Mother’s Day is not a liturgical holiday—meaning, we won’t celebrate it at church. But I always find that the commercial calendar brings thoughts, feelings, and questions to our minds and to our observance of the Christian calendar.
This weekend, you might be thinking about your own mother or a mother figure in your life, which could bring a mixed bag of emotions or memories. You might be carrying your own experience as a mom with all its complexity. You might be wishing you’d bought somebody flowers (personally, I recommend chocolate or cheese). So in lieu of a Mother’s Day sermon, here are a few thoughts to hopefully bless and encourage you as you reflect on your experience of motherhood this weekend:
First, God loves us like a mother. The Bible, which names God as Father, is also full of passages describing God’s love with maternal language. He likens his bond with us to a nursing mother (Is. 49:15), and his protective care for us to a mother bear (Hos. 13:8); Jesus Himself described a longing to gather us under his wings like a mother hen (Luke 13:34). This means that the gaps our human mothers left—which we all have—God can uniquely fill.
Second, through Christ, we can think of the church as a mother. This is a historic idea, dating back to the 2nd century bishop who said, “nobody has God as Father who does not have the church as mother.” Among other things, this means the church is our home: it is a place where we are born into a new community, nurtured in our faith, and always welcomed back no matter what we’ve done.
Third, by the Holy Spirit, all women can express a kind of motherhood as they care for and minister to people around them. This is why the most important mother figure in your life may not be your biological mom—or, the “children” you count among your own might be students, neighbors, or anyone to whom you have added life. I have been blessed to see this kind of ministry at The Vine among women of all ages and stages! May we all (men too!) participate in the generative love that makes us spiritual fathers and mothers to whomever God calls us.