Sermon Title: "A Mother's Love"
Author's Name: Rev. Alex Knight
(John 19:25-27 NRSV) Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. {26} When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." {27} Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.
Today we Celebrate Mother's Day. Observed the second Sunday in May, this day honors all mothers. It began in its present form with a special service in May 1907 at the Methodist Episcopal Church in Grafton, West Virginia. The service was organized by a Methodist laywoman, Anna Jarvis, to honor her mother, who had died on May 9, 1905. By 1908 Anna Jarvis was advocating that all mothers be honored on the second Sunday in May, and in 1912 the Methodist Episcopal Church recognized the day and raised it to the national agenda. It has some parallels with the old English Mothering Sunday in mid-Lent, which focused on returning home and paying homage to one's mother, and with Mother's Day for Peace, introduced in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe in Boston as a day dedicated to peace.
As we participate in this celebration, one of the things we need to do as a church is to affirm the way in which God esteems women. In our culture, in the last couple of decades there have been those voices who would have us believe otherwise. Some say our God is some sort of abusive, sexist God who puts women at a place lower than men. Now you may look at culture and see people behaving that way, but you cannot read the gospel and come to that conclusion. The gospel gives you the opposite conclusion. Let us look at some examples I think affirm the way God esteems women.
First, find a place where Jesus says that a person, because of their spiritual insight, will be remembered for all generations. There is only one place you will find this and it has to do with a woman, the woman who anointed Jesus' feet with expensive perfume as a way to anoint Him for His burial. Jesus said, because of her spiritual sensitivity, she will be remembered for all time. He never said that about Peter or John or Matthew or any of the guys that were following Him.
Next, who were the first to see Jesus risen? It was the women.
My favorite book in the Bible is the book of Romans. It was the book of Romans that spurred on Martin Luther to begin what we called the Protestant Reformation. It was the book of Romans that opened up John Wesley's life to grace which began the great Wesleyan Revival in England and in the United States. It was the book of Romans that brought Karl Barth and others back to the grace of God in this century. The book of Romans again and again speaks to us about the mighty grace of God. If you read the last chapter of the book of Romans, you find that Paul had one purpose in mind in writing that book. He was introducing a woman by the name of Phoebe, who he identified as a deacon in the church. He told the people in Rome she was coming to them and for them to do what ever she said. Current scholarship suggests to us that Phoebe was the one used by Paul to take the gospel to Spain. Where people get the idea that even in the New Testament church women were somehow relegated to second class citizenship is beyond me. The culture has done that for sure, but Jesus never did and neither did the apostle Paul.
If you are looking for one place above all places, where women are esteemed by God, do you look beyond Mary, the mother of our Lord? God is God Almighty. God can do anything He wants, any way He wants and if He is interested in reconciling His people back to Him, he can choose any way He wants. But God chose a woman to bear the son we call the only begotten son of God, our Lord and our Savior. We affirm the goodness of women in the eyes of God.
We also recognize there are differences between women and men in the way we relate to one another, especially with children. There is something unique about women and their relationship with their children. Maybe it is because mother's knew the children long before the father. I know when my children were born at TMH, they put the father at least 100 yards away from the delivery room, as far away as they could get him. We were not allowed in the vicinity. Thank God those days are changing. For both of my grandsons I've been right outside the door when they were born and I was able to hold my grandsons within 15 minutes of their birth. I was the first one to whisper in their ear, the name of Jesus and tell them that Jesus loved them. My son was in the birthing room, he was a part of the birthing process and I know that meant a lot to him. Even though these kinds of things are changing in our culture, the relationship between mothers and their children and fathers and their children is still not the same. I had this difference brought home to me this week.
I was in Jacksonville at the hospital where I am interning as a chaplain as a part of Clinical Pastoral Education work. I received a call on Tuesday night to go to the neonatal intensive care unit, to be with a woman who's baby had just died. The baby was three weeks old. The woman had been in an automobile accident when she was eight months pregnant that caused her to prematurely deliver. The child had been injured and lived for three weeks. When I got there, the young woman, 22 years old, was in a quiet room. She was still holding the baby, the lifeless baby, which she did for several hours. I sat with her for several hours and I helped her talk about her feelings. It was interesting the things that she shared with me. For her the baby was not three weeks old, the baby was at least nine months old. She had felt it move and grow within her. She had become a part of her life and she was grieving at the loss of her daughter. There is a special love, a special bond between a woman and her child. Because of this, women probably understand in ways deeper than men do, what it must have been like for Mary to watch Jesus when they beat Him with a whip, when they slapped Him in the face and when they drove nails in His hands and took a spear and stabbed Him in the side. When they brought Him down off the cross, Mary took into her arms the lifeless form that she had watched in agony for hours die. Then in a poignant moment you have an incredible act being played out in history. You have mother and son, . . . mother and God, sharing together in a moment of incredible pain.
Now, of all the things that moment can speak to us, one thing it says to me, very loudly, is that God understands our pain.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews understood this when he said we do not worship a God who is high and lofty and reigns over some sort of moral and ethical standards. Rather, we worship a God who understands what it is like to hurt and to experience pain and to experience suffering. Through the life of Mary and the through the life of Jesus, we have a God who knows what it is like for a mother to lose a child, for a mother to grieve over a child, for a mother to worry over her children. That is the nature of our God. Not a God that was far away from pain and suffering, but a God that is close and has experienced pain and suffering.
God not only identifies with our pain through the experience of Jesus and Mary, God offers something more. He offers us a way to share the pain. In a community of faith, we are not meant to be alone.
Once upon a time there was an old Jewish woman who was filled with terrible pain that was so deep it disabled her from living her life fully so she went to visit the village healer. This was a woman who specialized in herbs and in council. She explained her problem. She said that "Several years ago my husband, Mosha, God bless him, he died. And every morning I'd get up and I'd still miss him. A saint, he wasn't. But I still miss him. My days are filled with tears, I thought I would get over it by now, but I am filled with a deep pain that will not go away, can you help me?" Well, the healer thought for a long time, she scratched her head and she finally said, "Yes for this I can make a special tea. It will help, but success is not guaranteed." Well, the woman was initially overjoyed, but then she looked downcast and she said to the healer, "But I am not rich. What should I owe you for this tea?" And the healer looked at the woman and said, "You can help me make the tea. You can gather the herbs and when it's done, if it works, pay me a little. I won't have actually done much at all." Well, the woman was overjoyed and readily agreed to go and to help to gather the herbs. Now the healer named seven different herbs. Some were common and some were not. But there was one special condition. "If the tea is to work, you must gather the herbs from the gardens of people who have experienced no pain in their families. Otherwise it will not work." The woman left. It was near the end of the week and the Sabbath had to be prepared for so she didn't get anything done the first week.
At the end of the second week, she reported to the healer that she had found all of the herbs, but they were not in gardens. The healer shook her head. It would not do.
At the end of the third week, she reported painfully that she had found all of the herbs, this time though, all of them had been in gardens. But sadly she said, "All of the people have experienced pain, so much pain." And she began to cry. Again the healer explained that it would not work unless she found the herbs in the gardens of people who had experienced no pain in their families.
At the end of the fourth week, the healer had noticed that the woman did not come to see her, but was busy bustling around the community so she thought she must still be searching for the herbs.
By the end of the fifth week, the woman had not returned and the healer went and knocked on her door. When the woman came to the door, she invited the healer in and they made tea and then the healer asked, "Is this the special tea that I asked you to collect the herbs for?" "Oh that," said the woman, "it completely slipped my mind. But you know, an interesting thing happened while I was asking people about their pain. I met another woman and she had lost her husband recently too. She was crying all the time and I shared with her my loss and we were able to help each other. Maybe it is enough. I think I can help her, and she me."
The healer smiled and invited them both to tea and it was enough.
When Jesus was on the cross, He looked at His mother, and He looked at the one we believe to be the apostle John and He said, "Mother, behold your son" . . . "John, behold your mother." Mary went and lived with John. The community of faith was enlarged and they shared their pain together.
This is God's way for us to experience His love in our midst as He reveals Himself to us. We are not created to be islands, we're created to be a community of believers bound together in love by the love of Christ for us. We share the burdens and the pains of one another as we experience the grace of God in our midst. Let us pray.
Abba Father, we thank you again for this special day that we give pause to reflect on your goodness and the qualities of mothers and the qualities of women who have touched our life with love and compassion and with faith. Father we give you thanks for the community of faith. A place where we can pray and intercede one for another, to bear the burdens together, to share the pain together, to experience your grace and to celebrate your goodness together. We give you thanks this morning Father for friends, we give you thanks for the church, the body of Christ, the fellowship of believers. Amen.