Jesus, Our Mother: Sermon for the Fifth Sunday of Easter A

This last Friday, May 8, was the feast day of one of my favorite saints, known to us as "Dame Julian of Norwich," even though we do not know her actual name. She is called "Dame Julian" because she was an anchoress who spent much of her adult life in a room attached to St. Julian's parish in Norwich, England.(1)

I have been reflecting recently upon how much Dame Julian is a saint for our own time. Like us, she lived through pandemic and upheaval. During her 80 years of life, there were many catastrophes and upheavals that took place within Julian’s world, including the Black Death, the Hundred Years’ War, the Great Schism affecting the Papacy, the Lollard heresy, and the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. The wars and plague that swirled repeatedly around her give her words special weight in being able to speak to our time. 

One of her most famous sayings is "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well." One of my good friends in seminary, Paula, gave me a bangle bracelet with this message inscribed on it, and I wear it often, especially when I am in a situation that might make me anxious. With all that was going on around her, she wasn't saying that everything that was traumatic around her didn't matter. She was saying that God's presence with us in all our trials and tribulations gives us a sense of perspective that then empowers us to act boldly to alleviate the suffering we see around us.

Another interesting image Julian promoted, that was accepted in the medieval church far more than now, is the image of Christ as Mother. Julian’s epiphany was inspired by a vision of a crucifix held before her as she thought she was dying. Julian equates the suffering of Jesus on the cross with the pain of labor that women endure to give birth. Thus, Christ through his suffering on the cross births us into new life, and once he is finished giving us new life through his crucifixion, his earthly ministry is finished.

On this Mother's Day, Julian's association of Jesus with motherhood can help us see motherhood with new eyes. I know that for some people, Mother's Day can be a day of sadness and longing for what we may not have received in childhood. It may be a day when dreams of motherhood that were not fulfilled are brought to mind. It can also be a day when women who are not mothers are made to feel less-than, which is absolutely wrong. Yet, whether our memories of our mothers are happy or sad, we ourselves can serve as nurturing presences in the lives of others.

In our gospel reading from John 14 for today, we see Jesus tenderly caring for his disciples and preparing them for his leaving them as the result of his impending death and crucifixion. To recap: In John 13, Jesus had his last meal with the disciples and washed their feet. Jesus has just explained to the disciples that he will be betrayed, but that his betrayal will be to the glory of God. Peter, that apostle who is so like all of us, fails to understand what Jesus is saying, and asks where Jesus is going, thinking he is getting ready to go on a journey. When Jesus tells Peter that he can’t go where Jesus is going, Peter rashly proclaims his willingness to lay down his life for Jesus, only to be told he will deny Jesus the second the going gets rough. We then get our reading today. Thus Jesus begins to bid his disciples farewell.

Presence is a focus here: Soon Jesus will leave them to go back to God, but he preparing a place for them there, and by believing in Jesus they will know the way to where Jesus is going. Now, many people read this section as talking about the afterlife in heaven. Yet, throughout scripture, we are reminded that the kingdom of God is here and now, and we build it and strengthen it through our faith and actions today. At the midpoint of our reading, we have yet another of the seven “I am” statements in John. 

Jesus tells us he is the “way, truth, and life.” He also repeats a statement from last week’s gospel when he referred to himself as the gate or door for the sheep—“No one comes to the Father except through me.” We have to be careful with that claim, for it has historically been used by some to exclude and even frighten people. Jesus was speaking to people who already had followed him. For us in our time Jesus is how we as Christians live life with God—life right now.

Phillip then asks to be shown God, and Jesus makes another point about presence again: Jesus is God and seeing Jesus is seeing God. And those who believe in Jesus are part of Jesus and Jesus is in them. This is an extension of the idea we also saw in the epistle. The author of John’s gospel attempts to use three means to help the disciples understand who God is through his own presence in the world: sight, words, and works. At verse 8, Phillip asks Jesus to show them the Father. Yet as Jesus is getting ready to leave them, the time for seeing is over.

From our perspective, this is reassuring, since living 2000 years after the events being recounted means that we don't get to see any of these things. Yet, as we've been reminded throughout this Easter season, we can see Jesus living and present in the faces of those around us, and in our own discipleship. And if we see Jesus, then we have seen God.

Next, in admitting that the words that Jesus is using are not his own, Jesus provides reassurance to Christians --and especially preachers -- everywhere. We all pray when we get up into the pulpit or when we talk to others about God that the words that come out of us won't just be our own, puny words, but words through which God becomes visible and present among all of us as we are gathered together. We pray that our words or remind others of the word made flesh all begins speaking about in its prologue back in chapter one: the living word of God present and alive among us is what we all longed for and what we are assured will be with us when we are gathered in his name.

Jesus then speaks of his works he is performed in front of the disciples, and promises them that they can perform works even greater than these after he has left them. John's gospel, as well as the letters from John included later in the New Testament, remind us that faith without works is dead. This admonition is addressed especially to us as the Church, especially in the time in which we live right now. It is through our work as the Church and as individual member so Christ’s Body in the world that we make Christ visible and real.

It is through our works as self-professed Christians that Jesus is most made known in the world. This can be a double-edged sword though because it is through our works as self-professed Christians that doubt can most be sown in the world about who Jesus is: when we celebrate anger, pettiness, jealousy, cruelty, and self interest in our daily lives, when we deny the image of God that resides in each and every person by turning our back on suffering, poverty, homelessness or justifying it as deserved, we present a face of Christ to the world that is not just contrary to the gospel but is literally, anti-Christ. When self-professed Christians deny truth and reason in our world especially today in this crisis, we spurn our call and primary work as Christians, since Jesus plainly reminds us here that HE is the Way, and the Truth, and the Life. Those three things are inextricably intertwined. In this passage, Jesus reminds his disciples that seeing Jesus is the same as seeing God. He also reminds his disciples and us that how people see us is how people will see God.

If we left it at that, the responsibility would be overwhelming --if we didn't also have innumerable reassurances, through the testimony of Jesus’s life and work among us, then and now, that God's love for us is overwhelming, unconditional, never-failing, beyond our ability to fully comprehend because it is so far removed from the conditional love we may have received from each other in our lives. That love strengthens us and sustains us in our work as disciples. 

Jesus shows us repeatedly that all who seek Jesus, all who seek a deeper knowledge of God, are able to come freely to God knowing that God loves us and accepts us as we are, no matter how broken or even shattered we may feel by the experiences we have had in our lives or by our own actions. Even more astounding, as Jesus demonstrated in his encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well, God not only accepts us where we are, but God seeks to know us intimately as God's children. No matter what our own family situation may be, no matter what our own memories of our own parents may be, we were secure within the family of God. As Jesus reminds us in the parable of the prodigal son, God not only welcomes us back when we have gone astray, but rushes out to meet us and rejoices when we turn aside from attitudes and actions that hurt one another. As Jesus called Lazarus back into life out of the tomb, and called Mary Magdalen into understanding on Easter morning as she mistook him for the gardener, Jesus too calls each of us tenderly, lovingly by name, as a mother would, to a new life and new awareness of the beauty and wonder and miracle of daily life even in the midst of anxiety, loss, and dread—just like many of us are experiencing now.

And revisiting these words of Jesus in our gospel today from the other side of the resurrection reminds us that we too are a resurrection people. That we are not separated from the life and love of Christ by the distance of years and cultures.

No, wherever we as disciples of Jesus meet scarcity and want with abundance and fulfillment of need, Jesus is present right now.

Wherever we encounter physical, mental, and spiritual suffering, and we respond with the gifts of presence, compassion, and healing, Jesus is present right now.

Wherever hungry people are fed without denigration or blame for their circumstances, Jesus is present right now.

Jesus loves us so much that Jesus gives us the honor and the responsibility to share in the miracle of discipleship. Jesus calls us into the joy of discipleship, of being not a barrier but a blessing for others as the noblest pursuit of our lives. We are the proof we seek, if we allow the light and love of Jesus to shine forth in us in place of the darkness and cruelty this world repeatedly seeks to insert into our very souls and hearts and minds.

Never have these words in today’s gospel been more needed: “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” That’s the starting point to move from victim to survivor, from helplessness to agency, from isolation and worship of self to community and worship of God—the God who makes all things new and walks alongside us in our griefs and questions as well as in our times of joy. Even as Jesus speaks these words with the shadow of the cross looming before him, he reminds us of the assurance that each and every one of us have a place with him and with God—not just after our earthly lives are over, but right now. Jesus urges us not to let our hearts be troubled, just as 1300 years later Julian rephrased him with her reminder that all things will be well. As my dear friend the Rev. Dr. Maria Evans points out,

“All shall be well,” does not mean “And we all lived happily ever after.” Although we know so little of Julian’s life before [her] visions, it would be highly improbable that she never experienced massive levels of grief, death, and trauma living in the times she did. She certainly experienced being within a hair’s breadth of her own death in young adulthood. I’m certain living as an anchorite had its own pain and sadness. Yet her own view of her relationship of God and Christ was one of unspeakable joy, and even transcends gender when she refers to Jesus as our true mother.(2)

Jesus is clear that we are called to witness to the power of love in our lives, wherever and however we find it, and on this Mother’s Day with all its joys and potential sorrows, that is a vital balm to many a wounded, hurting soul. Making all things well is not just a wish, or denial of reality—it is a target for us to aim at, to prevent hurt and suffering where we can. The good news is that Jesus reminds us that we HAVE that power—that we can, each of us, see each other with a nurturing, generous love.

On this Mother’s Day, may we have the courage to see this time as a chance to break the cycle of anxiety upon the solid rock of love and faithfulness, and use our wisdom and our power of love for the sake of others. Then, indeed, all shall be well.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service on Facebook Live from St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:
Acts 7:55-60
Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16
1 Peter 2:2-10
John 14:1-14


References/sources:
1) For more information about Dame Julian, a wonderful source is the Julian Center, found here: http://juliancentre.org/about/about-julian-of-norwich.html 
2) Maria Evans, "All Shall Be Well, Even When It Ain't Normal," at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, May 8, 2020.