Sixth Sunday of Easter Sermon

Not long ago, I had some time to kill before a meeting in Olympia, so I decided to wander around and explore downtown. It was a beautiful, sunny morning. And it didn’t take very long before I found a bakery. I stood gawking at the display case for ages before finally settling on a piece of this fabulous, custardy, Italian cake. I got a double espresso to go with it.

And this is all to say, I was so wooed by its deliciousness, I could have fallen in love with anything at that moment. And as I sat there, nibbling and sipping, I read the free little arts paper that was on the counter. And there was a painting in it of a mother sea otter, floating on her back, her arms wrapped around her little baby. Then I saw the name of the painting: Mother and Peace.

And I tell ‘ya, I got all choked up. I nearly started crying right then and there.

And like I say, the cake and the sunshine had already primed the pump (as it were), and the otters were cute, but it was the title that pushed me over the edge – that this mother’s protective arms were wrapped around peace itself. And who did I see in this mother? but God, who is the source of all life, all truth, all goodness. And in this moment God was a mother, nurturing and protecting her child, Peace.

For all the chaos in this world – for all the warfare, for all the threats and fears and dismantling of things we’ve relied on – in this moment I perceived the deeper assurance that, above the chaos of the deep, God is afloat, holding peace, and that peace shall survive. She is safe. She is warm in her mother’s arms, basking together in the sun, their eyes closed as they float along the currents.

Perhaps you might even say that we are that child in God’s arms, and that our name is Peace, for in love did God bring us forth as children, and through Christ are we convinced: there is no enmity between us. The power of sin and death is overcome and we have been lifted up in life.

Call us “Peace” – and so may we live as peace in this world. Yes, there is danger. Yes, there is destruction. Yes, love will call us into such places of suffering and sorrow. And we shall remain as peace. For we are in God. And God is in us. And all will be well.

Today is Mothers’ Day. It’s not a liturgical holiday. And yet I’m mindful of the intrinsic link between motherhood and godliness. It’s not to say that our mothers were perfect. They weren’t. But the fundamental virtues we ascribe to motherhood are absolutely consistent with what we believe to be true of God.

We were conceived and formed in our mothers’ wombs, just as “in God we live and move and have our being.”

We knew by instinct at the first to seek our mothers’ breast, just as, by instinct, “we search and grope for God,” knowing beyond tutelage that this life must find its source and sustenance beyond itself.

We were protected by our mothers’ love, just as we are protected by God’s love, “since we are God’s offspring.”[1]

And although it’s always been in the margins of scripture, if you look for the metaphors of “God as mother” you can find them. How could it not be? After all, the scriptural foundation of our human identity is declared right at the beginning of the Bible: “Then God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness’…. So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.”[2]

It’s extraordinary. No other surrounding culture made such egalitarian claims that men and women equally represented the Godhead. But there it is!

Unfortunately, despite this unprecedented insight, Jewish culture in the Ancient Near East developed along the same patriarchal lines as all the surrounding cultures, so the scriptures tend to reflect this same bias, leaning toward masculine language for God. But our founding narrative insists on a far broader, far more complex understanding of God’s nature. Whatever is holy and true of our mothers must also be true of God, for it is in God’s image they were made, and in God’s name and spirit they function.

Not all of us are mothers, but all of us have mothers (or have had). There was a time in each of our lives when there was no one more important, more essential to us than our mother. She was the one without whom we could not survive. Our existence was utterly dependent on her existence.

And we need to think about that for a minute – to consider the enormity of what it means. In our formation we had no existence apart from our tethered existence within our mothers. And this is how God made our species to be. So in this, there is a deep holiness.

We know that ultimately our existence is rooted in God. But in our physical formation, it’s as if God subcontracted the job: I choose you, dear woman, to form this child in your womb, with me, and on my behalf.

That’s what’s depicted in the flowers behind the altar today. The white flowers are the womb of God, in whom all life is formed. The pink flowers are the womb of our mothers. And together, God and mother are birthing us, are holding us, are loving us.

And there’s a subtle message in this design as well: the pink flowers, themselves, are held in the white. They are held in God. God’s love is the first. It is the ground. It is the larger of the wombs (as it were).

But, of course, this work of God extends beyond the womb. Our mothers continue to do God’s work with us: feeding, bathing, cuddling, whispering words of affection and delight. And all of this beyond our memories. Our earliest, most formative experiences – those that established, in us, our sense of self and this world… they all happened within the tiny universe of this one woman’s embrace.

We could not be human, in any satisfactory way, without this fundamental role of nurture. Infants in orphanages who have been deprived in their first years of any physical, tender care, are often – psychologically – permanently malformed. We simply cannot be truly human without this kind of nurture.

To be a mother, then, is to join with God in God’s fundamental work: this mingling of creation with love. So although Mother’s Day may not be a liturgical holiday, it is in its very essence a most sacred of holidays. We are because the God who is, made us to be, through her, who is our mother.

And yet, in one way or another, from the moment our mothers gave birth to us, they were also preparing us for the inevitable good-bye. Every act of love was an investment in our eventual need to survive beyond them.

For some of us, this came far too early. Some in this room were put up for adoption. Some of our mothers divorced our fathers and left. Some died when we were still children. And in most cases, surrogates stepped in who continued this work on our mothers’ behalf. Perhaps that’s what “stepmother” means, “I step in to finish this work of love.” This, too, we can say is a kind of distinctive, maternal partnership with God. To borrow Jesus’ language from this morning’s gospel: “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”[3] For those of us raised by stepmothers, this can be as God’s special gift for us: “As she came to you, dear child, so you have now known in your life – how the gift of the Holy Spirit comes. ‘Because I live, you also will live.’”[4]

But for most, we had our mother’s nurturing, protective love for our entire childhood. But the day came when we moved out of the house, moved away from her protection. And I can only imagine what wrenching pain she felt with each step of independence. For whatever pride she took in us and our growing capability, she always knew – from the moment the umbilical cord was cut – that each step was a movement of independence away from her. But so it must be to raise a healthy child.

And now, for most of us, not only have we left our mothers, they have left us – they have left this life. And so, like Jesus who prayed shortly before his own death, so they had to say (in one way or another): God, I’ve done what I knew to do for them. But my days in this world are soon ending. Protect them. Protect them from the evil one, for now they are wholly yours.

For some of you, the reverse is true. Your child has preceded you in death and you have had to become as Mary at the foot of the cross, watching her child die: a kind of reverse labor, this wrenching pain that leads not to life, but to death – a pain that never ends. Unlike Mary, after three days, there is no consolation of resurrection. Just one more weighty day of bereavement.

And so, one by one, each of us from our places of pain – those who have lost their children, those who have lost their mothers, those whose mothers failed them, those who have lost any love, those who have lost the hope of ever knowing a significant love… all must now step into that deeper season of faith for which faith has been preparing us all along – to find that for which we were made, and that from which we were made. Every step in this life will prove to have been a step closer to God – a circular path that began in God and returns to God.

And, please God, as we approach ever closer to that end, may we be convinced more and more of the wisdom and worth of keeping your commandments: to love you and to love our neighbors. And may we find your Spirit of Truth to be abiding with us and in us. May we find to be true that we are ever with you, Mother and Peace.

[1] All quotes from Acts 17, in Paul’s speech at the Areopagus.

[2] Genesis 1:27

[3] John 14:18

[4] John 14: 19b