Mother's Day

John 13:31-35

Luke 13:31-35

Mark 3:31-34

               From Wit and Wisdom from the Peanut Butter Gang by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. (Nashville, TN: Rutledge Hill Press, 1994):

 “When you mother is mad and asks you, “Do I look stupid?” it’s best not to answer her.”

“I’ll never take my mom’s car out again until I can do it legally.”

“If your mom’s asleep, don’t wake her up.”

“It’s no fun to stay up all night if your parents don’t care.”

“Despite all the loving and caring relationships in the world, there is nothing more loving than the feel of my mother’s hand on my forehead when I am sick.”

“You should never laugh at your (mom) if (she’s) mad at you.”

“If mom’s not happy, nobody’s happy.”

“You only have one mom and you should take care of her.”

And finally, “Parents don’t get enough appreciation.”

               As you know, today is Mother’s Day.  And while the worship committee asked that we do a service that really and truly centered on Mother’s Day, and while I agreed to do it, I actually find Mother’s Day to be one of the hardest days of the year for pastors and one of the hardest subjects to preach on. 

               Mother’s Day is difficult because it is a loaded day for so many people, for so many reasons.  If you had a great childhood, but your mother is now passed on, it can be a day of deep sorrow as you miss your mother.  If you had a terrible childhood it can be a day of anger and a day to remind you of the difficult things that you experienced as a kid.   This is made even worse if you suffered abuse at the hands of your mother, or if your mother failed to protect you from the abuse of other family members.

Mother’s Day can call up feelings of guilt since most of the time sermons on Mother’s Day focus on appreciation for and the need to care for our mothers.  If you cannot do that for your mother, or even if just couldn’t do it all the time, this can be a very difficult and challenging day.

If you were adopted, it can be a day of confusion: who do I really count as my mother and how do I feel about both my biological mother and the mother that raised me.  If you have struggled to have your own children and were unable to do so, it can be a day of deep grief as you mourn never having the opportunity to be a mother.  If you have lost a child it can also be a day of deep grief as you mourn the loss of that child or those children.  If you raised your kids and they are struggling, it can be a day of real regrets: regretting the way you parented or specific things that you said or did in your parenting. It can be a day of anger at the judgements of others on your parenting, including pastors in Mother’s Day sermons.  (Did you know that one of the top reasons women pastors leave the ministry is because of all the unsolicited judgments and advice they are given on their parenting? 80% of all pastors feel ministry negatively impacts their families).  If you aborted a child, Mother’s Day can bring up all kinds of feelings: grief, fear, anger, etc.  If you have never been a mother and had or have no desire to be a mother, it can also be a hard day as the expectations of being a mother can feel so pressing and there can be so much judgment around that decision too.

  Mother’s Day can be a day to avoid the world for some people, and especially to avoid a church service which may be honoring the very people who damaged you in some real way, or a situation that you can’t or don’t want to be a part of.

In the midst of all of this, then, we have Mother’s Day.  And I picked three passages, all of which I feel have something to tell us about this day, about God’s relationships with us and about our relationships with one another. 

We start with the John passage and we are told that our biggest command, our final command, Jesus’ central message is that we love one another.  We are to be known as Jesus’ disciples by the way that we love, fully and unconditionally, despite differences, despite whatever we have been through, despite the way others treat us.  We are to be known through the way that we love.  And I believe that the best way that we know how it is to love in the way that God calls us to love is by reflecting the way that good parents love their kids.  Whether or not we’ve had good parents, whether or not we’ve been good parents, whether or not we’ve experienced that kind of deep and unconditional and abiding love, we all know what it looks like when a good mother loves her children.  There is nothing that will come in the way of that love: no belief, no choice, no action.  No matter how we are treated, no matter which of our deepest values our children reject or denounce, no matter if they mess up, lead lives that we don’t understand and can’t support, do unspeakable things or put us through hell, we continue to love them, fiercely, with all that we are and in such a way that we would easily and quickly give up our own lives for them.  That is what it is and what it means to be good parents. 

Jesus mirrors this understanding when he says in today’s passage from Luke, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem!  How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!”  Even in the face of our pain, of rejection from our children at times, good mothers love and want to protect their children.  God who reflects God shows us this kind of love and calls us to love all people in the same way. 

There is one other passage that always comes to mind for me when I think of what it is to be a mother.  And that passage is John 19:26-27.   Jesus is dying on the cross.  And we are told, “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.”  Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”  That passage to me is profound in so many ways.  But to me it is more than simply the obvious: “take care of my mother because I love you both.”  It is also a more universal statement.  We are all deeply connected.  We are all children and parents to one another.  We are all called to love one another with the fierceness of motherhood, to care for one another, to bring those who need it into our spaces, into our homes, to see them as family and to love them with all that we are as if they were our own flesh and blood.

The people who are our true mother and brothers, as Jesus points out in today’s passage from Mark, are those who treat us in this way.  Sometimes those are the women who birthed us.  Sometimes those are the parents who raised us.  And sometimes, as Jesus himself says in this passage, they aren’t.  Sometimes they are other people, who raise us and embrace us and love us with that fierce unconditional love that God calls us to. 

I think about all the strange stories of animals that have adopted other animals.  The crow who found a kitten and took care of it by bringing it worms until the kitten was big enough to start hunting on its own.  This crow continued to watch over the kitten until it was a full grown cat, leading it to food sources and just staying nearby in case anyone tried to threaten the kitten.  I think about the Leopard who attacked the baboon, discovered that the baboon had a baby on it’s back, and the Leopard adopted the baby baboon, watching over it and keeping it warm at night.  Completely unexpected and counter intuitive, but there it was.  Do you remember the story of MZee and Owen?  Owen was a baby hippopotamus who was separated from his family by a tsunami.  He was rescued and brought to a refuge where there was a tortoise named MZee.  The tortoise was 130 years old and very much a loner.  But Owen attached to MZee, following him around, and within a very short time, MZee took Owen under his care, watched over him, took him in as a mother would. 

And it brings me back to a story by Barbara Brown Taylor that I shared with you before but which embodies this kind of motherhood to a tee.  Barbara Brown Taylor has a silkie chicken which she obtained when one of her hens died, leaving an orphaned guinea chick.  She had heard that silkies were good adoptive mothers, so she bought one and brought it home.  She wrote, “I needed a foster mother for our orphaned guinea chick.  I had heard that Silkies are good mothers, so I shopped around in the Market Bulletin until I found some for sale…  When the Silkie and I got home… first I lay on the grass while she and the baby watched each other through the mesh of the cage.  Then I placed her inside.  Both she and the baby froze.  The baby cheeped.  The hen did not move a feather.  The baby cheeped again.  The hen staed right where she was.  The baby took a few steps toward her.  I held my breath.  The gray hen liften her wings.  The baby scooted right into that open door.  When I checked on them an hour later, all I could see was a little guinea chick head poking out from under that gray hen’s wing….This is counterintuitive, I might add.  If this hen is into the preservation of her species, then she ought to be looking out for her own babies and letting the others go hand, but she does not.  She accepts all comers, no questions asked.  She has neer seen a chick she didn’t like.  I ought to trust her by now, yet every time I introduce her to a new baby with nowhere else to go, I can feel the back of my throat get tight.  Please, please, please, don’t peck this baby, I plead.  It’s so little.  It has never laid eyes on any momma but you.  Then I set the chick in the cage with her, sitting down where I can watch what happens.  The baby cheeps.  The hen does not move a feather.  The baby cheeps again.  The hen stays right where she is.  The baby takes a few steps toward her.  The hen lifts her wings.  Come to momma, honey.  ‘Jerusalem, Jerusalem… How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!’  Jesus had chicken neighbors too, I guess, and from them he learned about God’s wings.  Watching them, he knew what he wanted to be and do.  One cluck from him, and I know too.”

On this Mother’s day, I invite you to remember that we are called to follow Jesus by loving in the way that he did.  That means loving one another, loving ALL the one anothers, with this kind of love, a Mother’s love.  I invite you to celebrate that love with me by reading together the Mother’s Day Litany that is printed in your bulletins.