Easter
6 2015 (Year B)
Father Adam Trambley
May 10, 2015 St.John’s Sharon
In this morning’s reading from
the first letter of John, we hear a rather bizarre passage. The Bible is full of things that make us go
“hmm” at first, and we get one of them today.
After talking about loving the children of God and keeping his
commandments and our faith conquering the world, we read:
This is the one who came by water and blood, Jesus Christ, not with the
water only but with the water and the blood.
So just what is John trying to tell us here?
In John’s day, some people
disagreed about just how much of Jesus’ life and death were actually part of
his work as the Messiah and to what degree he was the Son of God. Apparently some of them were arguing that the
most important part of Jesus work was done at his baptism. We don’t know precisely what they were
thinking because nobody bothered to spend the time to copy what they wrote over
and over again for the past two thousand years, but they may have believed that
God left the human Jesus before he suffered and died, or they may have felt
like once the incarnation happened that nothing more was necessary, or they may
have believed any number of things that belittled the importance of Jesus’
passion and death. They believed somehow
that when Jesus showed up, the important work was done. Such ideas continue to show up from time to
time today.
John, however, didn’t agree with
that line of thinking in his day, nor would he be sympathetic to it now. John points back to Jesus death on the cross,
and reaffirms that Jesus came by the water and the blood. We remember the scene described in the Gospel
of John when a soldier came to make sure that Jesus was dead and thrust his
spear into Jesus’ side. Water and blood
flowed out of the wound, and Gospel writer says that he himself saw the blood
and the water. The blood and the water
are important to John.
Why are the blood and the water
important? Because the blood and the water flowing out of Jesus side are
tangible signs of just how far Jesus was willing to go out of love for us. The blood and the water show the lengths that
Jesus suffered and sacrificed to bring us eternal life. As the reading from John’s Gospel says this
morning, No one has greater love than
this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Jesus’ love for us was so great, that he laid
down his life for us.
I want to take a detour here to
talk a bit about Mother’s Day. Mother’s
Day is an incredibly joyous day for many, and an incredibly hard day for
others. But what John says today about
Jesus coming can also speak to mothering.
Just like Jesus’ saving work was not accomplished only by water, so,
too, Christian mothering is not really about creating a child, but is truly
brought to fulfillment in the love that really does lay down one’s life for a
child, whatever their age or whatever the biological relationship between a
mother and a child.
In many cases, the sacrificial
love of mothers starts in the act of pregnancy and giving birth. I myself cannot describe more than second
hand the kinds of care and concern that many expectant mothers feel or the changes
in behavior to ensure their unborn child’s safety. The very act of giving birth is difficult
today, and in years past the numbers of deaths during childbirth made
delivering a baby one of the most loving and potentially self-sacrificial acts outside
of Jesus’ passion. Yet, delivering a baby
is but the beginning of what really makes a mother, and in many ways it is not
a prerequisite for being a mother.
Just like Jesus came in the water
and the blood, motherhood really comes in its fullness as mothers die to
themselves in countless ways out of love for their children. I’m sure we can all think on times that our
own mothers gave something of themselves that went beyond anything we deserved
or could reasonably ask for. My guess is
that most of those times we didn’t even know it until much later. Many of you who are mothers can also point to
times when your children pulled a level of love out of you that you didn’t even
know you had until that very moment, when you were able to put aside your own
wants and needs in ways that surprised yourself, or when you let go of
something that had been central to your self-definition or your life up until
then but just wasn’t so important anymore.
Mothers, too, we know share the sufferings and griefs of their children,
just like Jesus bore our sorrows and walked with us even into death and
hell. Mothers’ sacrifices are not
salvific in the way Jesus’ atoning sacrifice is, but the love poured out in
them is profound and their prayers are heard on high.
Of course, none of the profound
love in action that defines true motherhood is limited to biological
childbearing. In fact, even the fiercest
of natural affections pales before the power of Christian love enacted by
carrying out Jesus’ commandment to care for his children. In some cases, that love is all the more
powerful when it comes from non-biological mothers. Should anyone doubt the importance of these
arrangements, Jesus himself created a non-biological family on the cross when
he told his beloved disciple, likely John who wrote both the letter and the
gospel we hear today, that Mary was now his mother and that John was now her
son. The real work of motherhood, the day-in,
day-out almost unnoticed acts of love combined with the occasional incredibly
difficult or extravagant actions, can be done by many people who are not
biological mothers but who step in officially or unofficially to change
children’s lives. Some might be legally
adoptive moms, but others are the women who step up consistently because a
child of God needs a mother in some way, and they are willing to do the hard
and Christ-like work of loving mothering.
John tells us that we know God by
loving the children of God. In many
ways, then, mothering is not only a commission to love someone who is dear to
us, but also a path to God. As we,
whether mothers or fathers, grandmothers or grandfathers, aunts or uncles,
brothers or sisters, or in whatever other role we might have, as we give of
ourselves to care for one of God’s children, we will come to know God through
the love that we share. What we do for
God’s children, we do for him, and loving God’s children is actually loving
God. Offering our lives for one of God’s
children is offering our lives for God, and God honors those sacrifices. As we love a child deeply, we will find the
face of God in that child.
So on Mother’s Day, we honor
especially those who come not only with a Hallmark Card, but we honor those
mothers, in whatever capacity, who came following Jesus and continually offering their lives for the love for God’s children.
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