MAY 10, 2009  SERMON ARCHIVE

Dear Christian friends,

Mother's Day is a secular holiday.

As of today, there is nothing churchly or liturgical or Christian about the celebration. As we now know it, Mother's Day is about elevating and honoring one particular person- mom-above other people. A good argument could be made from the Scriptures that this is a bad idea for Christian worship. We Christians must neither show favoritism (James 2:1) nor elevate anyone in our midst except for "Christ crucified" (1 Corinthians 1:23).

Because Mother's Day is a secular holiday-a day that probably benefits greeting card companies and florists more than it benefits mothers-many pastors oppose the idea of Mother's Day observances in the Church. Quite a few of my dear colleagues in the pulpit would rather be shot than preach a so-called Mother's Day sermon, and in many respects I cannot blame them. (I don't think I have ever preached a Mother's Day sermon-but who can remember such things?)

It is not that my fellow pastors do not love their mothers or feel jealous of yours. It is not that they are insensitive to the hard and thankless work of maternity. They oppose Mother's Day observances in worship for one reason alone: These faithful and earnest shepherds of the Church want the focus of Christian worship to be exclusively upon the Lord Jesus Christ and the work of forgiveness that Christ fully accomplished for all people upon His cross. I agree. Nothing in our worship should focus our attention upon anything except for Jesus and His gifts.

Mother's Day is a secular holiday, but maybe we should change that. Maybe we should make Mother's Day a liturgical feast of the Church Year. It doesn't have to be big; we could make it a minor feast. But after all, it is not like the Church has never before stolen a pagan holiday from the unbelieving world.

Nobody knows why we celebrate Christmas on December 25, but there is a good chance that this date was chosen to replace either a holiday devoted to a Roman god or the religious observance of the winter solstice. How on earth did the Council of Nicea in 325 AD decide that Easter should be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox? Some scholars claim that these Christians tapped into a pagan method of keeping time in order to establish Easter's date.

Similarly, colored eggs, blooming flowers, and newborn animals all appear to have been symbols used in idolatrous worship before they became today's symbols of our Lord's victorious resurrection from the dead. The holy Christian Church has a grand history of transforming pagan religious observances into Christ-centered acts. Time and again we Christians have taken something man-centered or even idolatrous and we have changed its focus so that it may glorify Christ in our midst and fix our attentions upon Him.

Why don't we do the same with Mother's Day? Why don't we take this secular holiday and transform it into something that will fix our attention all the more upon the Christ who loves us and who died for us? You could still take your mom out to lunch, buy her flowers or serve her breakfast in bed. You could still give her a card that says mushy things to her. Mom still can have the larger part of the day on Mother's Day.

In addition to these things, we could also bring Mother's Day into the Church by celebrating a liturgical feast that uses the imagery of motherhood. We would NOT want to do this as a way of transferring the focus of our worship away from Christ and toward our mothers. But, we could do this as a way of understanding all the more the great, on-going gifts that Christ daily provides to you.

Mother's Day could focus your attentions exclusively upon Jesus Christ.

Mother's Day could be the feast day on which the Church hears and rejoices that God's forgiveness of your sins in Christ is a rich, unending supply of forgiveness that preserves and protects you every day of your life.

Mother's Day could be the day on which you hear about how your Christ acts like a mother toward you, gathering you "as a hen gathers her brood under her wings" (Matthew 23:37).

The life-giving Scriptures of God proclaim some wonderful things to you, using the image of motherhood to help you understand the point. For example, St. Paul explains to the Galatians that Jerusalem, the holy Christian Church, "is our mother" (Galatians 4:26). Luther used these words to explain, in a beautiful way, that when the Church is our mother, we all together are one family: We "have the same Gospel, the same faith in Christ, the same Holy Spirit, and the same sacraments.".

Stated a little more maternally, all of us Christians are suckled and nourished with forgiveness and life from Mother Church through the proclamation of the Gospel and the administration of the sacraments.

St. Paul also uses the image of motherhood to describe the tender devotion a Christian pastor has for his congregation. St. Paul writes to the Thessalonians Words of love that apply directly to the love that I also have for you:

We were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children. we were ready to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you had become very dear to us (1 Thessalonians 2:7-8).

Add to this the way that God also describes Himself as being like a mother to you, and even better than a mother: God the Father asks you in Isaiah, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?" "Even these [mothers] may forget, yet I will not forget you" (Isaiah 49:15).

A second time in Isaiah, God declares to you a maternal image of your salvation:

"You shall nurse, you shall be carried upon her [the Church's] hip, and bounced upon her knees. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem (Isaiah 66:12-13)."

Now do be careful here. When we hear these images from the living Scripture of God, we do not need to do something silly, like pretending that our God could also be called "earth mother" or some other nonsense. We could use these images of motherhood in the way that they were intended-that is, as a way of explaining and understanding the otherwise inexplicable love and devotion that our Triune God has for us.

Today's Gospel might even be a good Gospel to assign to the new liturgical feast that would call upon the imagery motherhood. Jesus says to you today, "I am the Vine; you are the branches. apart from Me you can do nothing." With these Words, Jesus uses a vivid and powerful image to describe the forgiveness and life that continually flow to you through His connection to you.

He is the nourishing vine, full of life-giving and disease fighting sap. This sap, as it were, unceasingly flows to you, continually providing you with strength and life. Because Jesus is the Vine and you are the branches, you can reason to yourself as Martin Luther did:

[My life] is grafted on Christ the Vine and grows from Him. My holiness, righteousness, and purity do not stem from me, nor do they depend on me. They come solely from Christ and are based only in Him, in whim I am rooted by faith, just as the sap flows from the stalk into the branches. Now I am like Him and of His kind (Luther, AE 24, 226).

There is only one other image I can fathom that describes your connection to Christ along the same lines as this image of Vine and branches. Not only may your connection to Christ be described as Vine and branches, but your connection to Christ may also be described as pregnant mother and unborn child. To follow the wording of today's Gospel, Jesus is the momma and you are the child.

Just as Jesus is a Vine for you, He is also mother to you in the sense that everything you need for your life and salvation flows to you from Him. A pregnant mother nourishes her child through an umbilical cord, and Jesus likewise nourishes you through His Word and His Sacraments.

Just as an expectant mother's body removes and collects her unborn child's waste products during the full course of pregnancy, so also has your Christ collected up from you and taken into Himself all of your sin, all of your death, all of your damnation.

Just as a mother's body shields her dear child from harm and danger, so also does your Christ continually guard and protect you.

Just as an unborn child will surely die without the continual life of his mother, so also will you likewise die and perish eternally, were it not for the continual life of your Lord Jesus Christ, poured into your ears and served into your mouths.

"Apart from Me you can do nothing," says Jesus. This is the voice of a Vine to its branches; this is the voice of a mother to her unborn child. The new liturgical feast celebrated on Mother's Day could be of great benefit to us. Among other things, this feast could:

1. Remind you that your Christ has loving seen fit, not to abort and destroy you, but to carry you until you, like Him, shall be born from the dead.

2. Impress upon you that there is not a moment of your lives that passes by in which you do not need your Lord Jesus and His constant forgiveness. Like children in the womb, you are too weak, too vulnerable, to powerless to fend for yourselves. You need the constant supply that Jesus gives.

3. Teach you to look at women and children anew. Just as every newborn child can be looked upon as a reminder of the Christ who became an infant for you, so also could every pregnant mother be looked upon as an image and reminder of the Christ, apart from whom you can do nothing.

4. Give you cause to rejoice, knowing that while you hear the Word and kneel for communion, your Christ is acting maternally for you, providing you with those good gifts that only He can give.

Happy Mother's Day, dear friends!

In Christ you live and move and have your being, as an unborn child likewise does in the womb of his mother.

Christ Is Risen.