Online Sermons
The 5th Sunday in Easter: May 10, the Rev. Dr. Barbara Schlachter
Welcome to our website. You are here: The Word --> Online SermonsGood morning and a Happy Mothers Day to all, for we all have mothers, whether living on this earth or with God. To use the image of the vine in the Gospel, the umbilical cord is the vine of life for every person who enters into existence. And whether our mothers were great, bad, or just good-enough, there is only one word we should all have: a word of thanks. Our epistle from 1 John reminds us that we love because God first loved us, and one of the ways that God first loved us was by giving us mothers who loved us. It is very hard to know the love of God if we have not known the love of a devoted parent or grandparent.
I spoke to my daughter this past week, and she has just entered into her last trimester of pregnancy. She said, “I have 12 more weeks of this?!” Oh, yes, honey, that is the way it works. We talk a lot in church about Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross that gives us eternal life, but let’s not forget that we have all been the recipients of someone else’s sacrifice for us to be born at all and that there is nothing as dependent upon loving care as the human infant. It’s a good thing they are cute and soon start to smile and make us smile, because it’s at least an 18 year commitment we make to these little ones. Creating a human person is infinitely more complicated than the big sea turtles who lay hundreds of eggs and let them all get to the sea on their own, or not.
This has been a good week for famous mothers. Monday was St. Monica’s Day. The mother of the man we have come to know with lesser or greater affection as St. Augustine. She is the patron saint of all mothers who watch their children make choices that seem lesser or down right wrong, and yet never ceased praying and finally had her prayer fulfilled as he became converted to Christianity and went on to become one of the most influential influences on our religion. She is also a reminder, perhaps, to be careful what you pray for!
Then on Friday we celebrated St. Julian of Norwich’s Day, the first woman of English letters, who learned to read and write so she could write her “Shewings,” images of divine love that were given to her during a lengthy illness, from which she recovered.
She gives us the understanding that Christ is our mother, who feeds us from his breast, and the most famous line, spoken in a time of the Black Death, the 14th century’s version of the plague. All Shall Be Well, and All Manner of Things Shall be Well. She had an incredible faith that continues to inspire us seven centuries later. Here is one of her famous quotes: “He said not: ‘Thou shalt not be tempest-tossed ; thout shalt not be work-wary; thou shalt not be disressed.’ But he did say, ‘Thou shalt not be overcome.’”
Today we hear about Jesus as the true vine. He is not just any vine but the true vine. As our Mother, we are connected to one another and to him. He makes us all brothers and sisters, children of one God.
Have you ever seen wild grape vines that do not produce fruit but entangle whole trees and anything else in their path, choking them, cutting them off from the source of their nourishment? These are the branches that threaten our true life and our true connection with the source of our life. These are the branches that must be cleaned out of our lives if we are to be able to be the loving, creative selves Christ invites us to be, if we are to live not in fear, but in joy. Our epistle reminds us that “there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” Perfect love is God’s alone, not an earthly love. It is God’s love that enables us to live in hope and faith, and yet, we need to do clearing of excess in our lives so we can hear and receive this love.
Christ as the true vine invites us to dance in divine union and love with him and with each other, entwining our hearts and our hands. There is a mystical connection here, that helps us see our lives as the interwoven branches that they are. We are the product of DNA that has chain danced down through the ages, and we are the circle of dancers that reaches out all around the world and invites enemies to become friends.
It is this call to entwined love in our gospel and in our epistle from I John that makes me ponder something today. How is it that we have let Mother’s Day become something so different from what it was originally?
The first Mother’s Day was organized by Anna Reeves Jarvis, who organized “Mothers’ Works Days” in West Virginia to improve sanitation in Appalachian communities. Then in 1870 Julia Ward Howe, better known for her writing of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” penned the following lines in response to the terrible carnage of the Civil War, where 1 out of 6 Americans died. This was a war of brother fighting brother, often literally.
“Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears! Say firmly, “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall 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.” Strong language born of conviction that was born of tragedy.In 1872 she proposed an annual “Mother’s Day for Peace,” which was observed for 30 years on June 2. But in 1913 Congress declared the second Sunday in May to be simply “Mother’s Day.” By this time a growing consumer culture had insidiously, like a great false grape vine, shaped mothers as the target and object of consumerism for the family. Women were to be passively celebrated on this day with flowers and gifts, and special acts of tribute.
What happened? What happened to the commitment to activism and peace that this day meant? Today in many places around the world women are standing for peace at 1pm—or whenever they can take ten minutes to stand, sit, pray, for peace. This is based on a book called “The Great Silent Grandmother Gathering.” Think of women standing for peace at 1:00 today. Perhaps say a prayer to join them in wanting for this world life without war for all mothers’ children.
You perhaps know the story of the canteen in North Platte, Nebraska, where during World War II thousands of service men were given sandwiches, cake, cookies, coffee, lemonade as they stopped at the train yards for 15 minutes on their way to one coast or the other, on their way to war. It started when the local mothers, wives, sweethearts heard that their boys were coming through from basic training for a brief stop. They baked up all kinds of goodies and met the train. How disappointed when it turned out that this was another group of men, not theirs. But then someone said, “Well, they may not be ours, but they are some mothers’ sons, some wives’ husbands, some women’s sweethearts.” And they gave them everything they had made and met every train of soldiers after that.
We are all one family, all connected to the one true vine. The vine is an image of creation, the created world that feeds us and cares for us, but also needs our love. The human community and the natural world are intimately connected; wherever the world is going, we are all going together. Mother Earth, the greatest mother of all, needs our love and care so she can continue to care for us. So on this Mother’s Day let us remember all our mothers, our earthly mother who give us birth, our Mother Christ, and the Mother of us all, Mother Earth.
The conclusion of this service will include marching out of the church to a newly planted tree that has been given in memory of Joan Norris, mother of two sons, one of whom, Jason, is here today with his wife Jewels and Joan’s beloved granddaughter Emma, to bless the tree—and to receive the tree’s blessing. She was part of Christ Church for only about seven years, when after her retirement she moved to Cedar Rapids to live with her family. But all who knew her came to love her. She died last year, and today would have been her 80th birthday.