1 Cor. 123b-13; Acts 2:1-21
Matt. 25: 14-29

In addition to the vital reminder to us to honor and give thanks for, our mothers, another very important reminder Mother's Day brings to us is one about all the important roles that are played by every member of our families--each one important for all the rest. When I think back and remember the important roles my own Mom played for our family, I wish I could thank her today for all she did for us, as we were growing up. But for me and my sisters, our Mom passed away several years ago, so we can no longer tell her in person. But she very much lives in our hearts, and so remembering her on this day, reminds us that in many ways she's still with us, because of all she did for us to make us who we are today.

One of the vivid memories I have about the roles my Mom played f or us was how much, and how lovingly, she kept all the members of the family connected with one another. It was like she was the communications central for the family. (Did or does your Mom do that?) I can still see in my minds eye all 3 of us kids coming home after school, and the first thing we'd do was plop ourselves down on a kitchen chair, since the kitchen was where my Mom hung out most of the time. Her desk was in a nook there, too so, if she wasn't baking or fixing some meal or snack, getting coffee, she was keeping the family books or writing letters or what have you. So the kitchen was the focal point of family life for us, and my Mom the central figure. It was she with whom we would share the happenings of our day when we got home--whether us kids or my dad, and it was from her that we often heard about the goings on in the rest of the family. She was also the letter-writer who connected us with extended family, and she kept us on schedule, and made sure the schedules of all of us didn't conflict. In other words, like the kitchen where she was and where we all gathered, she was the center point that made us a connected loving family.
On this Mother's Day, which happens this year also to be the Day of Pentecost for our Christian family, we're reminded of the account of that first experience the early followers of Jesus had with the Holy Spirit. It was a harvest holiday for the Jews, so they'd gathered in Jerusalem from many regions and countries, people of many different languages. But as they gathered, as Christ had promised, the Holy Spirit of God came into their midst like the rush of a mighty wind. Suddenly folk of different languages could understand one another--they were communicating. It was as if the Holy Spirit, now present, did something for the new Christians that was like what my Mom did for uas. The Spirit helped them communicate with each other and so tied them together like family. And so the church ws born.

The biblical account tells us also then that the visual clue of the Spirit's presence was something like divided tongues of fire that could be seen over the heads of each of the believers. Note it was divided tongues of fire. Not one big blazing spirit, but individual tongues. In our Call to worship we used Paul's words from Corinthians where he reminded us that the spirit, as on that day of Pentecost, comes to each of us individually, and gives each of us different gifts, but each gift of the spirit is important for the whole community--the whole family. God made us--the spirit made us,to work together--to be family for each other, with those uniques and individual gifts God gave us.

In our world of course we place a lot of importance on the indivdual and we see here that that's a good thing--for each persons gift is important in a different and unique way--like our Mothers who give or gave us so many gifts. Now my Mom, I said, gave us the gift of being the communications central--tying us all together. But we all had different gifts we brought to the family and each one was important.
When I do counselling with wedding couples I help them understand that there are many different patterns of relationship that spouses and families fall into, according to what fits their individual gifts and personalities. In some, one partner takes the lead and the other follows. In others the pattern is reversed. And the children all have many varied gifts. But I always remind the couple how important it is to let each person use their gifts that the spirit gave them, for the benefit of the family, and not force the pattern of who is "supposed to do what" on every family member. Obviously the wife doesn't have to be the cook--if that were so, Peg and I would be a lot hungrier. (No offense, Peg).

So it goes with all our family roles. As the apostle Paul put it, each part of the body which is our communities--whether family, church, the larger community or world-- each part of those bodies is important and unique said Paul, so we need days like today, when in this case we honor that key role of Mothers--however that happens in your family--and then we do something similar for Father's day, and indeed for children's day here in the church. And what we're affirming when we do that is how grateful we are that the spirit of God, first felt by the followers of Christ, has empowered each of us, with differ-ent gifts to share.

But then, though we celebrate the different and varied gifts of one another on such days as this--gifts of each individual--especially mothers on this day, both the reading from Acts and from Paul's letter to the Corinthians, our call to worship, reminded us that the Spirit, first experienced on Pentecost, and with us forever now, also connects us. So the Spirit of God that empowers you and me, has given each of us our individual unique gifts, and made them to be put together, to work together. We were made with different gifts so that we would need to share our varied gifts then as the family God made us to be--in order to have all the gifts we need for life. Family matters to God, you see--if's vital--for God made us to be a famiy for one another--in our individual nuclear families, in the church, which was born on the day of Pentecost as the Spirit connected the believers with one language and one faith, and we were made to be together indeed, one human family--with each people of each language--meant to be together and to seek to understand one another.

We're connected, and therefore work best as the people God created and the spirit nurtures--we work best when we work together in loving ways that takes cognizance of the others around us. What that gives us you see is har-mony, as opposed to many unconnected individuals just running off in ten different directions at once to "do our own thing."

For example: in our individual families. Within each family, all the family members need to take take time to talk to each other, about who has to go where at what time each day, or else chaos results. Each family needs to dream together, and share their dreams with one another often, otherwise they'll find themselves pulling in different directions and wonder why they have friction sometimes. Again like Paul's analogy, all the parts of the body are different. They have to learn to work together, for that's how we're made by God--to work best when we work together in harmony, not independently.

Most of us see examples of this everyday. Like when we're driving for example. If you're on the turnpike, and suddenly you begin to approach a construction sight on the highway or an accident, where all cars are slowed, and come to a crawl, in order to come down to one lane, the best thing you can do is form one lane as soon as possible. Right? But naturally there are always one or two people who instead want to go speeding by everyone else and only move over just before the merge. And while they may get there just a little faster, all they do really is slow everyone else down.

How much smoother things go when each driver takes turns merging into one lane-- to let the other person go first. A difficult situation is solved much more harmoniously, instead of a few people getting ahead, and everyone else getting mad.

God made us to work best, when we work together, and think of each other and what's best for all, instead of operating like--well like the stereotypical "Massachusetts driver" with everyone acting like it's race to get your car hood in front of everyone elses.

We were made by God to be a loving family. Family matters--so we all need to learn to put family first, which means thinking of the needs of all the others, at least as much, if not more than we think of our own needs and wants.

So if then family matters, and God made us to work best when we work together, harmoniously, with love, then that also gives us a responsibility to share those unique gifts each of us has, not just for ourselves, but for the benefit of all. In our gospel reading this morning, we heard the parable of the talents, where clearly we were shown how God, our Master, expects us to invest, to help to grow all of the gifts with which we each have been blessed--whether the pre-cious gift of family, or material gifts, or thoses individual talents each of us has been given bythe Spirit of God. For after all--all that we have ultimately be-longs to God, so what good does it do to just acquire more and more, or just try to keep and protect all that we have, instead of investing it, and sharing it for all, so that it will produce growth and new life.

I'm reminded of the somewhat tragic case of my wife's Aunt Lois. When Peggy's Aunt died a couple of years ago, her relatives went to clean out her apartment. They discovered first of all piles of travel folders that Aunt Lois, who lived by herself all her life, had apparently collected over the years, dreaming of trips she could take. Yet she never took any of those trips to faraway places. But before you start feeling sorry for her poverty, next Peggy and her sister found in that modest apartment in a somewhat rundown section in the struggling city of Bellaire Ohio--they found, in such odd hiding places as the bottom of the clothes hamper, all kinds of valuable stocks and bonds. For Aunt Lois had taken her earnings from her job as a secretary in a business office, where she worked most of her life, and instead of sharing them with others, or to enjoy her own life by travelling in God's world, she had simply invested them for herself, amused herself apparently by playing the stock market and buying some fairly valuable bonds. Oh not that she had a fortune, by any means, but how sad it was that apparently she became a recluse, in effect burying her gifts and her life protectively--not even trusting the local bank with it.
But then, I'm using Aunt Lois here, not only as a negative example of how sadly foolish we are when we bury God's gifts, for there is one other part of the story. and that is that at least, though she didn't put all those gifts of hers to work for God or others while she was living, she did leave it all for her nieces and nephews, which I have to admit we appreciated very much as a young couple starting our married lives, as in Peggy's and my case for example, with only one income to count on. So her gifts then grew in countless ways, giving life, instead of hiding it, as might have been the case had they never been found.

All of our gifts, from the unique spiritual gifts God gives to each of us, to the talents and abilities each of us has, to the material gifts with which we may be blessed in our lives--all of our gifts come ultimatley from our God, and God has made us to work best when we work as family investing our gifts with love to help all of God's people--God's family. After all we're all in this together, and God expects not just to sit on or hide, or keep for ourselves, the gifts with which we've been given--so that they'll be found by others in some old clothes hamper, but rather we're to share them before it's to late, to invest them for others and God, so that they might grow.

Since indeed, that is our calling as Christians, on this birthday of the church we call Pentecost, your church family this morning is indeed going to give you a birthday gift--a talent of sorts. At this time, if our ushers will come forward, every family here who wants one is going to receive a ten dollar bill, and since summer is coming, we'd like you to take this "talent" and invest it in some way over the summer months and make it grow. There are all kinds of ways to do that. Use it to help buy material, and sew something sell it, by ingredients for baking and sell what you make at a bake sale, buy some seeds and grow vegetables, and return to the church all the money you might otherwise have spent on the vegetables. Or if you want, get a group together and pool your resources and then make your combined talents grow in some creative way. Use your imagination and your own gifts. And then of course, just as the servants were to return the talents with interest, having made them grow, we're asking you then to return these "talents" we share with you today, with interest, for the work of our Master, Christ our Lord, at the end of the summer, on the first Sunday when we return to our Fall worship schedule. As you know our church has struggled a bit financially in the last few years, yet God has blessed us with a lively congregation of caring people. So rather than burying our gifts lets invest them for God. And on this Mother's Day, may they be a reminder as well, of the most precious gift of all God gave to each of us--the gifts of our families and of each other-- our church born on that day of Pentecost long ago.

Let the gifts of the Spirit loose beginning in this place on this Pentecost, that we all might grow, through God's gifts with love for family. Because you see, family matters--its who we are, how we were made to live--and that is together, for and with the loving Spirit of God. Amen.