A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter
The Rev. Patricia Gillespie
Acts 13:44-52
Revelation 19:1,4-9
John 13:31-35
Psalm 145 or 145:1-9
You'll know you're really a mother when ... You count the sprinkles on each kid's cupcake to make sure they 're equal. You hide in the bathroom to be alone. You hope ketchup is a vegetable because it's the only one your child eats. You hear your mother's voice coming out of your mouth when you say, "Not in your good clothes." You stop criticizing the way your mother raised you. You say at least once a day, "I'm not cut out for this job," but you know you wouldn't trade it for anything.
There are ways to recognize mothers. This list circulating on the Internet suggests some of those ways. "Mother" is just written all over some people, even when there's no child in sight. Some of those people may never have given birth. Some people who are good at mothering happen to be male. Even in unexpected places we know how to recognize mothering.
People often carry visible signs of who they are: Uniforms, or tools, or clothing tell who we are. (A green sash and carrying cookies, must be a girl scout.) Bumper stickers, pins, or badges proclaim that we belong. (She wears her collar backwards, she must be a priest.)
How is it that we Christians tell others who we are? Jesus told his disciples "By this everyone will know that you are my disciples ... " He identified the visible sign of discipleship. Not the sign of the fish, or even the cross The visible sign of following Jesus, of being a Christian, is having love for one another. Or more specifically: loving one another just as Jesus loved us.
Wearing a cross or carrying a Bible or having a fish symbol on the back of your car is not the sign by which Jesus tells us the world should recognize us. It is by our love like his.
That's much harder than toting a Bible around or even than wearing one of these tight priest-type collars. Jesus' loving act is pretty hard to follow. Think of Peter trying to figure out what kind of love this is. As usual it takes him a while to get it.
Remember the story where Jesus asks him over and over: "Do you love me? " And, with some frustration, Peter keeps answering "Yes, I love you." The story loses something in translation from the Greek. Greek has several words for "love." You're familiar with some of them: "phileo" or brotherly love -- as in the city of brotherly love, "Philadelphia" and "agape" which is an intentional self-giving love, the word Jesus used when he commanding us to love as he has loved us. But when Jesus asks Peter "Do you agape-love me?" Peter responds "Yes, Lord, I phileo-love you."
Peter loves Jesus like a brother- - like someone familiar, someone "like me." Jesus asks for another kind of love, one that reaches beyond the familiar, one that breaks the old boundaries.
Just look at how Jesus loves. Not just his brothers and disciples who are familiar and try to be like him. Jesus loves all the unlovables who are not like him: the IRS guy who makes people pay huge taxes on money they never saw, the woman who fools around behind her husband's back, those dirty lepers and bloody women, even those nasty, misguided Samaritans.
This is crazy love. It's the kind of love that calls ketchup a vegetable when the kid doesn't eat right. It's the kind of love that is proud of the homework paper even though when saving it on the computer the kid deleted mom's own work files. It's the kind of love that cleans dirty diapers, trusts a newly licensed 16-year-old with the new car, and embraces a son-in-law to be of the wrong color or religion or political party. This is motherly love.
Some saints of the church, like Julian of Norwich, whose feast day was yesterday, referred to Jesus as "Mother." Because Jesus does it right -- he shows us perfect motherly love. We all know that human mother-love sometimes goes wrong, sometimes terribly wrong, but at its best that parental self-giving and for-giving love may be our best human example of agape-love.
This is what Jesus is commanding -- not just asking, but commanding -- us to do. To love even when the other appears unlovable or isn't the way we want them to be..
Paul and Barnabas seem to have figured this out in Acts of the Apostles: they have learned that the old boundaries are blasted away by Jesus' agape-love. They reach out in love not only to their fellow Jews, but also to those foreign Gentiles. And as a result they are filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
Motherly love without boundaries. Maybe we don't struggle with Gentiles or Samaritans today, but today Jesus is still asking us to love those who are not like us, to love the unfamiliar, the seemingly unlovable. So where are your boundaries that Jesus is asking you to stretch?
I can guess at some of my own personal ones (and they are just that -- personal): I have a difficult time loving people who tell me that as a woman I should not be a priest; or people who choose to drink and drive; or people who confidently condemn others. Who is it that's unfamiliar to you and hard to love? Who makes you most uncomfortable?
Jesus says: "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another."
Jesus loves them all; gives himself to and for all: the talented one and the failure, the selfish one and the loving one, the well behaved kid and the one who's always in trouble.
That's the kind of mother Jesus is. He loves us that way: whoever and however we are, when we're selfish and when we're loving, when we shine and when we fail.
Brotherly love is good, but it's not enough. Jesus asks for motherly love when he commands his followers to love as he loved.
If we can accept that overwhelming love, it will flow through us into the world. We are able to love because as Christians we accept Jesus' love for us, and we become God's children: Like Mother, like daughter. We are images of our Parent, whose love has no bounds.
How do you know when you are really a Christian? Jesus' motherly love puts sprinkles on EVERYONE'S cupcakes. Let's try to do the same.