Our Lord teaches about prayer today and it is your Small
Catechism that should be used as a prayer-book. For, Jesus just doesn’t teach
us the Lord’s Prayer, but gives us life and His Church to continue to teach us
to pray. As the nation celebrates Mothers today, we find mothers mentioned in
the Small Catechism and should pray for them.
Yet, one thing that we never ask God for is parents,
specifically mothers. We don’t get to choose them and we certainly don’t get
the choice of having them or not. The way the world is ordered, we are given
parents without our consent (the horror). Which does not mean that we are being
oppressed, but exactly the opposite. In the family, God curbs our sinful selves
into His proper order.
that Proper Order is “honor your father and mother”. This is
one example of how the Father loves you, that He answers your prayer for a holy
and right life even before you pray for it, even before you come into existence.
So it is that this existence, this life begins with family and it is exactly
that institution that our country and culture has failed most miserably.
Now you say, its not so bad. Anyone can be a parent if they
choose. There is no Family Police breaking down doors, preventing families.
There are no barricades or glass ceilings to break through. There is nothing
stopping a family from coming into existence.
So you say. But do you see the world through God’s eyes? Yes
the family is not oppressed per se, but neither is it promoted. You would think
the very backbone of the country, the family that produces new tax cattle,
would be treasured and held more closely. But in these grey and latter days, it
is merely one choice among many on the clearance rack.
Yes, the family and its value is there on the national
culture shelves, but things that do not sell go on that shelf. What’s put out
front, on the end of the aisle, and at the check-out lane, the “impulse buy”;
those are the things that sell. What’s put in those places? Not family, not
motherhood, and certainly not God or prayer.
You would be hard pressed to find a vocation as essential as
mothers. We know its essential because everyone has a mother. Adam knew this
when he named his wife Eve, calling her the “mother of all the living” (Gen
3:20). This is the value of mothers, then, that they are the ones to fill
the earth and subdue it. A single person may make a small difference and lead a
satisfying life, but one mother can raise multiple lives and make a multitude
of difference.
Repent. We pray to God and ask our heavenly Father for
things in Jesus’s Name, but are completely disappointed with them when we
receive them, if not outright reject them. Back to Adam and Eve as our example:
Adam did not value Eve as a mother enough. He did not give her children right
away, he did not guard and protect her from danger, and he threw her under the
bus when they got caught at the tree.
So our prayers ascend to God, “What are we to do?” The
culture battle is lost, there is no persuading anyone anymore. What do you do
with a failed institution? You replace it with a better one.
With this in mind, we return to the Lord to teach us just
what we are to replace the world’s idea of a mother with. But since God is
“father” and “son”, what does He know about it?
We forget all too easily that the feminine, motherhood comes
from God. He made Eve, after all. Jesus even describes Himself as a mother hen
in St. Luke 13:34, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets
and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your
children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not
willing!”
Does this prove God is a woman? No. It proves that God
understands best the need for a father and mother such that He sends His Son to
purchase and win for us a sanctified life which fulfills the Fourth
Commandment. Our heavenly Father does not pick a father or mother and make them
strong, but sends His Son Whom He has made strong for Himself (Ps. 80:17).
He is made strong for Himself in order that He might be made
man, be raised by His own mother and father, suffer, and die. In this sacrifice,
His holy, innocent, and precious Blood covers the multitude of sins, even those
aimed at God’s ordering of father, mother, and family. For just as our heavenly
Father is our father, no matter the state or condition of our earthly father,
so too do we have a heavenly mother, regardless of the state of our earthly
mothers.
That of course is the Church of Christ. The Bride Whom the
strong Son offers His life up for “that he might sanctify her, having
cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present
the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing,
that she might be holy and without blemish (Eph 5:25-27).”
The Bride who births Children of God through Holy Baptism.
The Bride who nurtures and raises up sons of God by Word and sacrament. The
Bride who educates by gathering around the crucifix so that if any is bitten by
sin, they may look upon it and live.
The Bride who reminds her children of their natural face of
sinfulness, that they might seek the Lord and His forgiveness, offered freely.
The Bride who prays, non-stop, for the Church of God in Christ and for all
people according to their needs.
This Bride, is our answer to the world’s “motherhood”. This
Church, whom Jesus dies for and the Holy Spirit creates, is the answer to all
prayers. It is the life that God gives to replace what the world has corrupted.
And because we are a part of that corruption, we need to be given the things
that we pray for.
And so, the Lord says in Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in
the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart”. Meaning, that if
you have faith, God will give you a clean heart and right desires. He will not
let your private desires run rampant and destroy. But He will remake your
sinful desires into His holy desires.
And what are His holy desires? That every evil plan and
purpose of the devil be destroyed. That we should fear and love God alone. That
anger and contempt for father and mother, fatherhood and motherhood, be cast
far from us. Instead that we honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish
them.
Why? Because it is the Lord’s will to give you His kingdom
and His kingdom consists of the Lamb Who was slain, sitting on the throne and
the Lamb’s Bride, made ready by Faith (Rev. 7:10; 21:2, 9). The very existence
of heaven is a marriage feast.
Dear Christians, Deuteronomy 7 tells us that “It was not
because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his
love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is
because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your
fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you
from the house of slavery” (Deut 7:7-8).
No, it was not that you were praying for the right things
first, then God said, “Hey! I like this guy”. First, it was a loving God, then
a very good creation, then God’s compassion upon sinful humanity. First God
loved us from the beginning. Second, He makes a perfect, orderly world for us,
in faith. Third, He sends His Son to reorder our hearts and prayers back to His
good and gracious will, so that, in His Grace, we may pray for whatever and
receive it.
God loves us first and knows our prayers. He answers them
first, before our prayers. We continue to pray to remind us of that, so that we
receive our mothers and all things with thankfulness. Thankfulness that there
is still a godly life of faith to be lived, in the midst of satanic attacks and
propogandist, worldly culture.
thankfulness that, in loving the Son, Jesus Christ, in His
Church among His holy things, we find that we also are loving the Father and
the Spirit and are finding strength in our families, even our Church family,
which both our mothers gave to us at God’s Word.
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