“Where is June Cleaver”

Mother’s Day, May 8, 2005

Scripture Reading:   Genesis 27

Rev. Dr. Carol L. Kerr

Blue Point Congregational Church

Did you know that the all time popular sit com mom is June Cleaver in the show “Leave It to Beaver” aired from 1957-1963 on CBS and ABC?   How many of you have seen “Leave It to Beaver?”  If you haven’t seen it, your parents surely have.  If June Cleaver (played by Barbara Billingsley) is not the quintessential mom you think of when you think of mom, mother’s day, and apple pie, then I can assure you that your own mother thinks of her in that way.    A lot of America imagines our idea of perfect motherhood as June Cleaver.    She is the mother whom all other mothers are measured against.  I still get a relaxed calm feeling when I see a picture of her with her fabulous pearls around her neck and her dress with the skirt gathered at the waist.  I can smell the fresh batch of cookies she had waiting for the big brother, Wally (played by Tony Dow) and the little brother Beaver (played by Jerry Mathers) when they came home from school.    I chuckle warmly when I think of how graciously she put up with their ever present friends, Eddie Haskell and Whitey. 

Thinking about June Cleaver I looked up the show on the web.  It was a surprisingly serious and well thought out website.  A lot more thought than I ever imagined went into “Leave It to Beaver” and June.  Much was written as an educational piece to help people with their families and to illustrate good parenting techniques.  These techniques were based on Dr. Benjamin Spock’s post WWII parenting book called Baby and Child Care.  I started smelling my favorite peanut butter cookies when I read the four points of parenting that they were trying to get across:

·        The first classification examines the need for parents to support, understand, trust and protect their children.

·        The next category looks at parental accountability in terms of social and family responsibility.

·        The third most frequently repeated message told mothers and fathers it was permissible to make parenting mistakes and that reference to their own childhood would enable them to respond to, and understand their children.

·        The final category suggested parents avoid excessive interference, and keep their expectations for children in line with their abilities.  In other words, parents were not to live their lives vicariously through their children. 

The web site continues:

·        For June and Ward Cleaver there was always a concerted effort to involve themselves in their offspring’s lives through conversation.  Usually this occurred at the dinner table when the family discussed the day’s events.  However, on the other occasions, the fatherly lecture successfully resolved the issue and the boys learned to comply with their parents’ wishes.

I find it wonderful that a television show took its moral responsibility so seriously.  It intended to help the American family become better, more functional, non-violent, and most of all reasonable.

Here is an example of one of June’s great parenting techniques.  This is an episode aired in 1957 called “Brotherly Love.”

Fed up with constant bickering and fighting between Wally and Beaver, June makes the boys sign a friendship pact promising to spend their time in each other’s company.  On the Saturday following the signing of the pact, Wally is invited by his friend Chester to a football game, and Beaver is given the opportunity to go fishing with Gus the volunteer fireman.  Since neither boy wants to be the first to break the pact, and disappoint their mother, they each attempt to outwit the other so they can pursue their separate interests.  As a result, Wally misses the game and the Beaver doesn’t go fishing.  Recognizing the error of their ways, the following day, the boys visit Gus and he allows the boys to us his dinghy to go fishing together.

Like I said, I think it is wonderful that the producers of this T.V. show took parenting so seriously.  I am sure the friendship contract is a great idea of Junes.  When we think of families who go to church every Sunday somehow the imagination conjures up a family that is a lot like the Cleaver’s.  This is how families are suppose to behave.  We think of church and “family values” all in one sentence.  I can imagine all four of them sitting in the pew and the minister (a male minister of course) opening the Bible and reading about some families in the Bible.  There is June anticipating more parenting techniques she could use on Wally and Beaver from that morning sermon.   The Bible is full of family stories.  The one this morning is of Jacob and Esau.  They are two brothers just like Wally and the Beaver.  Unfortunately that is where the similarity ends.   “Brotherly Love – the Prequil” goes like this:

Jacob is the younger twin brother of Esau.  Jacob is the favorite of is mother Rebecca.  Obviously, Rebecca never heard of Dr. Spock.  In fact, Rebecca doesn’t care if the two boys get along or not.  She wants Jacob to get her old blind husband’s blessing even though it is rightfully Esau’s.  Forget about any pact for them to get along and spend time in each other’s company.  No, this mother of the Bible, Rebecca goes for deception and power games.  She lives vicariously through Jacob.  So she tells Jacob how to trick his brother out of his rightful inheritance.  June Cleaver where are you?!  She had him put is brother’s clothes on, made his arms feel hairy like Esau’s and con his father into giving him Esau’s blessing.  It works!  He gets his father’s blessing and now Jacob is going to receive the inheritance of the eldest brother.  Esau does not rationally work this situation through.  He simply plans on killing Jacob after their father dies.  Rebecca suggests Jacob run away to her brother Laban’s in Haran until things cool down.  Which will take about 14 to 20 years, not merely 30 minutes when the sitcom is over. 

The Bible is full of stories about the family.  Families are key in the God’s working out his divine plan.  Unfortunately, the families in the Bible sound more like the plot of “Desperate Housewives” rather than June Cleaver.   It is loaded with manipulation, deception, tomfoolery, theft, sex, social gaffes, alienation, false assumptions, addictions, jealousy, blackmail, anger, dark secrets and murder.   Yes, the Bible sounds a lot more like, frankly many of our families than the Cleavers.  All this in those leather bound Bibles that old lady scent with lavender and put on their coffee tables.  I don’t think Rebecca would get a bouquet of flowers from Esau on Mother’s day. 

 Don’t’ get me wrong the Bible is pro-family.  More than anything else, the Bible is a book of families.  Families are everywhere in the Bible.  We have Adam and Eve, Noah, Abraham, Lot, Isaac, Jacob, Saul and Johnathan, David and more.  Families in the Bible have two main characteristics.  The first is one I have mentioned already, the families are deeply flawed.  Often they are dysfunctional with a capital D.  There is squabbling spouses, sibling rivalry, deceitful children, the whole ball of wax.  However, the second characteristic of the families in the Bible is that through them God perpetuates his promises to humanity anyway.  God makes his covenants with the patriarchs of these families and pours his blessing onto them and into them and their descendents from generation to generation.  For instance, God says to Abraham:  Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great… (Genesis 12:1-2)…Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them…So shall your descendants be.

Families can be a mess.  For instance, today is Mother’s Day.  Perhaps it will be fun for those of us who are mothers.  But, the truth is we might have a sullen teenager who doesn’t want to go out and eat with us but would rather hang out with is or her friend.  This teenager who can go numb for the whole afternoon.  Or, maybe Mother’s Day is painfully awkward for the couple who has just decided to separate.  Or, how about the fact that it is raining out still.  What happened to picnic?  Or, what to do when your mother calls and infers that the flowers weren’t quite good enough.  Or, the sister who steals money from her mother on a regular basis. 

But, as the poet says, God darts from tree to tree in the shadows anyway.  God claims our families the good, the bad, and the ugly and loves them anyway.  Given the dismal state most families in the Bible are, it is strange how many studies have shown the marriages who attend church are more like to stay together than not.  Why is this?  It is certainly not from emulating Rebecca.  Did you also know that people who attend church have a greater lifespan by 7 years?  This is true even accounting for possible lifestyle differences.  Why is that?  I don’t know for sure, but I have a suspicion it has to do with our ability to see beyond dysfunction and to pray for the light of God to happen anyway.  It is knowing that Jacob was the great, great, great grandfather of Jesus and that is amazing given how flawed he was.  By no means, do I want to debunk good parenting techniques.  I love reading those books, and David and I employ their advice often with out children.  But, perhaps there is something more than techniques that makes a successful family.  Perhaps there is waiting and praying and knowing God still stands with us even in the shadows of our deepest conflicts.  God doesn’t ask for Disney to happen, or Ozzie and Harriet, or the Brady Bunch or the Partridge Family or “Leave It to Beaver.”  God asks us to watch and pray and have faith in spite of it all.  That is what makes a family truly great.    The Bible offers no parenting techniques.  What it does offer is families living in hope.  Hope is not something that we tack onto our faith as a last resort.  Rather, hope is the beginning of our faith.  Because we know the future belongs to God we can live in the present with confidence and courage even though it may be far from perfect.

The author of the book The Power of a Praying Wife.  She writes that her favorite three-word prayer is “Change him, Lord.”  Problem is that God never seems to answer that prayer when we ask and in a way we want.  So she has learned to being with a different three word prayer, “Lord, change me.”  She believes that God has to start somewhere, so he’ll begin with the person who makes herself available.  This is the secrete success of Christian families. 

I found a wonderful family story that has a happy ending despite all of the problems within the family 

A tiny woman lies on the bed with skin so pale that she is almost lost in the stark whiteness of the bedding.

Yet she is surrounded by warmth – a quilt made by her own mother a lifetime agao, three generations of family pictures in beautiful frames, soft music to calm her and the gentle light of a lamp from her home.  Her family is gathering for her dying.  She can no longer speak, or hear, or see.  This powerful, delicate, matriarch is waiting for the right time to die.

After days of family vigil-keeping, something deep within her shifts toward the holiness that calls her home.  A silent primal cry echoes out and she is ready.  The hand touching hers in that moment is that of her favored grandson who has come despite prohibitive family issues.

She blesses him, and he knows it.  Her blessing flows through those bird-like hands into his with no less intensity that a jolt of electricity.  The young man ahs not tears for that moment, only deep celebration, because now he knows the truth.  (Susan Ivany)

If you could put that squeeze of the hand from the dying matriarch to the loving grandson in words perhaps it would be a prayer that would go something like this:  I pray that because my son has set his love upon You, therefore You will deliver him; You will set him on high, because he ahs known Your name.  I pray that he shall call upon You, and You will answer him; You will be with him in trouble; You will deliver him and honor him.  That with long life You will satisfy him, and show him Your salvation.

The Bible is a story about God’s family from the beginning to the end.  This family is a far cry from perfect.  June Cleaver would have no idea where to start.  Yet, in spite of it all God uses these families as the channel of his grace and judgment.  This is good news for all of us who have less than perfect families.  This is very good news.