John 14:15-21: Is my motherhood reflecting the Spirit of God?
5 Easter, Mother's Day

In a recent survey of how people perceive Michelle Obama, some of the top descriptions of her were, elegant, smart, professional, and somewhere in the lower half was the description of her as a good mother. In comparison to Michelle Obama, our former First Lady, Laura Bush was seen first and foremost as a mother, mainly because Laura chose to stay away from the limelight. This is quite surprising given the fact that the Bush twins were already in college when Laura became First Lady. While, Michelle still has a 9 and a 7-year-old at home and describes herself as a mother first, yet people refuse to see her motherhood as a huge defining factor in her life. The survey goes on to confirm how skewed our perceptions of motherhood are. We talk about how important it is for children to grow up in healthy homes with very involved parents and an ever-present mother. However, when it comes to elevating roles in society, motherhood or parenting still remains way down at the bottom of the totem pole. We take one day in the year to celebrate as mother’s day, and what do we do for the rest of the year? We carry on with our lives in pursuit of so called “more important” things like making money, and earning more prestigious titles at work, or emulating people who are nothing more than fixtures on our TVs, computers and magazines.

When our younger daughter was 3 or 4 years old, if you asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up? She would very happily say, “I want to be a mom.” As she grew older her ambition for motherhood got changed to that of wanting to be an astronaut. I know there are many women, for whom motherhood is a deep unfulfilled desire, there are also many for whom motherhood is not a choice necessarily but they find themselves in it somehow. My hope for us today is that for all of us, regardless of whether we happen to be women or men, that we will find encouragement in knowing that the role and responsibilities of motherhood are designed along God’s own character and person. Motherhood is not just a role, it is a holy calling placed upon many women by God, just like the special calling to fatherhood that God places on many men. I see motherhood as a holy calling because in many ways I see my own responsibilities and concerns as a reflection of the workings of the Holy Spirit.

In the Episcopal Church we are too embarrassed and sometimes afraid to talk about the Holy Spirit, which I feel in a way reflects our general attitude toward motherhood too. We are afraid of opening ourselves completely to the Holy Spirit because we feel we would lose control of our lives. For some reason, we think that we know God the Father from the Old Testament, we also think we know Jesus the Son of God well enough from the Gospels. But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, we feel she really is too mysterious and beyond definition for us to be completely comfortable with. In a similar way, there is a certain reservation when it comes to embracing motherhood completely. Somewhere deep within us, we know that the complete embrace of motherhood entails a certain disappearance of the self and we are afraid. Sometimes, it does seem like the persons of the Father and the Son too overshadow the Holy Spirit in the Trinity. But what we need to understand is that the Holy Spirit is an integral and equal part with the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is always there in the works of the Father and the Son, very much like threads that are woven together to form the beautiful patterns on a fabric.

The interdependent working of the Trinity is seen very clearly when Jesus says to his disciples, "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you."I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”

Let me tell you the story of someone I knew who embraced her motherhood with tremendous grace. My grandmother married my grandfather who was a very prominent figure in our town. He was this greatly accomplished man and my grandmother had finished only 6th grade, and it seemed like most of her life she spent in the kitchen or talking to the neighbors. But, when there was a family problem, or if anyone wanted to see my grandfather, everyone went to her first. She not only knew the workings of every family of all her children, she kept watch over my grandfather’s business, and she knew how to make him understand the needs of his family as well as many others. At any given time she had at least one teenager from the village at home sponsoring them to finish school and sometimes college. She helped find jobs for single mothers, trained many illiterate women in traditional weaving to start their business. All through her life she collected and preserved many old and rare artifacts from our culture for future generations to reconnect with their past. She even managed to write a small book about our tribes’ traditional subculture of women. I know and have very close relationships with all my cousins, second cousins, aunts and uncles today mainly because of my grandmother. She always had patience to explain to us all the relationships that intersected right in her home. She did not have a job description, but what I can say about her is that I never had to go looking for her, she was always there. Motherhood for her was never a job or a chore she embraced the call as God intended it to be.

The wonderful promise of God’s presence through the Advocate or the Holy Spirit is what must define the meaning of being a mother. A mother not only to our biological children, but a mother to all who walk into our lives. That special ability to embrace all like a mother would her children is what it means to emulate the Spirit of Truth, the Spirit who abides with us, and the Spirit who will never leave us orphaned.

When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, his address to God was that of a parent, “Our Father.” It was not “God Almighty,” it was not “Our Creator,” nor was it “Our Provider.” Jesus’ description of our relationship with God is primarily that of a parent and a child. If God himself comes to us first and foremost as a parent, we too must learn to embrace parenthood (or motherhood as in today’s case) like the holy calling it is meant to be. We have allowed the selfishness and greed of this world to define what it means to be a mother, making it an obstacle and a burden, rather than a gift and a blessing. A money and power driven, materialistic world will never stop to see the underlying threads that hold every piece of our society together, because it is requires too much patience, time, care and love. Interestingly Jesus describes the Holy Spirit as the one whom “the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.” Like God’s magnificent work of caring and loving his children through the Holy Spirit, and working to build up the family of God, so also, we are called to be mothers. Let us learn not to seek the recognition of the world that feels one day is enough fuss over motherhood, rather let us be encouraged and uplifted in the knowledge that we are doing God’s own work. As parents we are in the business of creating and transforming lives, we are in the business of building strong foundations, we are here to reflect the ever present Spirit of God. As parents, as mothers, let us never allow anyone to feel like an orphan. Amen.