Fifth Easter
Revelation 21:1-6, John 13:31-35
The movie City Slickers opens with a classic scene. Billy Crystal playing Mitch is sound asleep in bed with his wife Barbara. The digital clock on the bedside table slips from 5:15 to 5:16 and the phone rings. Both husband and wife groan. Mitch rolls over and hits the speaker phone button. A cheery voice on the other end annoys the sleepers awake with the words "Good morning birthday boy". Mitch groans, "Hi mom." And then mouths the words as mom recounts a well replayed story of Mitch's birth. They knew it was coming. Apparently it is a tradition of mom's to call on Billy's birthday--at the exact time that he was born.
This scene was called to mind at lunch on Thursday as we sat with Nila the church secretary and she was saying she had called Scott, her son who had turned 30 on Wed. No she did not call him at the exact time of his birth--1:00 a.m.
I think it is almost impossible for a mother not to acknowledge the birthday of their children without remembering the occasion of their birth. Children here should note that their birthdays are at least as significant to their mothers as they are to them.
Doug usually graces me on mother's day by agreeing to preach and letting me relax. I kind of wanted to preach today. 21 years ago today I was supplying at St. John's in Lincolnwood. I was not feeling very well that day. It was tough getting through the 8:00 and 10:30 service. I chalked it up to being just over 8 months pregnant. The rest of the day didn't get any better. Timothy was born at 11:00 that night.
I called him last night at 11:00. I think my celebration for getting him to 21 should be at least as festive as his for having got there.
Fifteen or so years ago the greater church made a move to designate the week before today as Family week and today as family day because many congregations and preachers had gone overboard lauding mothers. The highly liturgical people thought that this secular notion of celebrating mothers was crowding out God's place in worship.
Some preachers answered that criticism and created quite a stir by suggesting that we worship our mother God on this Sunday of the church year. I chuckle now to think of the uproar that caused.
Thankfully, I think we have now become sophisticated enough in our faith understandings to acknowledge that any descriptive name for God is only an analogy; that the entirety of God can never be encompassed by any one human title. Each descriptive allows us to picture a part of God, to lift up a few special and unique characteristics, to celebrate a selection of the many virtues of God. And so we should be able to call God Father and Mother and Parent and King and Potter and shepherd all the while realizing the limitedness of our particular and personal perspective.
And so it might just be my bias, it might be a stretch but I see a mother's God's touch in the lessons that we have today.
In our Gospel lesson Jesus addresses the disciples in his last meal with them before his arrest and crucifixion. He uses a distinct and very personal term to address these full grown, worldly wise men. He calls them "little children." I once had a lector at one of the churches I served who read this lesson and on his own accord left out that address. After the service I asked if his eye had skipped. No, he just couldn't believe that Jesus would call the disciples that--these were after all MEN.
"Little children" Jesus says to them, "I am with you only a little longer." I will be gone and where I am going you can not come. The pathos of separation.
There is a study of childhood that is entitled "Separation" for that is exactly what childhood is about. From the moment a baby fills their lungs with air and lets out that first scream they are beginning to separate, to express their independence. After that it's just a series of firsts; the first time they let go of momma's fingers and step away, to the first time they climb on the school bus, to the first time they spend the night at a friends, to the first time they ask for the car keys---It's all about separation--about letting go--about sending off. So Jesus is sending these disciples off, not because he's deserting them, not because he doesn't love them but because it is time, it is time for them to move out into the world.
Jesus tells them, "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another." I have a sister and when we were growing up we fought--not a little, a lot. There were times when we put tape down the center of our room so we wouldn't have to deal with one another. So when we'd ask my mother what she wanted for a birthday or Christmas or mother's day her common but I think not original litany was, "I just want you and your sister to get along for the day." Love one another.
Just as I have loved you, love one another. A common unit of measure in Bible times was the cubit. Noah's ark was so many cubits. Solomon's temple was so many cubits. In contemporary measure a cubit is about 18 inches but only "about" because it was reckoned as the distance from a man's elbow to the tip of his middle finger. Of course that makes a cubit a varying measure. The cubit Brian R would measure would be significantly different than the cubit Carolyn R would measure. At the last supper Jesus told his disciples that the time had come to use a new cubit. The expectation was that they would have a new measurement of love. The standard human measure had been a flawed and fluctuating one--50-50. I can love you as long as, and as much as you love me. Then Jesus reiterated the Old Testament standard. "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Higher though still imprecise. Sometimes we can be not very fond of ourselves.
Then on the night before he died Jesus raised the bar once more, "just as I have loved you, you also should love one another." Now I will not merely love you the way you love me for I will love you even if you hate me. Now I will not merely love you the way I love myself, for I will love you at the expense of myself. Now I will love you as Jesus loved me.
"By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Jesus might just as well have been telling his disciples "make me proud." Show the world where you came from.
No mother looks at their child and does not have hopes and dreams for them. That gets translated into expectations. "Living up to" is often what Calls us forward into the future. We find our own best selves by living up to.
Any mother, when they hold a child in their arms has hopes and dreams and aspirations for them. We joke about wanting our children to be President or to be a big league ball player or a concert musician but the serious hopes and dreams are more gut level than that. I have found that the prayer we say at baptism invoking the spirit's presence and the bestowal of gifts of the spirit is really more to the point. What will makes God proud of James, what are the hopes dreams and aspirations that God has for this child that today God claims for her own. As the prayer says the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the lord and the spirit of joy in your presence.
God has dreams and hopes and aspirations for us but because God has sent us out to make our own decisions, plot our own plans and set our own course we can resent those hopes, as we often do, we can challenge those expectations, as we often do, we can ignore those dreams for our lives. There is only one certainty, that God continues to love us as a mother loves her child.
Amen.