I. A Special Presence Here 00:00
…we declare your goodness. We stand and rest in your love. We pray that you’d open yourself to us this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Well, happy Mother’s Day. It’s a really wonderful celebration. It’s not even in the church calendar, but man, is it a good one.
I just got a chance to travel to our churches in Madrid in February and then in Paris last week. And everybody who comes here says, “Man, you guys, this is such a special place.” Or when Bishop Kessler would travel, or Bishop Adler, they come back and they go, “Man, this is such a special place.” And sometimes you sit there and you go, “It’s good. Yeah, I have to say that,” you know? It’s like you’re supposed to say that. But just having done it, I want you to know: the presence of God and what he’s done in this place is so tangible here. It’s a reality that God has a special anointing, a special presence, here in Saint Michael’s. And you should be excited to be a part of that and to be able to come and be in that.
And this is nothing against Paris or Madrid. They were wonderful churches there, where I was. They do some things so much better than we do. I mean, you should see the Filipino church dance and worship. It is so cool, how unbelievably exuberant and coordinated. It’s just awesome. But I’m so happy to be here, and I just wanted to start with that. Excited to be back.
II. The Goodness of Motherhood 01:38
And today I’m not even talking about the lectionary. We’re talking about mothers today. As I was praying about what God wanted to say, I just felt like there is so much going on in our culture: things that I hear, things that I see on podcasts, things that I just talk to people about. And I think we need to be able to loudly declare the goodness of motherhood. And we need to be able to say that correctly. Because you may see the Hallmark cards for mothers: “They’re the champions, they’re the superheroes, they’re the real men.” It’s like, no, we’re missing something in how we talk about motherhood. Even when we try and honor it, it’s like, “Look at how much work they do.” That’s not why motherhood’s important. The work is important, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not the tally of effort that they put in that makes them special.
They are the womb of the creation of every person since Adam and Eve. That’s amazing. That is sacred. That is miraculous. In fact, one pastor put it this way: there are two guaranteed miracles, childbirth and the Eucharist. You can count on a miracle in both of those. And so in this sense I wanted to start with maybe walking through some of the reality of what it means to value motherhood, and by extension to value women. We’ll get into that in a minute. There’s just so much rhetoric around motherhood, and there’s so much better stuff in Scripture. And so we’re going to go through some scriptures and talk about this.
III. For Those Who Are Not Mothers 03:13
I just want to start for a moment with those of you who are not mothers. And I’m just looking at every single man here. We’re clarifying this: yes, you are not and will never be a mother. Every man here: there’s a lot here for you too. Because God, when he designed the universe, came up with the best possible model, and that’s man and woman coming together to image himself and then create the world. It’s really this incredible thing.
And so, you men, as you’re listening, you have a job to do. Because if men don’t do their jobs, then mothers won’t be able to do theirs. It’s just a fact. The men are here to build the city that allows women to be mothers. And I’m using this kind of symbolic language here, and I’m not going to talk a lot about that. But the point is, you see more and more in our culture women trying to take the roles of men. And I’m not going to die on this hill here, but if you want your woman to be more assertive, more in charge, leading the company, and taking ground, and soldiers who fight in combat, they’re imaging not the strong woman; they’re imaging the strong man. So we need to recover what it means to image a strong woman.
And that doesn’t mean that we say women are less capable. It just means women are less called to be a man than a man. It’s a simple idea, and I’m not going to get into the tangles of it. But let’s glorify motherhood as men, in a way that’s not trite or dismissive: “On Mother’s Day I buy some flowers and I say, ‘Oh, it was so nice how you mothered me.’” No. Motherhood is as important as fatherhood in the culture that we are in right now. We talk a lot about fatherlessness, but we need to talk about the glory of true motherhood. So I’m just taking some time to work through some thoughts that I’ve been having in prayer with God.
And for those of you women who maybe are not a biological mother yet (and I use that term somewhat purposefully): there are women who will never be biological mothers who still have a call to be mothers in the church, the same way there are men who are called to be fathers in the church. Look at the Catholic Church. Their entire clergy is made up of men who are called to be fathers in the church but not biological fathers. And their work has saved a billion Christians. You know, there are so many Catholics it’s hard to count. So the idea here is that everyone here should be listening to these things and valuing these revelations.
It’s a part of building the kingdom of God. Not just a part: it is the central part of building the kingdom of God, that we come together as fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters. That’s the original formation of the kingdom of God. Okay, that was a long preface. I apologize.
IV. Male and Female He Created Them 05:56
Let’s get started. We’re going to start with this line: male and female he created them. First, God made man. Then he said, “That’s not enough.” It was insufficient to image God as man. In fact, he needed a helpmate, a woman, in order to image God wholly. And it’s not like God made a mistake. He made the man first on purpose. He wasn’t like, “Oh my gosh, I thought I would get it right on the first go. Let me try again.” No. What he said was, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” (Gen 2.18).
Now, that word helper… I am going over some stuff that you may have heard before, but that word helper is the same word as when it says God is the help of Israel. So there’s not an implied servanthood here. Occasionally people take this to mean that somehow women are second, and they’re just supporting the man. That is not at all what it means here. It’s the same word God uses of himself several times. In fact, most often throughout the Old Testament, when this word is used, it’s applied to God.
And of course this was God’s plan from the beginning, because we get this in the chapter 1 creation story:
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. Gen 1.27
So we have to start with the understanding that men and women… I know some of you guys are like, “Duh.” But this is something people struggle with. Men and women are equally called to be images of God. Even though Jesus came as a man, and we know God as Father, that does not mean that you are less called, as a woman, to image Christ and Father God. You are exactly as called to image God and Jesus. Women are not less in Christ than men, as we’ve been talking about a lot with Bishop Jones. These are just simple things that we have to establish. And once you understand that, then any role differentiation, any calling differentiation, between men and women rests on the equal value that we each have in Christ.
When you talk to another human, man or woman, you’re talking to the image bearer of Christ. So walk carefully. You will be judged by how you treat the image of Christ in the world. And yes, you are the righteousness of God, but it also says that he will call you to account at the judgment seat. And I don’t want to look back on my life weeping because I dismissed the image of Christ as it came to me in the form of the crazy homeless person on the street, or the really frustrating person I’m working with at my job, or the person in my church that annoys me. I’m looking at somebody here. No. So in this concept of imaging Christ, we have to take that more seriously and not less. And men and women do it equally.
V. God Speaks of Himself as a Mother 09:02
From the beginning, the idea of motherhood was also declared from the perspective of God. In fact, God says this of himself:
3 Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; 4 even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save. Isa 46.3–4
Now, maybe you guys knew that there was all this motherhood language about God in the Scripture, but I think you have to hold on to that. You have to hold on to the fact that the actual process of bearing a child is imaging Christ. God designed this whole thing to be the most beautiful, beneficial, good, and wonderful purpose for populating the world. And he even describes himself in mothering terms over and over again throughout Scripture. Like Jesus says: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how like a hen I’ve longed to gather you under my wings” (Matt 23.37). The fullness of the maternal, the feminine, and the fullness of the paternal and the masculine are in Christ, and they are imaged in us as we come together, men and women, to be the body of Christ.
Okay, so that’s just a theological and philosophical basis that we’re going to springboard off, into Mary, the fulfillment of Eve.
VI. Mary, the Fulfillment of Eve 10:47
If you’re thinking, “Okay, what does it look like, then, to be a woman, and ultimately a mother, in the world?”: Mary is our prime example, the mother of God. Of course, when God made Adam and Eve, Eve is actually called the mother of all living (Gen 3.20). But Mary becomes the fulfillment of that which was promised, which was created: the type of the mother of all that Eve is, Mary becomes. We even see Irenaeus has this great quote, where he says:
“And thus… it was that the knot of Eve’s disobedience was loosed by the obedience of Mary. For what the virgin Eve had bound fast through unbelief, this did the virgin Mary set free through faith.”
So when you’re thinking about motherhood, the first thing I want you to know is that it’s all about obedience. We’ll go deeper into that.
Let’s look at this chart that goes through the ways that Eve fell in her imaging of motherhood and the ways that Mary fulfilled the image. And I’m sorry if you can’t quite see that; I’m working on some presentation software, trying to make it better. But Eve, you see, is visited by the fallen angel; Mary is visited by the angel Gabriel. Eve says yes to the serpent; Mary says yes to God. Eve’s disobedience brings death; Mary’s obedience brings Life himself. Eve is called the mother of all living; Mary becomes the mother of all living, as we are adopted into the family of God. Eve stands by the tree of disobedience; Mary stands at the tree of the cross. Eve: her seed is promised. And Mary: her seed fulfills the promise and crushes the serpent.
So maybe you’re sitting there wondering, “Okay, why do I care about this? This is a lot of theology. This is a lot of things that you’re doing here.” The reason is because we talk a lot about how our job is to take up our cross and follow him. Well, guess what? The women in particular have a unique call to bear the children of God, in their wombs and spiritually. There’s something that I can’t do that all of you women can do, because you are made specially to walk in the fulfillment of what God set up from the beginning, what Mary fulfills through the grace and propitiation of Jesus, through the Holy Spirit. She becomes an example, an icon, an image of the mother: the one who says yes and bears the burden.
VII. Two Images of God 13:21
Now, when we look at Mary’s life, we begin to see two images of God. We see the parallel between Mary and her son Jesus. Mary’s “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1.38) mirrors the Son’s “Not my will, but thy will be done” (Luke 22.42). It’s the same picture. It’s the same image. The yes to the pain and suffering of childbirth, which includes all of the childbirth that Mary says yes to, leads straight to her holding Jesus’ dead body. It’s not just the nine months. It’s the bearing of the child to the world, the offering up. The grace to say yes to God is the act of imaging Christ that Mary fulfills and that we are called to.
Now, I didn’t get the picture in here, and I don’t know why it says “the Pietà”; it doesn’t show the Pietà. But you guys know the marble image of the Pietà, of Mary holding the broken body of Jesus. It’s this great, beautiful image. That’s the icon of Christ. And I actually had made up the meme. I’m so sad I didn’t put it in here. But I made up the meme, you know, the one with Pam from The Office, where she’s showing two pictures to her boss, and she says, “Corporate would like you to find the difference between these pictures.” And then in the next cut it says, “They’re the same picture.” And she’s just trying to distract her annoying boss.
Well, the Pietà and the crucifixion: Mary is crucified, in the sense that she joins… What does Paul say? We complete in our suffering what was lacking in the suffering of Christ (Col 1.24). She is filling in, in her body, through her own suffering. She’s joining Christ on the cross. And so in the Pietà you see that the motherhood that every one of you says yes to leads to your own cross, your own suffering, your own giving up. It just leads to pain. “Life is pain.” My favorite quote. “Anyone who tells you differently is selling something.” Truly, your yes will lead to suffering. But just like the cross, it leads to resurrection.
Her suffering, the suffering mother… I cannot imagine the joy of the moment when she embraces the risen Christ. She went through the same three days of hell that Jesus went through. I mean, I know, metaphysically a little different. But she’s three days in hell till the resurrection, and then she’s able to embrace her son and see the fulfillment of her motherhood in the purpose of her son.
And there’s one other parallel that I thought was fascinating in the crucifixion story. Pilate leads Jesus out, and there’s this great moment, an echo, which is “Behold the man” (John 19.5). And there’s another “behold” statement, where Jesus is looking down at John and Mary, and he says, “Woman, behold your son.” And the last thing he says before he commits his spirit, he says, “Man, behold your mother” (John 19.26–27). The mother.
Now, I’m not putting Mary into some superhuman category, like some might be tempted to do. She was fully human, like you and me. And I personally don’t believe that she was sinless. Now, I’m saying that aside from the pulpit, because I don’t want to get struck by lightning. I don’t know if that’s true or false. I don’t know. I really don’t. It’s a really fascinating debate throughout all of Christian history. But I do believe that, just like you and me, she suffered, and she was tempted in every way as we are, and that she in fact had to bear all the burden of suffering that she went through. And the reason we look to her as the icon of the mother is because she still said yes every time.
And that’s all we’re called to do. We’re not called to conquer the world. We’re not called, in the sense of using our own strength, to go out and establish kingdoms. We’re just called to say yes to God, and then he can work through us. And yeah, he’s conquering the world. Jesus is the King of kings, the Lord of lords. That is the eventual outcome. But your only job today is to say yes. And that’s what we see in the ideal of motherhood.
VIII. Motherhood and Time 17:47
And then there’s this funny thing that runs throughout all of Scripture, where motherhood is used as a symbol of time. Over and over again it says, “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4.4), when it comes to term, let’s say. And then even more clearly, Paul says in Romans:
22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. Rom 8.22
So what I’m trying to explain here is: yes, the fatherhood; God is Father. That’s how we understand him, and that’s important and good and true. But he contains the motherhood, and it’s actually played out in creation. He is the one who is bearing the promises and bringing them to pass in creation. And so if you think about what you’re doing when you are bearing a child, you’re actually participating in God’s redemptive salvation of the world.
So even in this, the child in your womb is an image of the Savior. Just as Mary bore the Savior of the world, every mother bears the image of the Savior of the world. It’s not the same. But if you think of the climate… It’s very obvious when you think of people. And I know you guys probably don’t struggle with this, but there are climate people who believe that the answer to climate problems is just less people. To which you say, “Which ones are you getting rid of?” And at the same time, the answer of God to the salvation of the world is people. Period. It’s Jesus, and people who bear his image. And so it’s completely upside down.
IX. The Lies and the Truth 19:43
And so when we talk about motherhood, people say these crazy things. They say things like, “Children are a burden.” Very true, but not the whole truth. “They’re exhausting, expensive, they’re in the way of your real life.” What is real life, except for your children? What is real life? “You can’t afford them.” No duh. I have no power in myself to save myself. But the God who feeds the birds will feed your children (Matt 6.26). “They’ll ruin your marriage.” What is my marriage for? If my marriage is ruined by children, I don’t want that marriage. I want a different marriage. I don’t mean to a different person. I mean, let’s remake marriage in the image God made it: the one that procreates, that has children and raises children, and is fathers and mothers to the third and fourth generation, grandfathers and grandparents. I mean, you don’t stop when your kids move out. The motherhood thing, the fatherhood thing, just grows. That’s how it’s always meant to be.
Okay, here’s a crazy one: “Your body is your own.” Whereas the Bible says your body was purchased with a price (1 Cor 6.20). “Your body is your own, and pregnancy is an imposition on it, and abortion is healthcare.” Insanity. We know how backwards that is. I mean, I could just talk forever on that. That’s why I paused. You don’t need to hear me say that the murder of children is wrong. But I’ll just leave it there. How upside down.
“The planet has too many of us already.” Like I said, the solution is more children, more people. The salvation of the world comes through people imaging Christ. The creation of the world came by Christ, and we bear his image, and we go out and we create the world anew. God is always making things new.
And then the last one: “Childlessness is freedom.” Come on. The only people who can write things like that are people who don’t know children, or don’t know freedom, to be fair. I understand there is a type of freedom that says, “I am not responsible to anybody.” It’s the type of freedom that drives people to insanity, because the only goodness in the world is the relationships we have with one another and with our Father in heaven. That’s the source, the fountain of all goodness. In fact, the beautiful sunset: you’re like, “Oh, I could go out by myself and see the sunset.” It’s like, the communion you feel with nature is with God. It’s because it’s permeated with the goodness of God that you can even appreciate the awe and beauty there. It is not free to be burdenless. But to take up your cross and follow him is freedom, to say, “Let it be to me according to your will.”
Okay, the truth is this. Children are a heritage from the Lord (Ps 127.3), a reward, a crown. They are not the obstacle to your life. They are how you grow into your life. The God who feeds the birds feeds children, and always has. They’re not the ruin of marriage, but they are the result of marriage. True marriage results in procreation, the fullest marriage. And oh, God has such a heart for those who aren’t able to have children. But man, does he not stop! He doesn’t just stop calling you to be a mother or a father. There are so many people I know who have ministered to my life who had no children, but they were a father to me or a mother to me.
Okay: the womb is not a possession; it is a vocation. I forgot I had this on the slide. I don’t know if you can read it; it’s real small. It’s not a possession but a vocation, the place God himself chose to be carried. To bear life is to image God. To welcome a child is to welcome the King. Be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth (Gen 1.28). Every baby contains an image of the salvation of the world.
X. Say Yes to the Lord 23:48
Okay, that was a lot. I think what God wants you to know is this: wherever you’re at, if you’re a father, a brother, a son, a mother, a daughter, a sister, wherever you’re at in this family, you are being called into fatherhood. You’re being called into motherhood. That’s the journey you’re on. And when you say yes to him, he saves the world through you, through your sacrifice.
And every mother today that we get to honor and celebrate (I love that we get to do that): they bore the image of the salvation of the world. They bore Christ. Both, you know: spiritually they’re in Christ, but also that baby. And it’s such an amazing thing that we get to celebrate and we get to participate in. And let’s not reduce it to a Hallmark card that focuses on how many diapers they changed or how many meals they served. You’re imaging God. The diapers and the meals matter. Please do that. Thank you. But the image of all of creation groaning with anticipation for the coming of the children of God: you are participating, in a small part, in that.
It was all fulfilled on the cross. But Jesus says, “There’s plenty of room up here for you too.” And we’re all called to just join him in that. And we say yes, and then we experience more resurrection. We experience the salvation of the world, and we build the kingdom. I mean, I was just talking to somebody about how there are generations of people here in this church, in this building. And to see that propagate through the ages is to see the salvation of the world and the new creation coming to earth. That’s what it is.
And so, honor your mother. Honor your mothers today. Honor your fathers all the time. No, I’m just kidding: mothers all the time too. But today we’re particularly celebrating mothers. And then ask God, “Where are you calling me to step into fatherhood? Where are you calling me to step into motherhood?” Take up your cross. Say yes to the Lord. And follow him. Amen.