May 13 -- Sixth Sunday of Easter (Mother's Day)

It all comes down to love today.  Mother’s Day, the 15^th Chapter of John, this 6^th Sunday of Easter:  It all comes down to love.  “Abide in my love,” Jesus says.  What a motherly thing to say.  Abide in my love.  I want to invite you to turn to your neighbor and take turns telling each other what the word “abide” means to you...

It’s actually hard for me to contemplate that word “abide” and not think of mothers.  It’s a wonderful word for this day, not that these texts are chosen to match up with Mother’s Day themes, but it works this year.  ABIDE.  It is a post-Easter theme:  “Christ is risen! Let us abide.” 

We abide in the promise of God’s grace, sisters and brothers.  We abide in the promise of Jesus’ friendship.  There’s another word that I associate with abide:  friendship.  I think of a loving mother and a loyal friend when I think of the word abide.  “Abide in my love,” Jesus says.  Stay close.  Make friends with this truth.  Abide.  [Micah’s Baptismal Birthday today – one of our friends on a quilt that everyone made a square, wrote on her square for Micah, a variation of the great Swedish hymn, she wrote: “Child of the Heavenly Mother.”]  Close and warm.

But there is a fierceness to that love too, one that gets dirt under your fingernails, despite abide’s overtones of gentleness, there is a fierceness and a longing to abide.  There is a passion for peace imbedded in the warmth of “abide”, a fiery commitment to holding us close.  Think about a mother bear and her cubs…Don’t get between them. 

I was reading again this year about the history of Mother’s Day.  And as you may or may not know – there are two women whose names are associated with its founding: 

Julia Ward Howe, who started a medical clinic for both Union and Confederate soldiers during the civil war.  She had a fiery commitment to holding everyone close – friend and foe alike!  And her work for peace was a fight.  She was anything but passive; she was a peacemaker.  And her words ring out in her not-so-famous Mother’s Day Proclamation, which I’m afraid is not shared enough on this day.  But here it is, the Mother’s Day Proclamation, by Julia Ward Howe:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:  "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

And then the other woman who is credited with the founding of the day is Anna Jarvis.  She lived a few years later, early 1900’s. Anna Jarvis’ own mother set up a group of women called the Mother’s Day Work Club, a group of women that focused their efforts on clean sanitation systems and health care access for everyone in their communities.  Talk about motherly love that gets dirt, and who knows what else, under your fingernails.  Then Anna Jarvis herself, inspired by her mother’s life of service, petitioned Congress for years to make Mother’s Day a national day.  But almost as soon it was recognized, it became commercialized – flowers and greeting cards – and Anna Jarvis spent her final years campaigning against what the holiday had become.  She was even arrested at one point for “disturbing the peace.”

I mention all that today as I think about my own mother, who in her own way did a bit of disturbing the peace…in the name of peace.  When I was in elementary school in Texas, I was invited to go visit one of my school friends’ family ranch, with a group of other boys.  My mom apparently didn’t ask enough questions about what we were going to do, because I came home with stories about shooting a rifle for the first time.  My mother, who let’s just say is not a member of the NRA, was furious.  She called up my friend’s mother to “discuss” the situation.  And as she tells the story, they had a difference of opinion:  The other mother, reportedly, said that she believed young boys ought to know how to handle a weapon so that they can one day defend themselves and their families.  See, a mother’s love is always complicated.  My mother simply responded to her, “Well, Lorraine, Daniel will not be attending any more trips to the ranch.  We are raising peacemakers in our home.”  And then she hung up the phone.  A little dirt under the fingernails?  Motherly love is not clean and simple.

I think about my mother, as I read about Anna Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe.  And I believe that this motherly fierceness reflects that of God.  God’s love disturbs the peace for the sake of a much deeper peace, the peace that passes all understanding. 

God’s love for you crosses boundaries, makes uncomfortable phone calls, advocates and petitions, proclaims, as Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation, “Let the great human family live in peace.  Let each bear the sacred imprint, not of Cesar, but of God.”  The mother knows of the divine imprint that God has made on our children.

Sisters and brothers in Christ, this Mother’s Day, no matter how you experience Mother’s Day (because for some it can be a very painful time for various reasons), sisters and brothers in Christ, God’s love for you is fierce, like a mother bear, with dirt in her claws.  And should anything come between God and you, should peril or sword, or temptations or disease, anxiety, depression or disbelief…should anything come between God and you, then God, like a mother bear, becomes fierce, fierce about keeping you close, fierce about keeping you warm, fierce about you abiding in that motherly care.  God topples the cruel oppressors rod and draws you in like a mother bear draws in her cubs, like Julia Ward Howe, or Anna Jarvis, or my mother.  Let the cry go up from our mothers and all: “We are raising peacemakers in our home!”  God draws us close, forgives us beyond our own ability to forgive, protects us, and teaches us with the fierceness of a mother.  Christ is raising up peacemakers…calling us this day to abide in his love, to keep his commandments, and to hold one another in fierceness and in love.  To hold one another as friends. 

Thanks be to our mothering God, for we abide in Her everlasting arms, this day, and we always will.  AMEN.