+Our readings this Easter are clear: Love is the point. Loving God, Loving one another, Loving our Neighbor, Loving the stranger, Loving the outcast, Loving ourselves. Love is the key. And as one commentator puts it: Love isn’t easy. And clearly God knows this, why else would we get these messages of Love over and over and over again?
Our readings from the Gospel of John, all Easter, have been excerpted from Jesus’ “Farewell Discourse,” the final teaching series before his death. Clearly, at least from John’s perspective, these teachings of Jesus are the most important the fabric of our faith.
And the message? The message is clear: Love.
But, as I said, love can be very difficult. Nothing hurts as much as when something bad happens to one we love.
No loss is as painful as the loss of Love.
Once we start loving, we begin building up a huge amount of potential hurt. It’s the price of love.
Jesus knew this. He knew that the Love of His creator, of God was leading him to the cross. Jesus knew that it was love that would carry his followers through the dark days ahead. But he also knew that that same love, the same love God had for Jesus , that Jesus has for us, that those who love Jesus have for him, is the same love that can cause the lover tremendous, unspeakable and intense pain.
Yes, Love hurts, love is hard, yet Love is the source of everything. Without Love we are NOTHING.
To quote St Paul:
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. (1 Corinthians 13)
So our readings this Eastertide focus on this love. And then we come upon Mother’s Day. Now how can, how do our readings these great fifty days connect to an observance originally designed as a radical day of protest against the horrors of war, but has morphed into a Hallmark guided day of “on demand” expressions of love attached to an almost impossible icon of motherhood designed by, I dare say, men.
But despite the modern consumerism and fantasy attached to the 21st century version of mother’s day, I think having this day fall within Eastertide and our incessant messages of Love as found in the scripture readings these 7 weeks makes sense. For that initial focus of the first mother’s day established by Julia Ward Howe in the 19th century jives nicely with this idea of Love being hard, but in the end so very worth it.
For the initial Mother’s Day was all about bringing women together –together to stop the madness of war. Mother’s Day was about alternative conflict resolution, it was about Peace.
But over the years it has changed, evolved into what it is today: a day to honor our mothers with cards, candy flowers and brunch.
But, to coin an old phrase, just who are our mothers? For many people the woman who gave birth to them is not their mother, for others of us, not only is the woman who birthed us our mother, but so are older sisters, aunts, neighbors, friends. But, I think for all of us, one thing is certain: there have been women in our lives who have nurtured us, protected us, encouraged us, loved us. It is those women we honor today….for any woman who has taught us, any woman who has loved us, any woman who has PUT UP WITH US, is due honor.
If you look at some of writings about the history of Mother’s Day you’ll find great debate on the use of the apostrophe---should it be Mother’s Day, (apostrophe s) or Mothers’ Day (s apostrophe). Is this a day about one woman who is viewed as a mother in one particular family unit, that would be the singular possessive, the apostrophe s, or is it about all the mothers of our lives, of our world, the s apostrophe, the plural possessive?
And it is in this somewhat obscure debate that, I think, we get the connection between Mother’s Day and what Jesus is trying to get through to us.
You see, Love is what allows us to do the unthinkable. Love is what keeps us going. Love for others, as most brilliantly exemplified in a mother’s love for her child is what spreads the Gospel, it’s what makes the Body of Christ tick. And being Loved, having those people in our own lives, those people who will stand behind us, no matter what, is what fuels us, strengthens us, inspires us to risk loving others. It’s the ultimate circle of life: We are given the very gift of our life out of the love of others and then, whether we are raised by a loving mother or whether we find that motherly love in others, we grow and mature through the nurturing of others. And then through this love and care of others we are then able to nurture and love still others. Whether it be our own children or children of other parents, we, by virtue of allowing love to seep into our hearts, become Loving People, and loving people when gathered together like us here become the flesh and blood representatives of the source of all Love, GOD in the world.
Jesus commands us to love one another, not because Jesus thinks without this commandment we won’t fall in love with our children, our spouse, our siblings, our friends. No Jesus commands us to love one another so that we’ll stay in love, so that we’ll allow Love to be the singular focus of our life---for when we let Love slip from the number one focus of our life then we as a civilization, as a people, as a church, as a family devolve into fear, bitterness, hate and loss. The original Mothers’ Day was designed to point out the absurdity of most war, the original mothers’ day was created to remind each and every one of us that nothing, nothing matters in this world if we do not have love.
So on this day to honor mothers I encourage us all to do what Jesus has commanded us to do: honor Love. +
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