Topical Sermon for Mother’s Day
by Maylan Schurch
Bellevue Seventh-day Adventist Church 5/10/2025
©2025 by Maylan Schurch
(To watch this entire worship service, click the link just below:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T4y5KDTmiDY&t=4663s
Please open your Bibles to John chapter 6.
When you think back on your mother – or whoever it was in your life who was a mother to you – do you remember things she said? Can you imagine how many hundreds of thousands of words mothers say to their kids?
I was blessed to have a mother who was not a nagging person. Mom was not bitter. She was not obsessive about any of us. She did stay home with us until my younger brother, the youngest in the family, was 11. Then she went to work on a night shift from 11 to 7, so she could be home to see us off to school. Then she would try to get a little sleep so she could be awake again when we got back home in the afternoon. But she never got enough sleep.
And since our life was pretty tranquil, we had very little drama, very few tempests in the home, I actually don’t remember a lot of specific things she said.
But there were a few of her sayings which were “sticky.” They have stuck with me, from all those years back. And when I try to figure out why these few sayings stuck, I think the reason is that they were ones she said during emotional moments. And I think it was mainly my emotions, not hers.
This morning I would like to share three of Mom’s “sticky sayings” – little comments or phrases that have stayed with me. Since mom was a devout Christian, and so was dad, they both prayed daily about their kids and about a lot of other things. And that’s why it’s no surprise to me that these sticky sayings of hers echoed Christian principles.
And the main thing that’s made them sticky, as far as I can tell, is that they clashed powerfully with ideas I at first thought were sensible ones.
So for a few minutes, let’s look at Mom’s sticky sayings, and I’ll tell you why I think they are so important – and definitely so biblical.
If you’re taking down sermon notes, here comes what you might call Sermon Point One. Here is Mom’s first “sticky saying.”
“That’s their way.”
Now at first glance – or at first hearing – those three words probably don’t mean much. And before I tell you what this means, I need to let you know that my mom wasn’t wishy-washy. She did have strong preferences, and she did have things that privately annoyed her.
One of the things that annoyed her was when people went down to the store and bought huge wooden colorful butterflies, maybe two or 3 feet across, and attached them to the side of their houses. I think that was a decor fad in the early 90s. I don’t know why she couldn’t stand this fad, but she couldn’t. Of course, as her firstborn son, I took careful note of these prejudices of hers, and would thoughtfully bring them up once in awhile, to see her reaction.
Also, there was a town in Nebraska called Niobrara. It’s a perfectly innocent town, but when mom heard the name “Niobrara,” it was like fingernails scratching on a chalkboard. She would shudder with loathing.
Another thing that truly irritated her was how when she was a child, her own father would occasionally drink a bottle of beer in the evening. As far as I know, he never became abusive or anything like that, just a little giggly and tipsy. Mom hated how beer changed her dad into someone she didn’t recognize.
So mom had strong preferences, strong annoyances. But as I think it over now, I realize that those annoyances were rarely with people.
“That’s their way.” So, what did that mean?
This first sticky saying of hers would come out of her mouth when she noticed that I let myself get angry about somebody who was doing something that I thought was dumb. When she spotted me imagining that I was better than somebody else, or being contemptuous of them, she would calmly say, “Well, that’s their way.”
What she was saying was, “This person you’re talking about may not be doing things the way you would do it, but that’s their way.”
It’s amazing how that changed my thinking. It was like she was opening a door into the life of somebody else, and insisting that I try to think of why that person might be doing things that way, rather than my way.
Well, is this first saying of mom a Bible one? I believe it is. Jesus very firmly believed that that there is a right, and there is a wrong. But Jesus constantly recognized that not everybody was at first on the same page as He was.
I mean, He could walk along a seashore and suggest to the two sons of a fishing family that they should drop everything and follow Him, and they did. He could stroll up to a tax collector, sitting at his table by the road, hiding his moneybags under his cloak, and Jesus could say the same thing: “Follow Me.” And Matthew got up, squared his shoulders, and walked away from his livelihood.
But not everybody did that. Here in John chapter 6, and also in chapters 7 and eight, Jesus spends many verses reasoning with people about who God was, and what God wanted from them.
John 6:63 – 66 [NKJV]: It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you who do not believe.” For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who would betray Him. And He said, “Therefore I have said to you that no one can come to Me unless it has been granted to him by My Father.” From that time many of His disciples went back and walked with Him no more.
Can you imagine what Jesus must’ve felt, watching all those people turn their backs and just walk away? He knew their hearts. He knew that selfishness and rebellion and pride were “their way” – the way they and their ancestors for centuries had behaved.
Jesus didn’t like it, and He longed for them to turn their hearts to Him, but He gave them free choice. And every once in awhile, just when things got so discouraging, Jesus detected a ray of hope.
Verses 67 – 69: Then Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you also want to go away?” But Simon Peter answered Him, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. Also we have come to believe and know that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
But that wasn’t exactly a happy ending. Jesus didn’t breathe a sigh of relief and change the subject. Look at verse 70.
Verses 70 – 71: Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” He spoke of Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, for it was he who would betray Him, being one of the twelve.
My mom cared about people, and had a great sympathy for them. Jesus cared about people too. Mom was willing to give people the benefit of the doubt – and utter a sticky saying which for more than half a century has reminded me to do that as well. “That’s their way.”
Mom knew Jesus’ insistence that neither mom nor I should judge people, because Jesus Himself would be the final judge of us all. Yet even Jesus Himself – the future judge — was willing to be patient with people. Sadly, down through the centuries, some Christian groups haven’t been so patient with each other.
Now let’s look at another of Mom’s “sticky sayings.” I think she only said this one time to me, but it stuck. And again, I believe it stuck because she said it in response to a great deal of anger I was feeling.
I know I’ve told this story before, but not recently. As I remember it, I was in my mid-teens. I think I was upstairs in my room, and I heard the phone ring. I went to the head of the stairs to see if I could tell who was calling. I didn’t hear my mom say anything, except every once in a while she would say in sympathetic tones, “Ohhhhh . . .” And a few minutes later she would say “Uh-huhhh . . . Ohhhhh.”
Because of this, I knew exactly who had called. It was a friend of mom’s, whom I will call Mary, which is not her real name. Whenever Mary called, mom had to stand in the kitchen, or sit in a chair, holding our only telephone, which had a long coiled cord on it.
And every time I thought of Mom being held hostage like that, not able to even really get any kitchen work done, I would go into boiling mode.
Anyway, that particular day, when I heard the conversation finally come to an end, I stomped down the stairs and snarled, “Mom! You shouldn’t let her do that to you! You should just hang up on her!”
And then mom uttered this second sticky statement. Mom didn’t get mad at me, or tried to browbeat me, but she said simply – and this is Sermon Point Two:
Not only did Mom remind me, “That’s their way,” but she also reminded me that “She doesn’t have anyone else to talk to.”
And I was about to take another breath and make another protest, but that statement stopped me in my tracks. I realized how true it was. Mary and her husband had chronic problems, partly her husband’s fault and partly Mary’s fault, about fifty-fifty on each side. Mary couldn’t talk to her husband about their problems because he and she would both get stubbornly madder and madder. So she called Mom.
And Mom never fixed her problems, or tried to. She just let Mary talk, and she listened. Mary never asked her for advice, but just vented. And Mom knew that a week later, Mary would call again, and vent again, and Mom would stand there at the end of that black coiled phone cord and just say, “Uh-huhhh . . .Ohhhhh.”
“She has no one else to talk to.” Is that sticky statement part of Jesus’ playbook as well? Of course it is. One warm noonday He carefully positioned himself on the edge of a 2000 year old well. And as He watched a lone woman hurry out to that well with her water jug, because evidently no other woman came to get water at that particular hour, as Jesus saw her approach, He knew that she too didn’t have anyone she could talk to about what was deepest in her heart.
And when an influential Pharisee named Nicodemus tracked Jesus down late one night, Jesus knew that this man, also, had no one to talk to about what was deepest in his heart.
And later, walking along a Jericho street, Jesus heard a rustling in some tree branches, and glanced up to see still another person who had no one to talk to about what was deepest in his heart.
So what should I do, now that I know mom’s second sticky saying? I need to not jump to conclusions about people. I need to remember that even though I can’t read people’s hearts like Jesus could, I need to give them His listening ear, and His praying heart.
As a young pastor I quickly learned that you must not schedule your weekdays so tightly back-to-back that you can’t be available for 45-minute phone conversation if somebody needs it.
Maybe my mother’s third sticky statement – the last one I’ll cover this morning – was the most powerful of them all. It goes like this – and this is Sermon Point Three:
Not only did Mom remind me, “That’s their way,” and that “She doesn’t have anyone else to talk to,” but she also said, “We feel the Lord leading us to do this.”
When I heard her and dad say this, at first I was confused and maybe even a little suspicious. I would ask myself, “How did they know the Lord was leading them? Did He speak to them? How can they be so sure of what they would often call ‘A leading from the Lord’?”
Neither Mom nor Dad never claimed that they were prophetic or anything like that. I learned that they fervently prayed to the Lord to guide them, step-by-step. There may have been five or six times when they actually half-heard a strong sentence or two from God. But mostly He seems to have led them by impressions – by opening some doors and closing others, or by creating an opportunity for them to take advantage of.
But when they said – about this or that issue – “We feel the Lord is leading us to do this,” they meant exactly what they said.
And often, when they came to these conclusions, they were dramatic ones. For example, when everybody else in town was getting television sets, Mom and Dad felt the Lord leading them not. And when everybody else, in every other way, seemed to be “keeping up with the Joneses,” Mom and Dad mostly didn’t join them.
And just as I was about to enter first grade, they departed from the Wesleyan Methodist Church moved their family out close to the Seventh-day Adventist boarding school and elementary school, and started enrolling their kids there. Immediately, the Methodists hurried out in little groups to labor with them about this.
But my parents serenely said, “We feel the Lord is leading us to do this.”
In this of course was directly from the playbook of Jesus Himself. Jesus sought the leading of His Father as well. In John 5:19 and 20, Jesus insisted, “Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner. For the Father loves the Son, and shows Him all things that He Himself does; and He will show Him greater works than these . . . .”
And in John 6:38 Jesus said, “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me.”
And of course in the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus again relinquished His own will to the will of His Father.
So what should we do, now that we been reminded of mom’s third “sticky saying”?
I think that during whatever end-times path the Lord has in store for us this year, I think we need to get in the daily habit of asking for His leading. Again and again I’ve discovered how calming it is to write two or three pages in a prayer journal, just opening my heart to the Lord, asking Him to guide me. My mom and dad knew how to do this, and Jesus knew how to do this, and you and I – who are facing who knows what crises in the days ahead – you and I need to do this as well.
Because there is someone who loves you with a love your mother could never give, or your father could never give. And that is God and His Son, and His comforting Holy Spirit.