This Sunday, churches all across the country will participate in my second biggest pet peeve of American materialism that is co-opted, celebrated, and elevated in church. (the first is churches that have easter egg rolls and bunny themed events, I am sorry, but that is just sacrilegious. I am the mean mommy who does not buy easter egg baskets, but I do allow g-ma to).  

Mother’s Day has absolutely nothing to do with church, and was created in 1912 by a woman who a few short years later decried it, because of the rampant commercialism that she saw as detracting from the holiday she had envisioned. I have two beautiful children, so this rant is not borne out of the angst of the 14 year old girl who dislikes Valentines Day because she has no BF to list on facebook.  I dislike the way the church has embraced Mother’s Day as a holiday so pivotal in the church preaching calendar, that any pastor who does not interrupt their preaching schedule to do a little ditty about tiny fingerprints on a window pane, risks being egged as they run to safety past the spot where the baseball glove adorning the stage should have been.

I have always been bothered by the way the church acts on this holiday, so I have been trying to examine why that is.  There are my superficial and opinionated reasons: ie–saccharine videos that should never see the light of day are guaranteed to grace the screen (There are some great videos out there, our church often finds them so that is proof it can be done!).  

There are my social worker impulse reasons: really??!!   the only stock art you could get was of white people? was of suburban houses so large they could house 30 people and spit off enough energy to power Rhode Island? was of idealized children dripping ice cream out the window of a brand new mini-van? seriously?! no, really?!   My issue with those things is not that the suburbs, white people, ice cream or mini-vans are bad. It’s the way that type of family is idealized, and subconsciously held up as the only way a family can or should look.  Imagine what types of barriers to the gospel may raise.  Are the images bad? No.  But, are they wise? Not always.

 

On a deeper level I believe that the way Mother’s Day is treated is the exact opposite of the message of the gospel; which is what church ought to be about. 

The core of the gospel is the deep understanding that you are more awful and sinful than you ever could possibly know, but more loved and accepted than you ever dared hope.  Out of deep appreciation and love for our saviour and that truth, we are to be a community of people that functions differently than society.  We should be the one place that exudes acceptance and love regardless of status or station in life… and the way the church practices Mother’s Day is the exact opposite of that.  

     Church grates on me. It’s the place where I have had the most phenomenal experiences of my life, and also the most painful.  Prior to having children, or even trying to have children, I never felt more worthless as a woman than in church in general, and particularly on Mother’s Day because although I was missionally carrying my faith as a woman into some crazy work and life situations, that was not valued by my church community… only women home with kids were.  Then, once we began trying to have kids, and we miscarried a few weeks before M-Day, I had to endure walking out of church and not being handed a gift that was given to every other woman in line because I did not have children.  The year prior to that, when a youth group guy drafted to hand out flowers was about to hand one to me out of generosity as his youth worker, he was loudly stopped by the woman in charge who said, “oh no, don’t give any to her she doesn’t have any kids yet.”  Thankfully my current church is much more gracious, and I always appreciate the way our pastor prays for all women on mother’s day, I look forward to his words each year because I know how empathic they will be.

 

Despite the fact that the church exists for all people, our American church has elevated the status of the nuclear family in a manner that has made it an idol.  We do not feel convicted of this because families are a good thing.  Parents raising children to seek hard after God in a community of like minded people is a good thing; but it’s not THE thing.  Jesus is THE thing.  I honestly believe that two biggest idols the American church has today are 1.) the nuclear family and  2.) comfort.  The craziness of Mother’s Day is a symptom of the disease of idolatry the church has about the nuclear family.  Once again… are nuclear families bad? No. Are they unbiblical? No, they are part of God’s design to show us who he is.  The problem is that our sinful human hearts have colluded with the bad parts of our individually focused American norms to produce an idol of something that God intended to use a signpost to point towards him. Instead, we use God as a signpost pointing towards our idealized version of family, therefore shifting the focus to the created rather than the creator. The end in that scenario becomes the nuclear family, and God is just a means along the way towards our idolatry of it.

Married families with children CONSTITUTE ONLY 25% OF OUR TOTAL US POPULATION, and by 2010, it is projected to drop to 20%.  44% of Americans are single. But, if you were to walk into the average evangelical church examine the programming, the types of people on the banners and brochures, and the images flashing by behind the powerpoint, you would think that singleness was not just an aberration, but a disease.  Christianity Today, in an article on single women in the church, quoted one woman as saying,” Sunday mornings are the loneliest part of my week.”  another said, ” In my church, communion is served by the elders…. often accompanied by their wives.  This makes sense on logistical levels, but it leaves me with a few perplexing questions: How does being married to an elder make one more qualified to serve? …Will I be able to serve in this capacity only if I get married?- and to someone with elder potential?…. I don’t mean to bash the church…. I love the church. I am the church. But there are times when I feel more like its black-sheep spinster aunt than one of its valued daughters.”**  (If it were me making those comments, I would add the following questions… Where in the Bible does it say that only elders/e-wives serve communion? Where in the Bible does it say that only men serve communion? To my knowledge the Bible does not explicitly state that either of things are how things have to be, it is our preference based upon our convictions in other areas.)

Wow. I know those quotes were not specifically about M-Day, but it is indicative of the elevated status we give to this model idea of mom, dad and kids.  Don’t get me wrong, families are wonderful and good things, gifts from God, but the modern way we view family…as a solitary nuclear unit is remarkably different than it was pre-industrialization or in still developing countries where family means extended family.   The concept of mom, dad and kids flying solo in their home, living alone, and not in community with others physically is new.  Something is off when you can drive home from your work to your nuclear family, drive into your garage, and bbq on a back deck instead of sitting on a front porch.  None of those individual things are wrong, but stacked one on top of the other, they further isolate us into our small family units and away from our communities. 

 

What I love more than anything about church is the explosive power the gospel gives it to shatter the categories expected by society.  I was recently sharing with a Jewish friend of mine how I love that in my church I am forced to do life with people of every demographic, various races, ages, and interests.  It’s a collection of people that no company or cause would pull together in quite the same way. And yet, we have swallowed a commercialized holiday from our culture hook, line, and sinker.  

What we are missing is an opportunity to do Mother’s Day differently than our culture.  Each year at this time I think to myself… what would it be like if instead of Mother’s Day, we just celebrated women and what they bring to our church community? What if, instead of preaching about Proverbs 31, or motherhood for the 100th time, the sermon focused on the special place that women held in the lineage of the Messiah? What if, instead of a celebration of womanhood being expected to be held by only feminist institutions or causes, it was the domain of the church?  Think for a minute how category busting it would be if a celebration of femininity and women, regardless of marital or offspring status, became synonymous with the church on Mother’s Day.  What if Mother’s Day at church became synonymous with a day of service for single mom’s who were not part of your congregation? If any single mom or single woman in your community was guaranteed a free oil change in the church parking lot on Mother’s Day? We can do so much better than stock art and flowers. 

 

**Stats and quotes were taken from Lauren Winner’s Book, ‘Real Sex.”