Mother's Day
Good Shepherd Sunday
Good morning and Happy Mother’s Day. I am very aware that Mother's Day isn't easy for some people. There may be some of you who here and feel that way, and some of you may be watching from home who feel that way. If you are one of those moms, thanks for coming, because there are lots of reasons why this is a painful day for people and you might choose to stay away. Being a mother and having a mother invokes so many emotions. Some of us may not be mothers, but we have all had a mother. Some of us were blessed with Mother’s who were truly saints and have benefited from their love and care. Some of us don’t have those warm, feel-good feelings about our mothers. Our childhoods may have been characterized by pain and scarring, abuse even, emotionally and/or physically. Our relationships with our mothers are complicated. Some sit here missing a mother who has passed - a long time ago and for some, fairly recently. Some lost your mother early on and maybe never knew her. Some may have been raised without a mother. So we come today with many emotions and thoughts on our minds. Mother’s are important because they influence, for good and bad, whether present or not.
Many of you may be aware that I am a student of Bowen Family systems theory. I study it and tend to embrace its theories because I believe there is much truth and wisdom to be found there that lend a lens into how to view ourselves and the world around us.
Murray Bowen was a psychologist at the National Institutes for Mental health and he developed his form of family systems theory because he believed that the family was the primary source of emotions and personality. He worked with schizophrenic clients and described the symbiotic relationship between children and their mothers. He argued that schizophrenia was the result of several generations of dysfunction, with each generation experiencing more dysfunction, until eventually a child developed schizophrenia. Well, isn’t that a bunch of good news?
As my female friends and I studied the theory, we took umbrage with Bowen’s emphasis often on the Mother. We didn’t want to be responsible for kids function and/or disfunction. What about their father? Aren’t they responsible to? Sure they are. But Bowen’s theory (which he did later change his hypothesis to regard psychosis as a symptom of an active process that involved the entire family), emphasized the mother playing a key part in a child’s mental health and well-being. The “emotional oneness” between mother and patient was more intense than expected in patient’s suffering severe mental illness.
I could talk about the theory all day, but my point here is, is that our relationships with our mother’s are complicated and they influence us and deeply shape us - for good or bad.
Today is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Good Shepherd Sunday is always the Fourth Sunday of Easter and the Gospel text is always a selection from John 10. Year A, verses 1-10; Year B, verses 11-18; and Year C, verses 22-30. These passages are passages that speak of Jesus being the Good Shepherd and describe what it means to be a shepherd. Maybe take some time today and read the whole chapter. The sheep hear his voice (the Shepherd’s voice) and they follow 10:4.
Following a voice that you know is common to all of us. We instinctively know the voices of those who are close to us in our lives. Often on phone calls we just start speaking, aware that our friends and family will know who we are by our voices without us identifying ourselves.
John 10: 11 says, “I am the good shepherd the shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” And in today’s passage, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.”
Much like a mother knowing her children and her children listening and responding to her, sheep hear the shepherds voice and follow him. Which with our human, fallen, imperfect mothers can sometimes be the right thing to do, but sometimes we may be led a little astray (or greatly astray). Children follow their parents often without question until a certain age, by agency both without any other means to care for themselves or without exposure to think or do anything different.
I recently read “My Evil Mother: A Short Story” by Margaret Atwood who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. It is a short story that can really be read in one sitting. It is a story of a young woman who is being raised by a very eccentric mother who believed she had secret powers and cast spells. A mother who was different from all other mothers and of whom the narrator spent much time being ashamed of due to the absurdness of things her mother said, like saying the garden gnome in the front yard was her absentee father that she had turned into a garden gnome.
At the end of this story, as her mother lay dying, she finally asked her mother to “tell me you were making it up” referring to all that she had been exposed to as a child. Her mother replied, “You were such a sensitive child. So easily wounded. So I told you those things. I didn’t want you to feel defenseless in the face of life. Life can be harsh. I wanted you to feel protected, and to know that there was a greater power watching over you. That the Universe was taking a personal interest.”
I really enjoyed this story. To ruin the book, the narrator begins to see that the greater power watching over her was her mother. And she found comfort in that. As I find comfort in our Gospel passage today and you should too.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
We are sheep of the Shepherd will never perish. We do have a greater power watching over us - we DO have the Universe taking a personal interest.
I continue to be dismayed by things that are happening in our world. I continue to be dismayed by the responses of religious people with their surety in proclaiming how each of us should live and what is right for each of us prescribed by their own religious experience and belief. But contrary to this way of being, of having to do the “right” thing or believe the “right” thing, whatever that may be deemed to be, growing closer to God is not dependent on us and us following the “right” path. Everything depends on us belonging to him.
Our status with God does not depend on how we feel, on our religious experiences, on having no doubt, on our sin-free lives. Our status depends on one thing only: that we are known by the Shepherd. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” (John 10:28)
Listening to the Good Shepherd and hearing his voice, involves listening to a voice that liberates rather than oppresses. We rest secure in our relationship and know, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Abundant life. Secure in the relationship with our Shepherd as we hear his voice and we follow. We rest in the assurance as we live our lives, that “No one can snatch them out of my hand.”
On this Mother’s Day, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, as we each think of our own Mother’s and maybe contemplate the type of Mother we are to our own children, whether those relationships or the memories of those relationships bring joy or sorrow or a little bit of both, may we find comfort and confidence in the knowledge that no matter what type of human mother we had, we most importantly have a Good Shepherd who loves and cares for us and who will never leave us. May we walk each day listening to and for His voice.
Amidst all the other voices that evoke fear, make demands, or give advice, the voice of the good shepherd is a voice of promise—a voice that calls us by name and claims us as God’s own. May you feel the love of the Good Shepherd today. Amen.
Many of you may be aware that I am a student of Bowen Family systems theory. I study it and tend to embrace its theories because I believe there is much truth and wisdom to be found there that lend a lens into how to view ourselves and the world around us.
Murray Bowen was a psychologist at the National Institutes for Mental health and he developed his form of family systems theory because he believed that the family was the primary source of emotions and personality. He worked with schizophrenic clients and described the symbiotic relationship between children and their mothers. He argued that schizophrenia was the result of several generations of dysfunction, with each generation experiencing more dysfunction, until eventually a child developed schizophrenia. Well, isn’t that a bunch of good news?
As my female friends and I studied the theory, we took umbrage with Bowen’s emphasis often on the Mother. We didn’t want to be responsible for kids function and/or disfunction. What about their father? Aren’t they responsible to? Sure they are. But Bowen’s theory (which he did later change his hypothesis to regard psychosis as a symptom of an active process that involved the entire family), emphasized the mother playing a key part in a child’s mental health and well-being. The “emotional oneness” between mother and patient was more intense than expected in patient’s suffering severe mental illness.
I could talk about the theory all day, but my point here is, is that our relationships with our mother’s are complicated and they influence us and deeply shape us - for good or bad.
Today is also Good Shepherd Sunday. Good Shepherd Sunday is always the Fourth Sunday of Easter and the Gospel text is always a selection from John 10. Year A, verses 1-10; Year B, verses 11-18; and Year C, verses 22-30. These passages are passages that speak of Jesus being the Good Shepherd and describe what it means to be a shepherd. Maybe take some time today and read the whole chapter. The sheep hear his voice (the Shepherd’s voice) and they follow 10:4.
Following a voice that you know is common to all of us. We instinctively know the voices of those who are close to us in our lives. Often on phone calls we just start speaking, aware that our friends and family will know who we are by our voices without us identifying ourselves.
John 10: 11 says, “I am the good shepherd the shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.” And in today’s passage, “My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me.”
Much like a mother knowing her children and her children listening and responding to her, sheep hear the shepherds voice and follow him. Which with our human, fallen, imperfect mothers can sometimes be the right thing to do, but sometimes we may be led a little astray (or greatly astray). Children follow their parents often without question until a certain age, by agency both without any other means to care for themselves or without exposure to think or do anything different.
I recently read “My Evil Mother: A Short Story” by Margaret Atwood who wrote The Handmaid’s Tale. It is a short story that can really be read in one sitting. It is a story of a young woman who is being raised by a very eccentric mother who believed she had secret powers and cast spells. A mother who was different from all other mothers and of whom the narrator spent much time being ashamed of due to the absurdness of things her mother said, like saying the garden gnome in the front yard was her absentee father that she had turned into a garden gnome.
At the end of this story, as her mother lay dying, she finally asked her mother to “tell me you were making it up” referring to all that she had been exposed to as a child. Her mother replied, “You were such a sensitive child. So easily wounded. So I told you those things. I didn’t want you to feel defenseless in the face of life. Life can be harsh. I wanted you to feel protected, and to know that there was a greater power watching over you. That the Universe was taking a personal interest.”
I really enjoyed this story. To ruin the book, the narrator begins to see that the greater power watching over her was her mother. And she found comfort in that. As I find comfort in our Gospel passage today and you should too.
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.”
We are sheep of the Shepherd will never perish. We do have a greater power watching over us - we DO have the Universe taking a personal interest.
I continue to be dismayed by things that are happening in our world. I continue to be dismayed by the responses of religious people with their surety in proclaiming how each of us should live and what is right for each of us prescribed by their own religious experience and belief. But contrary to this way of being, of having to do the “right” thing or believe the “right” thing, whatever that may be deemed to be, growing closer to God is not dependent on us and us following the “right” path. Everything depends on us belonging to him.
Our status with God does not depend on how we feel, on our religious experiences, on having no doubt, on our sin-free lives. Our status depends on one thing only: that we are known by the Shepherd. “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.” (John 10:28)
Listening to the Good Shepherd and hearing his voice, involves listening to a voice that liberates rather than oppresses. We rest secure in our relationship and know, “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10)
Abundant life. Secure in the relationship with our Shepherd as we hear his voice and we follow. We rest in the assurance as we live our lives, that “No one can snatch them out of my hand.”
On this Mother’s Day, on this Good Shepherd Sunday, as we each think of our own Mother’s and maybe contemplate the type of Mother we are to our own children, whether those relationships or the memories of those relationships bring joy or sorrow or a little bit of both, may we find comfort and confidence in the knowledge that no matter what type of human mother we had, we most importantly have a Good Shepherd who loves and cares for us and who will never leave us. May we walk each day listening to and for His voice.
Amidst all the other voices that evoke fear, make demands, or give advice, the voice of the good shepherd is a voice of promise—a voice that calls us by name and claims us as God’s own. May you feel the love of the Good Shepherd today. Amen.