On the church calendar, today is the Seventh Sunday in the season of Easter, during which we, the church universal, focus on and celebrate Christ’s resurrection.  But on the secular calendar, today is Mother’s Day.  And that presents a dilemma to us clergy types.  In our sermons, should we stick with the themes of the Christian calendar and ignore Mother’s Day altogether, risking the wrath and antagonism of the congregation? 

Or do 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 me.  I am sensitive to the fact that honoring mothers excludes women who have not borne children, either by choice or through physical inability, and I am reluctant to focus on one group of people at the expense of another. 

 

I am 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. 

 

As I was considering how to address my concerns, I began researching the history of Mother's Day, and I was surprised to discover that the original themes of Mother’s Day were a little different than the modern-day focus.  In fact, Mother’s Day and the Christian calendar are actually more closely connected than we might think.

 

The inspiration for the modern observance of Mother's Day was Anna Reeves Jarvis, who organized "Mothers' Work Day Clubs" in the 1850s.  The clubs provided medicine for the poor, nursing care for the sick, and shelters for children with tuberculosis.

 

When the Civil War broke out, Anna Reeves Jarvis called together the women in her clubs and asked them to make a pledge to ensure that their friendships with each other and their work on behalf of others would transcend the battle lines between The North and The South.  As a result of her efforts, the women in the Mothers’ Work Day Clubs nursed soldiers from both sides throughout the war, and they saved many lives, both Confederate and Union.

 

After the war, Anna Reeves Jarvis became a genuine peacemaker, organizing "Mothers' Friendship Days" to bring reconciliation to families from The North and The South which had been torn apart by the war. 

 

In 1907, two years after the death of Anna Reeves Jarvis, her daughter organized the first "Mother’s Day" in Grafton, West Virginia, so that her mother's work for peace, reconciliation, and care for children, the ill and the needy would not be forgotten.

 

Another one of the earliest promoters of Mother's Day was Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the words to the Battle Hymn of the Republic.  During the Civil War, Julia Ward Howe was a militant abolitionist, and when the war ended, she focused her energy on two other causes: voting rights for women and world peace.

 

In the 1870s, when war broke out between France and Prussia, she began organizing what she called "Mothers' Peace Day" festivals, reflecting her conviction that though the world may be divided by war and conflict, mothers of the world could bond together into one human family through their shared experiences of childbirth and childrearing.

 

Thus, the original intent of Mother's Day was to have one day a year not for lavishing moms with flowers, cards and candy, but for lifting up the good work of such women as Anna Reeves Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe by focusing on peace, reconciliation, justice, and service to the young, the poor and the sick. 

 

Mother’s Day was established not simply to commemorate those who had borne and raised children, but also to show that we can all learn essential life lessons from the selfless and life-giving pain and suffering mothers experience in childbirth. 

 

Jesus experienced selfless and life-giving pain and suffering of a different kind.  And before he died, he showed his disciples how to live as a new kind of family, based on a new kind of love and relationship that transcended boundaries, borders and battle lines. 

 

In today’s Gospel lesson, Jesus prays to God to take care of his family on earth after he is gone: “I am asking on their behalf…All mine are yours, and yours are mine…,” Jesus prays.  “Holy Father, protect them in your name… so that they may be one, as we are one.”

 

Jesus calls God “Father,” and by using the image of Father, Jesus gives us a powerful new way of understanding God's compassionate love for all.  But the truth of the matter is, we limit ourselves – and we limit God -- when we think of God only in male terms.  Yes, the Bible does use male imagery such as God the king [Ps 47:7, 98:6] and God the warrior [Is 42:13] and God the bridegroom [Jeremiah 2:2]. 

 

But the Bible also offers us female images for God.  In the Psalms, God is likened to a midwife [22:9] and a handmaiden’s mistress [123:2].  And there are even more passages that represent God not just as woman, but as a mother. 

 

The prophet Isaiah writes, "For this is what the LORD says… As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you" [66:13].  “Can a woman forget her nursing child or show no compassion for the child of her womb?  Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you” [49:15].

 

The prophet Hosea depicts God as furious as a mother bear without her babies.  Angered by those who threaten her children, God says, "Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open" [13:8a].  Not exactly the kind of mother Hallmark is thinking of, but one who is moved to urgent action to protect her children.  I think every mother has acted like a mother bear at one time or another; I know I have!

 

Also in Hosea [11:3], God speaks as a mother teaching a toddler to walk and holding the child in her arms.  In Deuteronomy [32:11], God is depicted as a mother eagle who stirs up the nest of her young and bears them aloft on her pinions.  And in the Gospel of Luke [13:31-35], Jesus likens God's protective love for us to a mother hen gathering her brood under her wings. 

 

God is constantly feeding and nurturing God’s children.  God is the one who gives us life, who breathes us into existence.  And just as mothers withstand unselfish pain and suffering to give life to others, Jesus gave us new life through his unselfish pain and suffering on the cross.

 

Yes, Jesus tells us to call God “Father,” but God’s love is very much like motherlove.  The point is not whether God is male or female; God is spirit and transcends gender distinctions.  The point is that God loves us as automatically as mothers love their newborn babies, with a love that knows no bounds. 

 

The origins of Mother’s Day focused on peace, reconciliation, justice and service – and these are the focus of Christ’s ministry and teachings, too. 

 

Mother's Day touches upon the deepest truths of our faith.  The most amazing gift a mother can give is her unconditional love; it is what each of us needs.  Only a few of us have experienced it fully, even in the most loving of mothers.  But what we have seen in part in a mother's love, we see fully in the love of God.  And it is that love – that motherlove – on which we can depend. 

 

It is that motherlove of God that saves us, supports us, and inspires us as we work towards the original vision of Mother’s Day, to move beyond the boundaries and borders that separate families, faiths, and nations so that we can live out the teachings of Christ and be instruments of God's love, God's justice, God’s care, and God’s peace throughout the world. 

 

Happy Seventh Sunday of Easter, and Happy Mother’s Day, too!  Amen.

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