A Mother's Love - 4th Sunday of Easter

Isaiah 66:13; Matthew 23:37-39

When we began recruit training (USMC), our senior drill instructor gave us a brief run-down of what we would face in the coming months.  Part of the training involved running what was known as the “John Wayne” course; crawling through the sand surrounded by simulated bombs and overhead rifle and machine gun fire reminiscent of the Marine Corp’s island-hopping campaign in the Pacific during WWII, immortalized in the John Wayne movie, “The Sands of Iwo Jima”. 

The senior drill instructor assured us there would not be no live rounds fired at or around us because the Blue Star Mothers of America had put their foot down!  I didn’t even know there was such a thing!  Recruits in the past had been seriously injured, and this group of mothers had apparently been instrumental in convincing the Corps that every reasonable precaution should be taken to protect young recruits in boot camp from unnecessary harm. 

There is nothing so binding, so yielding, and yet so fierce as a mother’s love.  Even the hardest, toughest, most salty Marine would not dare stand against or defy a mom defending her young!  And this reality could be the very reason why the Scriptures use such a metaphor to convey The Lord’s love for, and innate desire to protect, His own young!

When The Lord spoke to His people through the prophet Isaiah in assuring them they would one day be returned to their land after they had been “grounded” in exile, they heard this promise: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem” (Isaiah 66:13).  It is the sort of comfort only a mother can give.

Yet Jesus also laments this same people who “kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to you”; so because of their hard-heartedness, The Lord had been unable to “gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” … because “you were not willing” (Matthew 23:37).  It is the kind of lament only a mother can really understand.

My own father was not the greatest example of a “dad” in the strictest sense, but I know there was nothing he would withhold from me or my sister or brother if he thought it would help in any way.  Yet I also know – as I think most of us can agree – there is no reasonable, finite measure of a mother’s love for her children.  I don’t mean to diminish the fathers among us who would go to the ends of the earth for our children, but I think we can agree a mother would go beyond even the ends of the earth to protect and comfort her children.

Trinitarian theology (Father, Son, Holy Spirit) is meant to express the fullness of YHWH even though the doctrine is probably more confusing than fulfilling.  Yet it is an important doctrine to help us to understand the God who created (the Father), His eternal Word (the Son), and His enduring presence (the Holy Spirit) to teach and to guide us. 

Even in that fullness, however, there seems to be a missing component; a component that not only acknowledges but honors a mother’s love.  Roman Catholic and Orthodox theology offer to Mary, the blessed Mother, a significant part of the fullness of this doctrine in the role of the Church.  It is Mary who, despite great personal risk, heeded the call of YHWH to bring into the world the Messiah.

She is the Mother of the Word; the womb from which the Word sprang, the womb in which the Word was nurtured and protected and sustained.  In the historic understanding of the Jewish mother, she was also the one who nurtured, sustained, protected, and taught from the home so her blessed Child could grow as safely as possible into the role for which He was begotten. 

As Mary is regarded and honored as the Mother of the Holy Church, the Church can gain a better understanding of its own role in allowing the Word to be nurtured from within so that, in the fullness of time, the Word can be proclaimed outwardly.  It does the Church nor the world any good to keep the Word in the womb!  It is an important role we too often take for granted and only assume all things will simply fall into place; but without a mother’s love and assuming too much, the Church has not lived into its role with a real sense of purpose, dignity, and Truth.

Joseph had his own role as protector and provider, but this isn’t Father’s Day!  Joseph certainly provided a house, but it was surely Mary who created and sustained a home environment necessary for Jesus to become His true Self – not what she wanted Him to be but what He was begotten to become.  Yet it is, sadly, the environment of the Church which has become more a “consumer’s choice” than a genuine necessity for one to live into one’s true calling. 

There are far too many who regard the Church as no longer necessary to simply “be” a Christian, regarding “being” as we choose to “be” as much more important than “becoming” who we are created to “become”; so keeping the Church compartmentalized is akin to regarding a mother’s love as little more than a choice rather than to embrace a mother’s love as essential to the fullness of life and living. 

Yet the Church, the True Mother of the Faith, must never forget its own role in the life of the community and in the life within the congregation itself; to “be gentle, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children” (1 Thessalonians 2:7).  There is a time to be firm and steadfast to be sure a child gets what the child needs, but the Mother of the Faith cannot be so rigid and unyielding as to stifle personal and spiritual growth. 

Just as we know the profound independence a child comes to know when it’s time to walk, we do all we can to protect and continue to teach – but we also know there are some lessons which must be learned independently.  Yet even when the lessons are sometimes much harder than a child can withstand, the Mother of the Faith is always there to comfort, to discipline, to guide, to teach – and to nurse a boo-boo here and there.

Here’s the thing, though.  The Church cannot fully appreciate its role as the Mother of the Faith without appreciating Mary’s role in the Life of Jesus; and Mary’s role as the Mother of the Church cannot be fully embraced without understanding the essential nature of the mother’s role in the home and the family. 

The essence of the Divine Commandment to “honor mother and father” is about much more than simply obeying them.  We learn to honor our parents by the way we live, reflecting their faith and their endurance when it would have been easier to walk away and choose our own course.  Yet the one who nurtures and sustains our faith cannot be taken for granted without us losing the essential part of who we are: children of the Living God.

Live into that role, and we truly honor a Mother’s Love.  For now, and forever.  Amen.