We Also Ought
1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8

May 10, 2009


Mother’s Day has been in a lot of trouble for a good while. At the same time that the greeting card industry, flower shops, restaurants have saturated our senses with demands for Mother’s Day gifts and festivities, the Church in many places responded by eliminating Mother’s Day. Not every woman is a mother, not every mother is a saint, not every person has a memorable mother, especially for orphans or people placed in foster care.

Very true, of course, and for decades the politically correct “Festival of the Christian Home” was the official and optimum way to describe the second Sunday of May. Now the fact that many single people who live alone have difficulty resonating with the concept of a Christian Home with multiple family members and perhaps even some decidedly non-Christian members in the midst of the Home was never really thought out with the same politically correct care.

Mother’s Day, however, is back, resurrected, though I don’t remember hearing any sort of explanation. Kind of reappeared in the middle of the night. I suggest a Human Being Day as the best way to celebrate and honour our contributions to families and human existence. Of course, this leaves out pets, pet rocks, significant green plants in our homes that bring us joy, and alien beings, rare as they may be. I must have left out everybody somewhere along the line.

Mother’s Day is one of those high holy secular days which finds welcome in the ethos of churches, but is simply not found in the Lectionary readings of Scripture for worship. When Jesus says, “I am the true vine,” it is hard to fit mothers into the imagery. Mothers are mentioned frequently in the Bible, but almost always as specific mothers of specific people and as tends to be the case with people these mothers are quite different. Mary pondered all these things in her heart following the birth and infancy of Jesus, but Rebekah connived in her heart to make her favourite son Jacob great.

If I may risk a general sense of what motherhood is all about, it has to do with unselfish, sacrificial love that approximates the nature of God’s love as best as we humans can manage. The author of the First Letter of John talks about this divine love in a clear and beautiful manner. No mothers are used in these verses, but if we get the idea, we’ll get the idea.

Theories abound regarding the Letters of John, and most recognize that there is a strong resemblance of language and concepts between the Gospel of John and the Letters. In one way, it’s all pretty simple - God is love, that is, the very stuff of God is love, so if you love, you have God within your being. That sounds awfully good, for most of us can admit to being loved and loving someone else, so we are all divine stuff. Yet John emphasizes something we seldom emphasize or even take note of - God was here first.

Love is not simply a human trait to which we attribute godliness; love comes out of God. We love because God first loved us. We wouldn’t have a clue about love otherwise - human beings couldn’t invent such a notion - so when you genuinely love another person it is evidence of your transcendent nature, your divinity!

On the other hand, since love is a pretty universal practice among humans it means that the God Who Is Love is the God of the universe and the God of every human being. We describe God in very different and distinct ways, because in the first place God is indescribable. It is appropriate that love points to the nature of God, for no human being can do more than mumble or sing or write poetry about love. Love, the most real thing in the world, the best thing in the world, is always elusive and indescribable.

Love is indescribable because from the perspective of Christians it is amazingly non-sensical. Many of us will admit to have entangled ourselves in a love affair in which we did things that do not follow logic. Yet, as crazy as we may have been, it all made perfect sense at the time. Love has a different logic than pure reason. In much the same way, God acted out of love in a way that did not make sense for a God to act. God was love-crazy when God became one of us.

Several centuries ago Jonathan Edwards was amazed at how the Son, Jesus, is a sign of the Father’s determination never to be completely alone. The Son has this inclination to communicate himself, which was always the purpose of creation - that Christ would share the goodness and happiness of God with the people who were made in order to share Christ’s happiness. It’s a little circular, a little contrived, but it’s for that love that doesn’t fully make sense. God is All in All. God doesn’t need anything. God doesn’t need to be loved, yet God is driven to share love with human beings who cannot always return it properly or in measure.

Everyone loves to dump on John Calvin as the severe Reformed pastor and theologian who preached predestination and took the life out of life. His was a harsh, judgmental God, we have come to believe. Nevertheless, Calvin stated delightfully, and not just once, that God could have created us for God’s usefulness - we would be simply his servants - but God’s love is demonstrated to us in that God also created us for God’s sheer delight. God loves us simply to have the opportunity to love.

The author of 1 John reaches the culmination of his preaching: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.” A few verses later, the author makes this even more pointed that if you say you love God, but hate your brother or sister, what love do you have? If you love God, you should also love your sister and brother. You cannot choose and separate one from the other, as we do so well in human relationships.

I hope you have been following along and keeping the thought of mothers close at hand. Love does not make sense, except that it is the reason for life in the first place. Sacrifices for the ones you love are not considered sacrifices at all, but acts of love that are simply part and parcel of your nature - just as God sent his Son to suffer with us and for us. Is there a mother in there you know?

another place, I cited a short section of a marriage service I sometimes conduct. It comes from the prayer after the declaration of marriage when we all pray together for the new couple and for all of us present. We give thanks for the parents of the couple, and “for all who have been mother or father to us.” I hope we all have had at least one extra mother in our pilgrimages, a person who loved you not because you were related, but because against all odds and sense, she loved and cared for you. We also ought to love one another that way.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan