Means of Grace & My Mom
Preached at Decatur First United Methodist Church, Decatur, GA
on January 4, 2025
Luke 24: 13 - 35 (NRSVU)
Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, “What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?” They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, “Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?” He asked them, “What things?” They replied, “The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.” Then he said to them, “Oh, how foolish you are and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?” Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures.
As they came near the village to which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged him strongly, saying, “Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem, and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, “The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!” Then they told what had happened on the road and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
There’s no shortage of good things to say about my mom. Joann Frances Webber Watts was accomplished personally and professionally — she was an award winning educator, with gifts not only for teaching in the classroom, but also for school administration, and those are not the same set of skills. She was a faithful daughter, sister, wife, mother and aunt. She took all of those roles seriously. She was a good neighbor - literally and in the spirit of the good samaritan that Jesus described. She was ambitious in her service to the church and her community, finding creative ways to live into the kingdom of heaven, and never failing to say yes when asked to serve. We could spend all day saying good things about my mom, but as we gather to celebrate the goodness of God and a life well-lived, I want to start with Coffee.
If you worship here at Decatur First, you may have heard me say at some point that coffee is a means of grace. This gets a good laugh, because “means of grace” is an old methodist phrase, and having coffee in worship is a relatively new phenomenon in our 202 year-old congregation. But I mean it literally when I say it, and while she never used those words, it’s something I learned from my mom.
Mom’s circle of friends was never large, but if you were in it, there was nothing she wanted more than to sit and drink a cup of coffee with you. Now, you could also just sit and talk, but that wasn’t the same.
The coffee was an extension of welcome and hospitality. It says, I want you to be here. It was a communion of sorts - an experience of connection that made the visit richer, and even, holier.
This is the theological side of mom’s coffee drinking, but there was a practical side as well. My mom was an extraordinarily hard-working and disciplined person. During some of my elementary years, she was working full-time, raising a family, and getting a masters in gifted education all at the same time. I honestly do not know how she did that, but I know that I rarely saw her without a cup of coffee in her hand. It was not uncommon to find half-full cups of coffee around the house - one in the microwave, one in the bathroom, one by the kitchen sink. It looked haphazard, but it was actually very efficient. When one cannot find their cup of coffee, it’s best not to spend a lot of time looking for it. Just make another one, and move on with your day.
John Wesley, the founder of the methodist movement, defined "means of grace" as outward signs, words, or actions, ordained of God, and used by God, to be the ordinary channels through which we experience God’s grace. Coffee worked that way for my mom, it works that way for me, and it works that way in this church, so you are invited, following the service to have a cup of coffee with our family and visit, in the back of the sanctuary.
Of course, coffee was not the only way that mom shared and experienced grace.
When Andy and I were first dating and I brought him home to my parents’ house in Homewood, my mom made this really yummy salmon dish with lemon and dill. She didn’t yet know that Andy Yates really likes salmon in general, but she noticed that he asked for seconds. She ALWAYS noticed if you asked for seconds. For the next year that we were dating, every single time Andy came to the house she made salmon with lemon and dill. Every time.
Loving people through food was natural for my mom. I’m not sure she even thought about it. She entered the flow of God’s providence and rolled with it, providing ordinary things, through which those she loved could experience abundance and grace.
When I was in college and working at Camp Sumatanga during the summers, we ended each week with a camp-wide service of Holy Communion. In our tradition, once the bread and juice have been consecrated, they must either be consumed, or returned to the earth. So, after lights out, the team would return to the assembly hall to clean up and reset the room, and to reverently and joyfully finish off the bread and juice.
A couple of times each summer, my mom made sure that we had a jar of Dreamland BBQ sauce for dipping the bread, and some cold coke-a-colas in glass bottles to go with it. In those days, that meant driving from Birmingham to Tuscaloosa, and then to Gallant, Alabama to deliver those provisions. That’s 223 miles round trip. But that’s not even the craziest story I’ve got for you today.
The summer after I graduated from college I moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota. I loved my time there, but the difference between Alabama and Minnesota in both the style and preparation of food was significant. I was homesick for familiar food. When my parents came to visit me for the first time, the airline lost their luggage. They arrived at the transitional home where I worked at 8:00pm on a Friday night, without any clothes or toiletries. What they did have was a small cooler, packed with Milo’s Hamburgers and fries. They were still warm. The next morning we would need to make a Target run for clothes and toothbrushes, but that night we feasted on Milo’s, a taste of home, safely stowed in an overhead compartment, and delivered to me 1000 miles away. Ordinary signs, words, or actions through which we experience grace.
This inclination to share grace through food got dialed up to 11 when grandkids came along. The moment that Sullivan was born, she became Nannie Jo, and she was never happier than when she had grandkids at her house. Mitchell, Theo, Ginny, Harrison, and Sullivan were, without a doubt, the apple of her eye. If they ever did anything wrong at her house, I never heard about it. She was bursting with pride and happy to tell you about the funny thing one of them just said, or the cool thing one of them just did. I remember more than once showing up to pick up kids from her house, and seeing 4-5 take out pizza boxes on the table. “Were y’all hungry?” I asked. Mom replied, “Well, they all wanted something different so we just ordered a buffet.”
When we started having Christmas Eve dinner at my house, Mom and I decided to keep things simple and order Chinese food, since I work on Christmas Eve. Mom loved to say, “just keep it simple,” but she was fundamentally incapable of doing that. So when I would start putting together the Chinese food order for Christmas Eve dinner she would send me a 12 line text message with everyone’s favorite entree, as well as each person’s preferred version of rice or noodles. And, I pretty much ordered it.
I actually have more food stories… In fact just last night, my Aunt Jan shared a story involving broccoli and margaritas that will just have to wait for another time…. because I want to make sure to reflect on an important food-adjacent moment in Mom’s life. In 1987 mom went on a Walk to Emmaus retreat. She had grown up in the church all her life, but this three-day retreat turned out to be a turning point in her faith. I was in middle school and Clay was in high school, and we were pretty much oblivious to such things, but looking back now, especially as a Christian educator myself, I can see the difference it made.
The purpose of Emmaus retreats is not just to create a heart-warming faith experience, but to challenge and train disciples for service in their local church. And, it worked. It was a grace-filled moment that continued to ripple through the rest of her life, and into the lives of those around her.
At our church in Homewood, mom would go on to serve in several administrative capacities - she served as a member of the Administrative Board, and as the chair of the Staff Parish Relations Committee during the transition of our senior pastor, she also supported our church’s youth ministry as a volunteer coordinator, which in retrospect, may have been more challenging than the process of bringing in a new pastor.
The basis of the Walk to Emmaus retreat that was so important to mom, and to many others, is the story from the Gospel of Luke that Andy read for us earlier. Two of Jesus' followers walked with him following the resurrection but they did not recognize him. They spoke of deep and important things, and still did not realize it was him. They finally became aware that it was Jesus, only when he got his hands on the bread they were going to eat for their supper. They were in his presence the whole time, but they couldn’t receive the blessing of that until they shared a meal with him. And then, once they had received that grace, they were unable to keep such good news to themselves, they rushed to Jerusalem to tell others.
I don’t know which came first, my mom’s deep encounter with this story in 1987, or her gift-slash-obsession with feeding people, but there’s a relationship there and in her later years, she served the church through food.
Mom was a much loved volunteer in the Vacation Bible School Volunteer Snack Room, but even when she was not able to serve in person the last couple of years, she and dad texted me every day to find out what we needed for the next day’s feast. Her pimento cheese is now the stuff of legend, and the standard by which we on the church staff judge all other pimento cheese. It got that way because it’s really good, but also because she and dad are so generous with it. There are no SMALL batches of pimento cheese in this family. Like God’s grace, we make it in bulk quantities so there’s plenty to go around. And, it’s not a secret. Why would we keep something so good a secret? The recipe is on the back of your bulletin. Pimento cheese, like grace, should not be kept secret or used sparingly. It is meant to be shared and given away.
Even in what would be the last months of her life, she continued her ministry. She and dad made meals for our church meal train ministry right up until the summer. And in August she made sure that beloved family friends had snacks in their family room on the day of their loved one’s memorial service.
The thing about a means of grace, is that it is, by definition, ordinary.
The bread of Holy Communion is just bread, until God gets ahold of it.
The waters of baptism are just water, until God puts it to use.
The coffee is just coffee. The salmon is just salmon. The pizza is just lunch. The Chinese food is just take out.
And the pimento cheese, as good as it is, is just a spread…until it becomes a part of something more.
Mom was a quiet master at joining that something more. The last meal train she delivered was to a family that had delivered a meal to us, the day after a death in our family. The last grieving family who got the Joann Watts treatment in their family room, organized the snacks for my family today. The flow of grace in and out of her life goes on. Mom was not able to worship in-person much in the last year, but she was never apart from the church. Even now, as the church begins collecting socks and underwear for our homeless neighbors, I heard her voice asking me to pick up some for her and put it on her card. She continued to keep her vows of prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness right up until the end. I hope the same can be said about me one day.
Thanks be to God for the gift of grace extended to all of us, for the ordinary ways that we get to share it, and for my mom. Amen.
Pimento Cheese
(This is exactly as my parents sent it to me to include in the DFUMC cookbook)
Ingredients
½ cup Duke's mayonnaise
1 cup home grated extra sharp cheddar cheese
1 cup home grated sharp cheddar cheese
3 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
2 to 3 tablespoons pimentos (or more to taste)
1 teaspoon grated onion (or more to taste)
black pepper to taste (no salt, cheese adds salt)
Directions:
Do not use bought bags of shredded cheese. Buy blocks and shred!
Beat cream cheese and cheddar cheese until smooth and fluffy (by hand or mixer).
Add other ingredients and beat until well blended
This is always better after being in the refrigerator. This is good on crackers, celery, bread, or by the spoonful. (We won't tell!)
This is a small batch. We almost always double or quadruple the recipe.
Read mom’s obituary at this link.
