Wait Until Your Mother Gets Home

Pray also for me, so that when I speak, a message may be given to me to make known with boldness the mystery of the gospel. Ephesians 6.19

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I have been a mother for a little over 24 years, and had a mother myself from the very day I was born—just like you, I expect. Some of us grow up with the woman who gave birth to us; some of us are adopted; some of us are brought up by someone other than the woman who brought us into the world. Our experiences having mothers and, for some of us, being mothers, are all different. Sometimes it’s really a wonderful relationship, and sometimes it’s not—but it’s always important, one way or another.

I’ve paid attention to Mother’s Day over the years. I have received some heart-melting gifts from my children, ranging from the gluey contraptions with handprints and photos made in nursery school, to the bouquet of roses that arrived this week from my daughter in college. I have made telephone calls and sent and received lovely cards. I’ve gone out to dinner. For years now, I have dreaded preaching on the second Sunday of May. And that has pretty much been my Mother’s Day experience.

And on Friday, as I was working on my sermon for today, I ended up throwing the first one away. It was a sentimental reflection on personal peace, and on the nurturing nature of God as revealed in human relationships. In today’s scripture, Jesus says,

²⁷Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I had written most of a sermon about how God gets that peace to us, through the presence of the Holy Spirit. I talked about how peace and fear cannot co-exist, and said that practicing trusting God, even just a moment at a time, is the path to peace. It was a fine sermon, and you may get to hear it one day.

But then I learned some things about Mother’s Day that I had not known. I already knew that the national holiday, signed into law by Woodrow Wilson in 1914, was the result of Anna Jarvis’s extended campaign to honor her mother (also named Anna Jarvis) and all mothers. I knew that Anna Jarvis, the mother, was an Appalachian homemaker who had organized a day to raise awareness of poor health conditions in her community in the 1850’s. This was a cause she believed would be best advocated by mothers, and she called it "Mother's Work Day." In 1868, after the Civil War ended, she organized a "Mother's Friendship Day" in her West Virginia town, to unite families from the North and the South after the Civil War through the friendships of mothers. Anna Jarvis felt that mothers could play a unique role in reconciling the division of so many families. After she died—105 years ago today, on the second Sunday of May, May 9, 1905—her daughter began a campaign to memorialize the life work of her mother.

Anna began to lobby prominent businessmen and politicians to support her campaign to create a special day to honor mothers. At the first service organized to celebrate Anna's mother in 1908, at her Methodist church in West Virginia, Anna handed out her mother's favorite flower, the white carnation. That church, in Grafton, West Virginia, has since become the International Mother’s Day Shrine, incorporated in 1972 as a non-profit organization dedicated to the preservation of Motherhood with a capital M. (I’m not kidding.) In 1913, the House of Representatives adopted a resolution calling for officials of the federal government to wear white carnations on Mother's Day. In 1914, Anna's hard work paid off when Woodrow Wilson signed a bill recognizing Mother's Day as a national holiday.

People began to observe Mother's Day by attending church together, writing letters to their mothers, and eventually, by sending cards, presents, and flowers. As the gift-giving activity associated with Mother's Day increased, Anna Jarvis (the daughter) became enraged. She believed that the day's purpose was being sacrificed at the altar of greed and profit. In 1923 she filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother's Day festival, and was even arrested for disturbing the peace at a convention selling carnations for a war mothers’ group. Before her death in 1948, Jarvis is said to have confessed that she regretted ever starting the Mother's Day tradition.

I knew most of that history, though the part about the International Mother’s Day Shrine was news to me. But here is the part I had not seen until Friday—which amazes me, since I’ve been preaching on Mother’s Day for more than a decade. Does the name Julia Ward Howe ring a bell? “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord…” Yes, she was a poet, abolitionist, pacifist, suffragist, and author of the lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic. This song was written in 1861, and it quickly became the unofficial anthem of the Union forces in the Civil War. After the war, however, Julia Ward Howe became convinced that war would never lead to peace. She organized a day encouraging mothers to rally for peace, since she believed they bore the loss of human life more harshly than anyone else. I’m not sure I agree with her on that, but I admire any impulse that leads someone to pursue peace. The first “Mother’s Day” for peace was held in New York in 1872, and celebrated in 18 cities across America the following year. The holiday continued to be honored in Howe’s hometown of Boston for another decade, but eventually ended after she stopped underwriting the cost of the celebrations.

For the first Mother’s Day, in 1872, Julia Ward Howe wrote a proclamation that I had never seen before Friday. Instead of setting mothers up as the object of admiration, veneration, and presents on Mother’s Day, it is a call to action—a cry, a plea for action that leads to peace. Jesus promises us peace in the scriptures; Julia Ward Howe insists that we pursue it. Here is her Mother’s Day Proclamation:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,

for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,

will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm!

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home

for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

One hundred and thirty eight years ago, in the wake of the Civil War, things were so bad that Julia Ward Howe issued this plea for action in honor of Mother’s Day, to be led by women, in the interests of peace for all humanity—justice for all, safety for all, provision for all. She believed that none of us are safe until we are all safe.

I am one of the most blessed and fortunate people on this earth, and I don’t feel very safe recently. I was in New York City the day before the bomb didn’t go off. I have recently learned of very serious illnesses and injuries among people I know and love. The President’s Cancer Panel, established in 1971, is going to release a report on Monday saying that we have to do something about the many known and suspected cancer-causing chemicals that are completely unregulated. The blown-apart oil well in the Gulf of Mexico continues to spew 210,000 gallons of oil a day into the water. Nashville is still under water. More miners are trapped, this time in China, and some are dead. North Korea has nuclear weapons outside of any treaties, and Iran seems to want to join them. And I don’t know what’s going on in Arizona.

I’m not saying that I don’t like to receive roses, or have somebody make me dinner, but I share the sentiments of that first Mother’s Day Proclamation. Yes, it is possible, and good, to pursue individual peace for ourselves. But that is not the example of the Savior we follow, Jesus the Christ. He did not do what was easy, comfortable, and pleasant for himself, but gave everything he had, even his own life, in obedience to God, for the sake of all humankind. He accepted God’s love and didn’t keep it for himself.

It’s right and good to pause and celebrate all the people who have nurtured us—beginning with, but not limited to, our mothers. Yes, charity begins at home; we can’t share something we don’t have; “let peace begin with me.” All that is true. It’s important to pursue peace for ourselves—but not only for ourselves.

Parents Circle-Families Forum is a grassroots organization of bereaved Israelis and Palestinians who have lost close relatives in the conflict in the Middle East. They promote understanding, reconciliation, and transformation as an alternative to hatred and revenge. Here’s an unlikely pair trying to wage peace: a young Palestinian man whose brother was killed by an Israeli soldier—and a Jewish mother whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper. They met in the Families Forum, and against all odds, became friends. They stress that they do not always agree. However, they strive to understand one another, believing that reconciliation is rooted in understanding the suffering of the person on the other side. They travel the world together, speaking in mosques, churches, synagogues, parliaments, and public meetings. They use their story as an example of how hatred can be transformed to compassion; grief to calm; prejudice to justice; war to peace.

In the spirit of that first Mother’s Day, let us too pursue peace and justice—not just for ourselves and our loved ones, but for the world. Let us wage peace, as the Quakers say—make peace where none currently exists. Jesus say, “My peace I give to you.” Let’s not keep it for ourselves. Amen.