God's Motherly Love

Sermon for May 8, 2022

Revelation 7:9-17; John 10:22-30

Well, the trees are leafing out, it’s raining all the time, and the high temperature can’t decide whether to be around 50 or 90.  It must be springtime in the Midwest.  Today is Mother’s Day, another rite of spring for us.  Graduations are just around the corner, as our seniors know so well.  Soon, summer vacation time will be here.  And at least for me, as we prepare for travel, or rest, or whatever else the summer brings for us, I also find myself traveling back to summers past.

I was enormously blessed as a child to have a family that basically enjoyed being together.  That doesn’t mean there weren’t challenges.  Like all couples, my parents drove each other crazy sometimes.  Like most close siblings, my youngest sister and I took the opportunity to fight over virtually anything.  But nearly every summer, we packed up our station wagon, my sister and me sprawled out in the far-off back in those days before we worried about inconveniences like car seats or seat belts.  The annual trek west to see my grandparents in California was the highlight of our summer, the jewel in the crown of the year – so good that my sister and I would draw up an agreement ceasing hostilities for the four weeks of the trip.  Mostly, we even meant it.

Of course, as a kid, I had no idea the cost that went into these trips.  We had a pop-up Starcraft camper that my grandmother had given us, which meant the accommodations weren’t too pricey but had to be put up and taken down each day.  With six of us traveling cross-country on a college professor’s salary, we cut costs on meals, too.  In the camper, I remember a lot of little boxes of cereal and Tang for breakfast, as well as hamburgers and canned chili for dinner.  It may not sound like a gourmet delight, but I remember those as some of my family’s best meals ever.

But even better were the lunches.  We’d stop in some little town in middle-of-nowhere Oklahoma or Texas or New Mexico, and we’d find a grocery store.  I remember my mother leading us up and down the aisles, creating a picnic.  To a little boy, it was amazing, getting to pick out lunchmeat, and bread, and chips, and pickled beets, and carrots, and fruit, and nuts, and Hostess cupcakes.  Then we’d find a little city park and eat our lunch, and play in the playground, and run around like crazy.  For my parents, I’m sure it was a very intentional strategy, filling us up and wearing us out so we’d fall asleep for the afternoon drive.  But to me, it seemed like heaven. 

Why am I telling you this?  Well, it’s Mother’s Day and, here in church, Good Shepherd Sunday.  So, we’re celebrating the love of motherhood and the people who’ve embodied sacrificial love in our own lives.  And we’re remembering the source of that deep and holy love – the love we talked about last week, the love of agapé, the love that gives itself away to give life to someone else.

What you don’t know, until you have your own kids, is how much it takes to do something as deceptively “easy” as going on vacation.  It would have been tremendously easier just to stay home, but my parents – and especially my mother – wanted more for us.  She wanted to give us new experiences, and a sense of history, and the chance to get to know places that looked and felt and smelled different than Springfield, Missouri.  And she wanted the six of us to experience it together, building memories and sharing love that would stick in our hearts and minds – reminding us later on, in rougher times to come, that a picnic from the grocery store can be a heavenly banquet and that, no matter what happens, we’re truly never alone.

Of course, at that point, I didn’t see God in any of this.  But I think one of the rich mysteries of motherhood – however and through whomever you experience it – is the same truth we hear from Jesus in today’s Gospel reading. 

The religious authorities are pressing him for a straight answer as to whether he’s God’s anointed king, or not.  They want to trap him in a statement of blasphemy and lock him away.  They ask, “If you’re the Messiah, tell us plainly”; and Jesus says, “I have told you” (John 10:24-25) – but actually, he hasn’t.  He will, eventually, but so far in the story, what he’s done is not to tell but to show.  He’s been demonstrating the power of divine love through one sign of abundant self-giving after another.  He’s provided gallons of the finest wine for a wedding banquet.  He’s engaged a hated Samaritan, and a woman at that, in a deep theological conversation, risky for him because the law required that “Jews do not share things in common” (John 4:9) with the likes of “them.”  He’s healed the son of a foreign official.  He’s broken Sabbath regulations to heal a man who’s been ill for four decades.  He’s fed thousands of people from five loaves and two fish.  He’s advocated for a woman caught in adultery.  And he’s healed a man born blind, confounding the authorities who only notice that his healing broke the Sabbath rules. 

Now, I’m not saying that words don’t matter, because they do – especially when they’re words of love; and I was blessed to hear those words from my mother all the time.  But we learn to love from witnessing acts of love.  One act after another of putting the interests of someone else ahead of our own – that’s the love of God, forming us to be the love of God with flesh and bones, hands and feet.  Identifying divine love is like confirming Jesus’ status as God’s king: You truly know it when you see it.

The paradoxical truth is this: Sacrificial love is power.  The love that empties itself and gives itself away is also the love that rules our lives and our universe.  I knew this on a very personal level as a boy.  My father was the family’s provider, our moral compass, our rock.  But my mother was in charge.  When the kids wanted something, she was the decision maker.  And, she had the credibility to exercise her power because she ruled in love.  Day by day, she showed up – opening doors onto new worlds, setting safe boundaries, holding us accountable, bandaging wounds, providing rich feasts, hugging away the pain.  It made sense that she was in charge because she had our back, creating a world in contrast to the world around us – a world in which giving came first.

Maybe that’s just being a good mom, but I think it points to something bigger.  In the reading from Revelation today, the Lamb who’s been sacrificed is also the king on heaven’s throne.  The Good Shepherd, the leader who sets the bar for the reign and rule of God, is the one who lays down his life for the sheep.  The power that saves the world, and the power that shapes our hearts, it’s the same.  It’s God’s own power, piling us into the station wagon to guide us to the springs of the water of life and wipe away every tear from our eyes.