Holy GermX
May 14, 2006
Mark 3:1-5
Mothers. It's a difficult topic. Everyone has an opinion about mothers. Most have an opinion based on their own experiences of mothers. But, whatever the opinion, no matter how wonderful/horrible, the response is passionate. So it makes a day like today tough. The truth of the matter is that women are human and just because we become mothers it doesn't automatically convert us into saints. It is difficult work that some are suited for more than others. And, some shouldn't attempt at all. However, because of how we've treated women historically: not giving them reproductive freedom, not allowing them to make their own money, have their own identity without having a man, because of these things women have not and do not always become mothers for the best of reasons or in the best of circumstances. But today, I thought I'd share a bit about a Mother God. A God who creates, a God who brings people to life, a God who nurtures, corrects and unconditionally loves. Let's use this Mother God as the ideal Mother today.
What if being a person of faith meant we were working our hardest to reflect Mother God into this world with all of our being? It would matter not if we were men or women, for all would be asked to reflect God into our world. What if that ideal stemmed from Mother God in whose image we were all made.
And, this Mother God, knowing there were two beings made in her image, sent to earth her son. Let's face it…Jesus, was a mama's boy. Born of a Virgin? Who started that? I can hear those playground taunts now, about this boy who loved to go to synagogue but was just the carpenter's son. Who did he think he was? From what family was he? And, the myth was born…”Yeah, well, my Momma wanted me so bad she begot me as a virgin!” definitely a Momma's boy. And, he went around town and beyond preaching about loving everyone. He went around asking people to put themselves last and elevate the weak or disenfranchised. He went around speaking to all kinds of women, as if they were equals, as if they were somebodies as if he had heard their voices somewhere else before. And, even on more than one occasion he allowed a woman to teach him a lesson stating their faith was greater than his.
In Jesus time as well as the time in which this story was recorded in Mark, the men of the household were not to concern themselves with anything but providing a good household for the family, carrying on the family name and observing God according to their station. And, then there was Jesus. Not interested in his station except to fraternize below it and question those above it. Not interested in his household, instead considering all part of his household and all households open to him. And, the family name he denied for a larger family name, the one of child of God which made him part of a wider family. All of these things broke the man rules of the day…Where did this non-dominant role model come from for Jesus? Was Joseph a Sensitive New Age Guy or was Jesus taking leads from a raucous Mother God?
A raucous Mother God who understands what it means to whither away within is giving the shots. Many women know the reality of having something die within them. Actually losing the life that was growing within them, the emptiness, the lost time, the vacant feeling where life once thrived. Metaphorically, we carry that over into other places in our lives as men and women, where we have sloughed off our being, given away our healthy life lines and begun to whither in our living. Instead of juicy flesh, ripe with vibrant color we feel and look more like peach pits. Hatred does this to us. Greed does this to us. Violence does this to us. With each encounter we lose another piece of flesh becoming hardened, withered in that spot.
What a gift to hear that Jesus could see these withered places. And, that tradition didn't matter more than helping someone heal their withered spot. It didn't matter that others disapproved, it only mattered to him that someone was dying and he could bring life. He told the man to stretch out his hand and it was healed. What would it take for us to mother one another a bit? To help people name their withered places and then help them nurture them back to life. What if we all embraced a bit more of the Mother God in whose image we were made? What better mothers we would be? What better people we would be. What better communities we would be.
What if we quit worrying about being so sanitized. What if we quit trying to keep our children and our friends from reaching out and leaping? Abbigail asks a lot of questions. It helps her to feel safe. She was asking me about a picture in our home last night by Jane Evershed. It's a picture of two cliffs separated by a chasm with a woman leaping gracefully, confidently, strongly in between the cliffs. The title of the painting is “The Great Leap of Faith”. And, I was thinking to myself, “You know, this is what it means to heal the withered hand.” It means that we must often stand in opposition to those around us. Jesus healed the leper…yet he was still known as “the leper”. You find him in later stories still referred to as the Leper…”We were having dinner at the Leper's house”. We must stand in opposition to people who don't believe we can change. We must surround ourselves instead with people who believe we can, who know we will, who want to nurture, challenge, and support us in doing that important work. What if we instead filled ourselves up with the Holy Spirit. Prayed ourselves open so wide to the Spirit, the Presence of God, that we might be a vehicle allowing God's presence to be with one another. What if we opened so wide to the Holy Spirit that we had the prophetic words that bring clarity to someone who has withered. What if we were so in tune to the movement of the Spirit, that we might have the mothering compassion of God to care enough to incarnate new life where death has reigned. What if we were so filled with the Presence, that we might have a Mother's insight to see where life has died within another. That we might have a mother's heart to know any child that hurts is too many. What if we were so filled with God's love that we might have a mother's indignation when any child is left behind and rise to the challenge.
I'm not sure what this Mother's Day is all about. But, I'm thrilled to be thinking, soaking, reveling in what miracles Mother God will guide me into this year. I hope you will join me Let us pray.