Motherly Advice

Yesterday was Mother's Day, which many pastors will tell you is a hard day to preach on because it is the 3rd most sacred day in the church (just barely behind Christmas Eve and Easter).  Our gospel was also from the farewell discourse of John (John 15:9-17 to be exact) which is also not an easy text to preach on because there are a lot of repeated phrases and confusing sentence structures.  But some how for me these two came together.  


Enjoy!

Happy Mother’s Day!  Now I am not a mother, nor do I pretend to be a mother – I will stick with the titles “aunt” and “godmother” and be just fine.  Jesus was not a mother either.  But I think he could relate to most mothers during our gospel passage today which is part of the farewell discourse in John chapters 13-17. Jesus had been with these disciples for a few years, in many ways he had raised them, and now it was time for them to go out in the world on their own – without him. So before they leave, well actually, before Jesus dies, he wants to give the disciples as much information as possible – like all those little nuggets of information our mothers have given us. Jesus saying “love one another as I have loved you” is kind of like our moms saying “Always wear clean underwear.” Actually it is a little more like “stop fighting with your brother”

Therefore this section of John can be pictured as a mom talking to her child as the son is headed off to college or daughter is prepared to go off to basic training.  The kids are about to experience life out on their own.  Mom will no longer be around to make them dinner, clean up after them, drag them out of bed in the morning or one of the other few hundred things that mothers do for their children each and every day.  And so we can picture this scene of Jesus giving these words of wisdom to his disciples before they head off into new uncharted territories.

But what does that mean for us?

Jesus spent a few years with these disciples and now here we are almost 2000 years later still trying to understand the same advice that Jesus gave to those disciples. Only unlike when we moved out of the house, and were still able to call up mom or dad and ask them for their advice, or for a little bit of cash to help us out till the end of the week, we can’t just call up Jesus and get more information.  We can’t call up Jesus and ask him to clarify who exactly he meant when he love one another, or what he means by laying down our lives.

Jesus is not going to have us over to make his world famous chocolate cake, give us more wisdom and advice and help us solve our problems.  Or maybe he will.

For some of us, our mothers are no longer with us, having died, but that doesn’t mean our mothers are no longer with us.  When you hear your mother’s favorite song, smell her favorite flower, bake a recipe that she passed down to you, see her traits in your own, whether physical or personality, your mother is still with you. And even though she is not able to answer you, you may still ask her for advice “mom what would you do in this situation?”

And we can do the same with Jesus, we can turn to Jesus in prayer for understanding.  We can turn to him to understand what it means to lay down our lives or who we are called to love. And just like one mother can raise multiple kids and tell them each the same advice but they all understand it differently, so it is true with Jesus.  For some of us, laying down our lives means giving up everything to be missionaries, for others that means giving generously of what possessions we have, and yet for others we might ignore the advice entirely and want to do our own thing.

We can still turn to Jesus for advice, but unlike many of our mothers, we have to ask for that advice to be given.