This past week at a meeting with some of my clergy colleagues, we lamented about the dilemma Mother’s Day presents for us preacher types.  Each year, we have to decide whether we will stick with the themes of the Christian calendar and ignore Mother’s Day, thus risking the wrath and antagonism of the congregation, or will we throw away two thousand years of church tradition to celebrate – as one slightly cynical pastor put it – “a secular festival that Hallmark has parlayed into a gold mine for its own commercial profit”?  What’s a pastor to do?

But it’s not just the tension between the sacred and secular calendars which concerns my colleagues and me.  We are sensitive to the fact that honoring mothers excludes women who have not borne children, either by choice or through physical inability, and we are reluctant to focus on one group of people at the expense of another. 

We are also sensitive to the reality that some of us have complicated or broken relationships with our mothers, or with those who call us mother.  And some of us have lost a mother, or a child, which makes today’s celebrations more painful than joyous.

And, in my case – and that of every other pastor who is also a mom – preaching a sermon extolling the virtues of mothers feels a lot like, well, self-promotion.

But by the grace of God, the lectionary passage for this Sixth Sunday of Easter provides us with the opportunity to honor both the Christian calendar and Mother’s Day, too. 

This morning’s lesson from the Gospel of John is part of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse.  He is spending his final evening with the disciples, his closest friends.  In a demonstration of the kind of servanthood he wants them to follow, Jesus has washed their feet.  They have shared a Last Supper together.  And now he wants to leave them with some final words.  In that room with one who will betray him, another who will deny him, and the rest who will desert him, Jesus’ farewell message to his disciples focuses on love.

 

"A new command I give you: Love one another.  As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” [John 13:34]  "If you love me, you will obey what I command.”  [John 14:15]

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus speaks of and demonstrates different kinds of love for his disciples.  He has shown them the Fatherly love of God, saying, "As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.”  [John 15:9]  He has shown love as a son, saying “the world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.”  [John 14:31]  And he has called his disciples “brothers.”  [John 20:17b] 

And throughout the Gospels, Jesus also shows his disciples – and us, too – a motherly love.

So much of being a mom is serving others and putting the needs of our kids ahead of our own.  Let’s start with the sacrifice of pregnancy.  We give up our lifestyle, our convenience, [remember having to go to the bathroom every half hour?], our figures, often our health.  And then when the baby finally comes, we find ourselves suddenly “on call” twenty-four hours a day, ready to respond instantly to the every need of a little life totally dependent on us.  Suddenly we are servants.  And though the job description changes as this baby becomes a toddler and the toddler a young child and eventually a teen, we mothers are in some form of a servanthood role for a number of years. 

 

Sacrificial servanthood is putting another’s needs before our own.  And that’s what Jesus’ life was all about.  He demonstrated servant love, washing his disciples feet and serving God and others in so many other ways.  And he demonstrated selfless and life-giving pain through his sacrifice on the cross. 

 

Servant love.  Sacrificial love.  Selfless love.  Life-giving love.  God’s love.  Like a mother’s love.

 

"Mommy, boo-boo!"  What mother hasn’t heard that plaintive cry from her toddler?  And what do we do?  We drop everything to apply a Snoopy Band-Aid and a kiss to "make it all better."  And it works!  Five minutes later, the pain is quickly forgotten, and our little one is back busily scattering toys all over the floor!  Jesus healed, too – the paralytic, the blind man, the woman with the hemorrhage…  He vanquished demons from Mary Magdalene and the two Garasenians, and through him, God reconciled the world to Godself [2 Corinthians 5:19].

 

Healing love.  Reconciling love.  God’s love.  Like a mother’s love.

CNN carried a story a while back of a 25 year old man in San Francisco who was dying of AIDS.   He had already suffered the death of his mother, and now his father wouldn’t have anything to do with him.  He had nobody.  The reporter asked the emaciated young man how he was able to endure the pain of facing death alone.  And he answered that he often closed his eyes and imagined that he would awaken in the arms of his mother because he knew that she would never leave his side. 

Unconditional love.  Never-ending love.  God’s love.  Like a mother’s love.

British author and poet Rudyard Kipling penned these verses:

If I were hanged on the highest hill,

I know whose love would follow me still.

Mother of mine.  Mother of mine.

If I were drowned in the deepest sea,

I know whose tears would come down to me.

Mother of mine, mother of mine.

If I were damned by body and soul,

I know whose prayer would make me whole.

Mother of mine.  Mother of mine.

Forgiving love.  Abiding love.  God’s love.  Like a mother’s love.

Now I could end this sermon here, and some of you might think that it was a pleasant enough for Mother’s Day, if maybe a tad sentimental and idealized.  But you know, if I were sitting where you are, I might just leave this sanctuary with a case of “Guilty Mom Syndrome.”  I mean, I think I’m good mother.  I think even my kids will tell you that I’m a good mother.  But I must confess, I don’t always love sacrificially or selflessly; I’m not always forgiving; and I find that loving unconditionally is downright difficult, if not impossible.  I know there have been too many times when the best love a mother can give her child won’t heal the injury, cure the illness, or take away the pain.  And sometimes a mother’s love isn’t forever.

 

For all of us moms who feel insufficient to the task of mothering, here’s the good news.  As Christ told the Apostle Paul, he also tells us, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." [2 Corinthians 12:9]. 

 

In other words, God in Jesus has enough forgiveness, mercy, grace, healing – and offers enough unconditional, infinite, and never-ending love – to more than make up for our shortcomings as mothers, and as fathers, too.  And so, with hearts grateful to all who have shown us motherly love in our lives, and with hearts also grateful to God, let us close in prayer with words written in the 12^th century by St. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury:

 

Let us pray…

Jesus, as a mother you gather your people to you;

You are gentle with us as a mother with her children.

You weep over our sins and our pride,

Tenderly you draw us from hatred and judgment.

You comfort us in sorrow and bind up our wounds,

In sickness you nurse us and with pure milk you feed us.

By your dying, we are born to new life;

By your anguish and labor we come forth in joy.

Despair turns to hope through your sweet goodness;

Through your gentleness we find comfort in fear.

Your warmth gives life to the dead, your touch makes us holy.

In your mercy, heal us;

In your compassion, bring us grace and forgiveness,

For the beauty of heaven, may your love prepare us. 

 

Amen.