Mother's Day 2016

​Mother’s Day Liturgy 2016

Song: Hail Mary, Gentle Woman

After the Entrance Song, a pitcher of water will be poured into the baptismal font.

May this water remind us all of the waters of our birth which brought us life and the waters of baptism that bring us spiritual life.



Opening Prayer: Let us pray:

Holy and Loving God: You call each of us to be mothers, to co-create, birth and nurture love. You call us to be your own, regardless of gender, sexual orientation or vocation and to be parents to the unwanted, to the disenfranchised, to the motherless. Grace us to touch others gently and with full acceptance as a loving mother does her child that we may grow in our ability to love without condition. Amen.



First Reading: Miriam Therese Winter (eucharist with a small “e”)

“This is my body”

The first person to utter the words we associate with Jesus must have been his mother. For nine months they were one body, Mary and her child. Like any mother, surely she said of the new life taking form within her: this is my body!

She would also have watched her newborn baby nursing at her breast and marveled: his is my body, his is my blood, bone of my bone flesh of my flesh. Mary alone can identify with the physical body of Jesus. To her we owe the embodied presence of Jesus in our world. Amen.



Responsorial:

All: Mother God, we thank you for your creative love.

Creative Mother, through all your labors, you bring the light of day and the

beauty of night. Response

Nurturing One, you teach us the joy of love and the healing power of

forgiveness. Response

Divine Parent, you call us forth to become our best selves and empower us

to grow beyond our fears. Response

Eternal Matriarch, you reveal to us our birthright: to be compassionate to all

that is living, embracing our universal family. Response


Second Reading: Philippians 2:1-4

If our life in Christ means anything to you—if love, or the Spirit that we have in common, or any tenderness of sympathy can persuade you at all—then be united in your convictions and united in your love, with a common purpose and a common mind. That is the one thing that would make me completely happy. There must be no competition among you, no conceit, but everybody is to be humble: value others over yourselves, each of your thinking of the interests of others before your own.

Gospel Reading: John 17:20-26

“I do not pray for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all may be one, as you, Abba, are in me and I in you. I pray that they may be one is us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— I in them, you in me—so that they may be made perfect in unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and that you loved them as you have loved me. Abba, I ask that those you gave me may be here with me, so they can see this glory of mine which is your gift to me, because of the love you had for me before the foundation of the world. Righteous One, the world hasn’t known you, but I have; and these people know that you sent me. To them I have revealed your name, and I will continue to reveal it so that the love you have for me may live in them, just as I may live in them.”


Sermon

As you can tell, our theme is unity. I think all of us want that, we yearn for the day when truly “all are one.” It’s typically what all mother’s want. I can remember my mom saying, “Why can’t you all just get along?” That’s a unity statement, a hope for 8 kids to stop arguing and play nice. Anyone who works for unity has a mothering way about them because unity requires patience, wisdom, gentleness and lots of unconditional love. We as human beings don’t tend towards those behaviors without a lot of work. I invite us to look more deeply at how we can be more mothering today on Mother’s Day.

Our first reading is from Miriam Therese Winter, a modern day prophet, a woman who helps us remember the intimate connection between Jesus and his mother Mary. Miriam reminds us that Jesus was a child, a helpless infant, completely dependent on his mother, dependent on her for his very life, just like all of us were. The image of the Madonna with child is seen in every culture. It is relationship at its most basic, and its most essential. We envision a child with its mother, being physically nourished, first in the womb and then at the breast, enabling the child to grow. But we intuit so much more. Mary’s touch, her voice humming lullabies and then words of encouragement, teaching Jesus, keeping him safe. We have no records, no evidence of this except the amazing outcome of her efforts, a man wise and kind who became his fullest self.

Lately I’ve been giving talks on Emotional Intelligence or EQ; some would say EI but I say EQ because it helps to directly contrast it with IQ. We’ve always thought that it was our IQ that determined our fate, our place in life but that belief is starting to change. Now it’s our EQ that is seen as the main determinant for becoming our fullest selves.

Researchers like Daniel Goleman are finding that in order for us to have a high EQ, we must be able to understand ourselves well through self-awareness. Then, when we are more self-aware, we develop our ability to understand others well. This is EQ, having both good self-awareness and then being very intuitive or adept at sensing what others are feeling. That’s what helps us to be most successful in life.

Goleman talks about research being done at Cornell University where mothers and their infants are observed. One of the researchers, Daniel Stern is fascinated by the small, repeated exchanges that take place between mother and child; he believes that the most basic lessons of emotional life are laid down in these intimate moments. Of all such moments, the most critical are those that let the child know her emotions are met with empathy, accepted and reciprocated in a process Stern calls “attunement.” The mother “matches” the baby’s level of emotion over and over, sending a message about once a minute to stay emotionally connected. Once a minute is a lot. Thus begins a lifelong process of relationship and compassion. So, depending on how attuned your mother was, your EQ develops. And it’s not as if it’s an over-and-done process. If your mom wasn’t so “attuned” you will have others in your life who help develop your EQ—good teachers, supervisors, partners, and friends. So I believe that EQ is the basis of compassion, of being able to help build unity.

(If you’re interested, you can google EQ quiz and test your level of EQ. It’s a fascinating test that gives clues as to how to do better and improve your EQ.)

Paul, in his letter to the Philippians, is encouraging the people, these new Christian communities, to be like-minded, to be united in their convictions so that true unity of purpose is achieved. There is deep intention here, his desire that, instead of quibbling over differences they focus on what they have in common.

In John’s gospel, Jesus is praying for unity, that all may be one. I love that he prays aloud, for once, so that his disciples can appreciate what he holds in his heart. It’s a profound gospel passage, one that we should really examine and reflect on because it shows the intimate relationship of Jesus with His creator God. He prays not just for his disciples but for all the “others” who will be shown Jesus through them, that ripple effect of evangelization. That’s us in a long line of succession, We are meant to “pass it on.” We are the new messengers. It is our way of being in relationship with others that will either convey Jesus’ care and compassion or not. That’s quite a huge responsibility. It’s vital to unity. Without us, the message of Jesus, love for all, unity of all cannot be heard or seen or felt.

All of us had a mother. Some of our moms were better at attunement than others. Some of us are still learning how to nurture, how to be in relationship to others. So too we are still learning how to live the message of Jesus, that of compassion and unconditional love. Sadly, the message has gotten very twisted and distorted. Our human tendencies to judge and categorize has interfered with the message of Christ.

On the phone with my mom last week, she was saying that she and dad had heard a priest talk about the fact that there are some good Muslims. “That’s new for dad and me,” she said. And I wish I would’ve responded, “But you were the one who taught me to love all people, mom. Don’t you remember?” How has that message gotten lost? Fear can cloud many minds and cause them to judge rather than love first. Now that we have Donald Trump nearing the White House, I am amazed that Christian men and women support him, even though his “favorite” Bible verse is “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” Hmmm, seems like someone redeemed that very phrase and told us to do differently. Still, Christians will support Trump and we will try to remember how to be Christian.

So today we honor mothers, mothers sometimes in the bodies of men and boys or Muslims and Unitarians and atheists, all those who have a high EQ and respond out of compassion. May we be mindful of our need to move towards unity. It was Jesus’ deepest prayer, his greatest hope. And mothers can help pave the way—even if those mothers are teachers or bus drivers or bartenders—who are aware of the lesson of love, of compassion. When we areattuned to the needs of those around us, our EQ is at its best and the hope for unity becomes a bit more realized in our world. Happy Mother’s Day. Amen