That day just gone by . .

Mothers Day and Christian religious life have a lot in common.

The cards, the kitsch, the rampant dishonesty, the veneer of love. The whole love stuff often has no more substance than fairy floss, more an ‘I wish it would be this way’ than it really is. It points to something which is significant, but the real feelings of love and joy are somehow disconnected from lived experience – from relationships with all their ups and downs, the trials and struggles, the hopes and happiness, from which joy and love have emerged. These authentic feelings have been lifted, sucked like cream from the milk, into something that is strong on sentiment but disconnected from the substance of relationships. Pasteurised, homogenized, sentimentalized.

Mothers Day and Christian religious life have a lot in common.

We all know Christians who ‘act’ the extremes of love and joy as if the authentic feelings that emerge from a relationship with divine love, and within the gathered faith community where love can be embodied – that these feelings can be lifted out, sucked like the cream from the milk, into something that is strong on sentiment, on performance, on masquerade, but disconnected from substance of relationships.

Mothers Day and Christian religious life have a lot in common

Now please note I didn’t say mothers, or the life of Christian discipleship.

The love of those who have mothered us – birth mothers, adoptive mothers, aunts, grandmothers, mentors – has depth and may often be defined by earthiness, defiance, determination, ‘real’ relationships etc. In fact, the origins of Mothers Day lie within the heart of strong, determined mothers in the civil war who rose up and demanded an end to the violence that was killing the sons of mothers on both sides of the civil war. No shrinking violets, and no sentimentality in sight.

Love and joy are not warm mushy feelings nor sentimentality. Love and joy is not even a goal of the Christian discipleship journey, but a bi-product of relationships with the divine, and within the community of faith we call the church.

Some of you will know the children’s song, ‘Put on love’. It’s a simple song about helping children make choices about how they will live their day. Put on love as naturally as we dress ourselves each day. In the voices of children, the words are constructive. In the experience of adults, it can be a call to masquerade and performance. Put on love. Put on smiles. Put on an image.

In our reading today from John’s gospel, Jesus expresses here the longing and the promise that his joy might be in us and that only in such abiding love and joy can we find wholeness in life, that has integrity and authenticity.

The Gospel reading speaks about love as the fruit of the divine relationship. I’m not a big fan of using technical theological words, but I do remember discovering the word perichoresis in my study - the dance of the Trinity. My imagination was captivated by the image of the divine dance, and the joy that emerges in that dynamic relationship. We all know what it feels like to join in a communal dance: we can’t help but smile and be filled with joy and happiness. Many of us have been drawn to this community of faith because of the warmth, love, support and acceptance experienced here, which points to the deeper reality of divine love.

In abiding in the divine relationship of which Jesus speaks, we are invited into the dance, from which love and joy emerge. It is in the doing, rather than passive receiving, that love and joy emerge.

May it be so.

Sandy

Ref: John 15: 9-17

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