LOVE ON MOTHERS DAY
SERMON PREACHED BY FR. TONY NOBLE ON SUNDAY APRIL 26th 2009
John 14: 15 “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”.
Mothers’ Day. I wish all the mothers present many blessings as you remember the joy – and the agony – of being a mother. If there is one word we associate with mothers it is the word we have heard several times in today’s Gospel – the word “love“. In both the Epistle and the Gospel today we have several mentions of the word “love” – particularly the beginning of the gospel: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”.
In reflecting on this, it is a bit like a mother saying: “If you love me you will do what I say”!
In our household when I was growing up, my mother usually said: “Wait until your father gets home”!!! In fact, mothers usually provide compassion and love, and it’s the father that usually dispenses the discipline and the correction.
In today’s Gospel we see later (John 14:23) that Jesus expands on this concept of love and commandment: “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our home with him”.
“Home“, of course, is another word we associate with mothers. They are the homemakers, usually there at home when the children come. Often when the children have had an unfortunate day, injured themselves or something, the mother is there to provide the comfort.
In my six years here in San Diego I have come to admire military mothers, military wives – because when the husbands go on deployment or tours of duty, often for months on end, it is the mothers who provide the basis for the home in father’s absence, and are really the parent who both cares and hands out the discipline, as well as the encouragement. So I’ve come to admire you military wives very much, as you have a special job that is often not the lot of others.
As I was thinking about all of these things, I began to think about who would be a suitable Patron Saint for mothers? Now we would all automatically say the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Mother of Christ. But she can’t be the patron saint for mothers, for her Son was perfect. Now I know some mothers who may think their son is perfect – but I don’t know any mother who has a perfect son! Certainly not my mother J
Someone who is a good patron for mothers is Saint Monica, the mother of Saint Augustine of Hippo. St Augustine is a great Doctor of the Church, but when he was growing up he was not really a good Christian. As a young man he rather liked the high life, or we might say the nightlife of Northern Africa.
His mother, being a faithful Christian prayed daily for his conversion to the Gospel. Eventually his mother Monica’s prayers were answered. He was converted and became a bishop and a great theologian.
He is famous for two sayings, both of which reflect his misspent youth:
- “Lord, make me chaste – but not just yet”.
- “Love God and do what you like – but love God first”.
Of course that’s the whole point. If you love God first, everything you do will be dependant not only on your love for God, but how you live that love in your life. Some people think it means you can do what you like as long as you have some sort of love for God, however thin the connection is.
Both of these sayings seem to suggest an abandonment of rules – that for a Christian it is more important to love God with all the nice feelings it means, and forget about commandments. In fact, many voices tell us that Christianity is about love and not about rules.
John 14:15, is a hard saying for many people: “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”. They don’t like the idea that if you love God there are some commandments as part of the bargain.
In fact it’s not fashionable these days to have rules and commandments. We live in a society in which everyone should be able to do what they like, express what they like, and think what they like. In the Church we don’t hear so much about commandments and the disciplines that the Church has given us – it’s not very popular.
Some people say that the Gospel is only about love, and commandments interfere with that. Obviously Jesus doesn’t agree with that and has a different idea! “If you love me, you will keep my commandments”,
John 14:15-21 contains a fascinating sequence of verses, which at first might look slightly confusing. If you look at them, you will see they are all interconnected. John 14 is part of what we call Jesus’ farewell discourse to the apostles as he was preparing them for his Ascension into heaven, and the subsequent outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
- Loving Christ involves obedience to his commandments.
- He promises that the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, will be sent by the Father in response to Jesus’ prayer.
- The Holy Spirit cannot be received by world – but will dwell in Christian community.
- Jesus is to return to heaven, and the Holy Spirit will be sent to the disciples.
- Although the world will no longer see Jesus, the community will not only see him – they will live because he lives. He is living in heaven, and because of the gift of the Holy Spirit we will live the Resurrection life of Jesus.
- Finally – coming back full circle – the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in the community is a relationship which includes Jesus’ commandments.
In the verse immediately following this is a post script, in which Jesus says that if we keep his word, he and the Father will make their home with us.
Here we see the first outworking of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity – that most hard and most difficult doctrine.
What Jesus is saying is that at the heart of the Trinity is the mystery of love and mutual indwelling. And when you think about that, it makes the whole thing sensible. What many people see as a difficult thing to understand, the Holy Trinity, is actually quite straight forward and relates to our relationship in daily life – the Trinity is about love and mutual relationships.
Isn’t that a great Gospel to have on Mothers’ Day – love and mutual relationship!
Now we can understand why the last day of Eastertide is Pentecost. For the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on that day is the fulfillment of all that Jesus has been saying about his Resurrection and return to the Father. And that is why the Sunday after Pentecost is celebrated as Trinity Sunday – it is all related, and all made so clear in today’s Gospel.
Pentecost is not a justification for speaking in tongues, or preaching powerfully – but rather a proclamation that the Risen Christ continues to be present in his Church through the coming of the Holy Spirit to the Christian community. It is through the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that the Risen Christ not only continues to reign, but remains present in his Church and among his people.
So now we move from a consideration and contemplation of the Risen Christ appearing at various occasions since Easter Day to the apostles, to a consideration of the ongoing presence of this same Risen and exalted Christ in his Church.
Still there is this nagging thing…“If you love me, you will keep my commandments?”.
Firstly we know that for Jesus love involved obedience. On the Cross, Jesus showed his great love for world. There his love won for us the great gift of eternal life and forgiveness of sins.
That could not be achieved unless Jesus was obedient, not only to the Cross, but to his Father. Thus for Jesus, love and obedience were intertwined, and cannot be separated. It is not just a matter of Jesus doing what was required or what he knew had to be done. It is because at the heart of love is both will and action.
If Jesus had not willingly offered himself as the sacrifice for sin on the Cross, there would have been no meaningful resurrection. If he had not done something, then his love would have been pointless and shallow. It would have been words, and only words.
But Jesus did something. It was tough because real love is tough. “Love is as strong as death” as the Song of Songs says – another text for Mothers’ Day.
1 John 3:18, from today’s epistle, expresses this in a very practical way. “Let us not love in word or speech, but in deed and truth”. In other words, love is not just talk – it is action. The Epistle reading concludes by saying the same thing that Jesus says in the Gospel for today:
“All who keep his commandments abide in him, and he in them. And by this we know that he abides in us – by the Spirit which he has given us”.
So we have come again full circle.
On this Mothers’ Day perhaps we realise that the greatest lesson we learnt from our mothers is that love and commandments do go together.
They certainly do for the followers of Jesus!