Thompson's Blog

Heavenly Family Dynamics
John 15:9-17

15:9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Because today is Mother’s Day, I’m going to reread this morning’s text, and I’m going to shift the reference to God as our father to God as our mother. It’s not what Jesus is reported to have said, but it’s just as likely to have been what he meant. Jesus wasn’t wanting us to think of God as male. Jesus wanted us to think of God as being like a loving parent. Some people are a little put off by the talk of God as father, and this may put-off the rest of you, but in honor of Mother’s Day, I want us to hear how God’s love compares to a mother’s love.

15:9 As the Mother has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Mother’s commandments and abide in her love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete. 12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Mother. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Mother will give you whatever you ask her in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

Comparing the love of God to the love of a mother doesn’t work for everyone. Neither the love of a father or a mother is an adequate description of the love of God, but the love of a parent is probably what best provides for us an inclination of how we are loved by God. I’m pretty convinced that it’s how we are treated by our parents that gives us our elemental understandings of God. Certainly mothers and fathers are god-like characters to children, and how we are treated by our parents can go either way in regard to formulating our images of God.

I think we all have to engage in some recovery from the way we were raised. It turns out that mothers and fathers are a lot like human beings who get some things right and other things wrong, but some people do a better job of childrearing than other people. It’s not essential to have a good mother or a good father to have a good life, but it’s terribly sad when a person grows up without much love from anyone.

Some children are blessed with two mothers, some with two fathers, and some with just one or the other. That essential element of parental love can come to us in a lot of different ways, and that’s the first thing I want everyone to hear me say loud and clear this morning. There’s nothing inherently essential about having an actual mother. Some people would be better off if they had not been exposed to the mother that raised them, but that’s the exception and not the rule. Generally speaking, a mother’s love is a beautiful thing, and that’s the second thing I want to talk about.

I was visiting with someone at a wedding reception the other night who said that she lives in Grafton, West Virginia, which is the hometown of Anna Jarvis, a good Methodist woman who was the founder of Mother’s Day. Anna Jarvis was moved by the way in which her own mother not only cared for her, but by the way she took care of wounded soldiers from both sides of the Civil War. Anna Jarvis considered motherhood to be a sacred calling, and she thought it should be properly honored. She created a recognition day in her own town of Grafton, and she embarked on having it become a nationally recognized day. It became established as a national holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914, but it soon became her worst nightmare.

Anna Jarvis took issue with the way in which the day got hijacked by people who wanted to sell things in the name of motherhood. Because of the way in which the greeting card, floral, and confection industries began making huge profits off the sentiments of the day, she worked hard to have the holiday repealed within ten years of its establishment – which as you know has not happened.

But I’m not going to rail about the crass commercialization of Mother’s Day. In fact I’m going to take advantage of the day in my own way. I’m banking on the sentiment of motherhood to produce a sermon.

I had the good fortune of having a good mother, and I want to talk about my mother for a moment. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say she was the most powerful person in my childhood home. She wasn’t a loud or a large person, but it was her will that ruled our house. She was a very gracious person, but she had her limits, and she communicated those limits very clearly — sometimes she even used words.

I think the primary gift my mother provided me was this powerful sense of belonging. I think my sister and I both were made to feel like we were very wanted children. We weren’t led to feel like we were at the center of the universe, but my mother made me feel like I was very welcome in the world. I think she also led me to believe that this world was a good place. I may be giving her more credit than she deserves for making me feel like I had a place in a benevolent universe, but I give her a lot of credit for making me feel at home in the world.

Of course this deep sense of security that she provided me played out in some ways that scared her to death. The bicycle trip I embarked upon last spring wasn’t the first odd adventure I ever struck out upon, and I think she was a little terrorized by some of the things I did when I was young.

My mother wasn’t a perfect person. There are pages of notes in a therapists office that document my efforts to get over some of the less beneficial messages she somehow communicated to me, but the primary message I got from her was how much she loved me. And I like to think she understood how much I loved her as well.

One of the nicest gifts the universe provided me was the opportunity to make eye contact with her just prior to her death. After a wonderful day of seeing family and friends here in Little Rock, my mother had a stroke in the parking lot of the Kroger store in the Heights. She and my father had gotten in to their car after shopping, she started it, and she put it in drive, but then she became immobilized. The car drifted to the edge of the parking lot and was stopped by the curb. My father called me and I was there within a few minutes. My mother was sitting in the driver’s seat and her eyes were open, but she couldn’t speak or move. Instead of calling an ambulance my father and I decided to just drive her to the emergency room at St. Vincent’s.

I picked her up like a child to put her in the back seat of the car, and when I did she looked at me. She didn’t have a look of panic or pain. It was more of a look of curiosity – it was as if her eyes were saying, Well isn’t this an interesting situation.

She closed her eyes on the way to St. Vincent’s and she never opened them again. She had had a massive stroke and she died the next night. It was a terrible loss for us, but after the initial devastation of her loss, I came to feel more gratitude than anything else. I was grateful to have had her as a mother, and I was grateful that she died in such a peaceful way after having such a wonderful day.

I may be wrong about this, but I’m pretty sure my belief in the benevolence of God is rooted in my experience with a loving mother. That’s not the only reason I believe that we live in a world that was created and is sustained by a loving God, but I am convinced that my good mother put me in touch with the concept of a loving God. There are other avenues to such a conclusion, but that’s the one I got to travel, and I’m grateful for the nice journey.

God reaches out to us children in many different ways. Jesus seems to have had a nice mother, but he travelled a rough road. The benevolence of the universe wasn’t the most obvious message that the world provided to Jesus, but he could see beyond the violent surface of this world in to the heart of God, and he shared what he could see in an enduring manner. He knew that this world was established by the One whose love would never fail.

There are no perfect parents in this world, but the perfect love of God continues to be revealed to us through the imperfect efforts of our parents, our friends, our enemies, and ourselves. The message is larger than any of us, but its small enough for any of us to carry and to hand-off to a friend or a child. God can and does use us all in ways we don’t fully comprehend, but it is within our means to be willing messengers of this good news of God’s eternal love.

You don’t have to have a mother to have been cradled by the hand of a loving soul, nor do you have to be a mother to bring new life in to this world. The living Christ empowers us to become the children of God, and he enables us to be the bearers of this divine love for others.

Through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ it becomes possible for others to look in to our frail eyes and see the goodness of God.

Thanks be to God for this heavenly gift! Amen