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06/07/2026

June 7, 2026

A message for 2nd Sunday after Pentecost from Marie Jucknik

We invite you to read the lessons for today: Hosea 5:15-6:6;
Psalm 50: 7-15; Romans 4:13-25; and Matthew 9:9-13, 18-26

Good morning and welcome to the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost.
Have you ever had one of those moments when your cell phone won't connect to your service to make a call? Sometimes when it happens at home, I might move to stand in just the right spot in my living room and hold it up toward the ceiling. I turn it this way and that and even give a deep sigh just in case my phone will figure out I’m annoyed and will connect just because I want it to. We've all probably done it, but the problem isn't that the internet disappeared; the connection is just weak.

Faith is a lot like that connection. It doesn't create God's power or His promises, but it connects us to them.

In our second lesson from Romans, Paul points us to Abraham. God made Abraham a promise that seemed impossible. He was old. Sarah was old. The circumstances, especially as we would look at them today, said, "No chance." But Abraham chose to trust God anyway. He believed not because he could see the outcome, but because he trusted the One making the promise.

I find that encouraging because so much of life is spent waiting. We pray, we hope, we trust, and sometimes we wonder if God has forgotten our address. Abraham reminds us that faith isn't pretending everything is fine; it's trusting God when we can't yet see what He's doing.

It is important to remember that it wasn't the size of Abraham's faith that made the difference. It was the God in whom he placed his faith. The power was never in Abraham's ability to believe harder; the power was in God's faithfulness to keep His promise.
Moving on to Matthew's Gospel, we meet a woman who had been suffering for years. This encounter with Jesus is one of my personal favorites, and it was especially moving to see it come to life on screen in the series "The Chosen."

It's the kind of faith I wish I had because she believed that if she could just touch the fringe of Jesus' cloak, she would be healed. She didn't have a detailed theological explanation; she simply reached out. When Jesus said, "Take heart, daughter; your faith has made you well," it served as a powerful reminder that her faith wasn't passive.

What strikes me is that her faith moved her toward Jesus. Faith acts, reaches, and takes the next step even when the outcome is uncertain. And just like Abraham, it wasn't the strength of her faith that healed her. It was Jesus. Her faith connected her to the One who had the power to restore her.

The same chapter also tells us about a little girl who had died. Everyone around Jesus saw an ending, but Jesus saw an opportunity for new life. Where others saw impossibility, Jesus brought restoration.

In both stories, people had reached the end of what human effort could accomplish. One woman had exhausted years of suffering. One family was grieving the death of a beloved daughter. Yet Jesus stepped into those situations and revealed that God's power is not limited by what we see as impossible. Chronic illness and even death itself were not beyond His reach.

That's what faith does. It opens our hearts to God's promises, God's healing, and God's life-giving power.

As I reflect on my own journey, I've noticed that my faith often grows most during seasons when I would rather have confidence. I'm a person who prefers clear directions and advance notice of God's plans. Yet God repeatedly invites us to trust Him one-step at a time and in His time. Not because He wants us to walk blindly, but because He wants us to walk closely with Him. He wants that connection.

Maybe today you're waiting for healing, reconciliation, guidance, or simply enough strength for tomorrow. The examples of Abraham and the courageous woman remind us that faith is not about having all the answers. It is about trusting the One who does.

So as we leave here today, remember to reach out. Trust God's promises. Hold on when the evidence seems thin. Faith is the connection that links us to God's power and His grace. And when the signal seems weak, don't assume God has disconnected. Keep reaching. Keep trusting. His promises are still there.

As you go out into the world this week, you will encounter people who are carrying burdens you cannot see. Some are waiting for healing. Some are searching for direction. Some are wondering whether God still sees them at all. Be a witness to the hope you have in Christ. Share His compassion. Extend His grace. Offer encouragement where you can.

Walk forward trusting not in the strength of your faith, but in the strength of the Savior who holds you. The same Lord who kept His promise to Abraham, who healed the suffering woman, and who brought life where there was death, goes with you still.

Go in peace. Go in faith. Go in hope. And wherever God leads you this week, remember that you never walk alone.
Amen.

06/01/2026

May 31, 2026
A message for Holy Trinity Sunday from Jeff Meyers

We invite you to read the lessons for today: Genesis 1:1–2:4a;
Psalm 8; 2 Corinthians 13:11–13; and Matthew 28:16–20

If you were asked to describe my physical attributes, what would you say? You’d probably try to estimate my height (5’9”) or my weight (let’s say 170). You’d talk about my hair color, eye color, maybe my boyish good looks... sorry, I shouldn’t lie from the pulpit. It’s really fairly easy to describe the physical attributes of a person. But if someone were to ask you to describe God, how would you do it? Well, we’ve been told that God created us in his image, so we have that. But that’s not really what I mean. I mean more, how is God three beings in one? How do we have one God that essentially has three components, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? This is a question that has been debated and described many different times and ways by people much more qualified than I am to speak on the topic. Yet, it is hard for even the best trained to describe it to the common church attendee. One way used to try and help us figure this out is to compare the Holy Trinity to ice, water, and steam. The idea is that the holy trinity is essentially all the same substance (like ice, water, and steam are all forms of water). But that is probably where we need to have this analogy stop. Because the Holy Trinity can all be present at the same time, and they all interact with one another, such as they did at Jesus’s baptism. Ice water and steam don’t do that. It is water that changes from one state to another, it transforms. But God doesn’t transform from the Father to the Son to the Holy Spirit as needed, they all exist at the same time. It seems like the water analogy doesn’t quite cut it.

Then, some of you may have heard of the egg analogy. The idea is that the the Father is one part, say the yolk, and the Son is one part, say the albumen, which for those of you who are like me and may not know what that is and would have to look it up, it is the egg white, and then the Holy Spirit is the shell. It solves the problem with the water analogy in that all three occur together and all three interact with each other. However, it falls short in another key area. The idea of the Holy Trinity is that the Father is God in full, and the Son is God in full, and the Holy Spirit is God in full. None of them are just one-third of God that, when put together, creates a complete God. They are each God entirely. Going back to the egg, an egg shell, is not a complete egg. An egg yolkis not a complete egg. Any analogy of the Holy Trinity that tries to break it into parts where, separately, they are not a complete God, is incorrect. This is hard for me as a math teacher, because if the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are all 100% of God, they are God alone and yet there are three entities together, well, that’s like 300% of a God. But that is where this thinking is faulty. God is not broken into 3 parts. They are all together, and all of them are God in their own right. Some people try to explain the Trinity using a 3 leaf clover, where each leaf represents a part of God. But that is the problem. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit aren’t parts of God, they are God, 100% on their own. Other analogies like the flower analogy (stem, leaves, petals) do the same thing.

The last analogy I’ll talk about makes the most sense to me. I want you to think of three roles you hold in your life. For me, I might have husband mode, dad mode, and work mode. If I am playing with Landon or Ethan, or trying to teach them, I would be in dad mode. A dinner out with Samantha, husband mode. Teaching math, work mode. The real question becomes, can the modes blend, can they talk to each other? Some people say that since a person’s husband mode can’t talk to dad mode, that it is a poor analogy. I may tend to disagree. I think dad mode and husband mode do interact. If you have seen the movie Inside Out, or the older short running sitcom Herman’s Head, it is kind of like that. There are different roles in your brain making you the person that you are. Those roles do interact, talk to each other so to speak, something that doesn’t happen with the egg or the water.

Now that said, it is certainly not a perfect analogy, I don’t want to portray it as such, it is just the one that struck me the most. Why is it not perfect? Because the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit can be separated from each other. See Jesus’s baptism, where God calls down from the heavens, Jesus is baptized, and the Holy Spirit takes the form of a dove. That is where this analogy falls short, because I, and believe me I have tried sometimes, can’t be in three places or in three separate pieces at the same time. I can’t be playing with he kids while at dinner with my wife while teaching a math class. God can be in Heaven, and be baptized, and be a dove, all at the same time. And, like some of the other analogies, I would not be complete if I played just one of those roles. Being in dad mode all the time would make me a poor husband and poor teacher, or a divorcee and an unemployed teacher. Being a husband is not wholly who I am, yet The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are complete on their own.

So how do we describe the Holy Trinity? Well, maybe we can’t. I know I say that when people question us that we need to be able to defend our religion and our beliefs. But perhaps in this case the best way to defend it is to give those analogies, and then describe where each of them falls short. We were created in God’s image, but maybe didn’t create anything here on Earth that mirrors the heavenly Holy Trinity and how it works. Maybe, it is supposed to be a bit of a mystery, something that we think we understand, yet is hard to explain, or define. And maybe, as we humans tend to do sometimes, we are over analyzing. Maybe the exact explanation of how the Holy Trinity is how it is is unnecessary.

Maybe what we are supposed to take out of this reading, and away from this Sunday, isn’t a crystal clear explanation of what God is and how he is composed. Maybe it is supposed to be what God, all three entities in one, does for us. Maybe the first reading is picked for today not to explain how the three in one are one, but to make it clear that there has always been three, from the beginning of time. God the Father created, the Word, which we know is Jesus, and the Spirit are both present interacting with each other in a perfect way to make creation. Maybe the Psalm is there to remind us that we really don’t have any right to be watched over by God. We are his creation, but we are so far below him, he doesn’t have to care about us any more than we care about a beetle, probably less, and yet he loves us.

We look at our second reading. The church in Corinth at the time of Paul’s letter was a mess. They were arguing with each other, they were breaking into factions, they were the opposite of community, the opposite of how the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit our one. Paul’s letter is telling the Corinthians that they can’t live in isolation. God himself is a relationship that lives in perfect harmony, and Paul is telling the Corinthians, and us indirectly, that they too need to come together and live in harmony. It won’t be as perfect as God’s harmony with the three in one, but we are made in the image of God, meaning that we are made for relationships. It is one of the many reasons the pandemic was so hard. We lost, or didn’t create, relationships.

And the gospel, the disciples are literally looking at the resurrected Jesus, and yet there was doubt. So if you have ever sat in that pew and had doubts, or didn’t quite understand everything that was being said, probably a common occurrence when I try to explain something, that’s okay. I don’t think that, when we meet St. Peter, there is going to be a test where we have to write about the exact nature of how the Holy Trinity works. And Jesus, when still met with doubt by his disciples, tells them to baptize in the name not just of himself, or the Father, but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

So what should you take away from this message? First, maybe somethings can’t be explained. And even though we have to be able to defend our faith, maybe not everything has to be explained perfectly. It may not even be possible to explain heavenly things with just our Earthly understanding. It’s not the intricate workings of what the Holy Trinity is that’s important, it’s what the Holy Trinity has done for us, and continues to do for us. It is the example it has shown us of how to love, and how we should try to model that love here on Earth. It is the example it has shown us of how to interact in perfect harmony, something that we too should try to model here on Earth. We don’t need to know how our body separates oxygen from other gases for us to know we need to breathe. We don’t need to know how food is broken down so the nutrients we need are sent to the right places and what we don’t need is eliminated to know what we need to eat. Maybe we don’t have to know exactly how the Holy Trinity works to know that God loves us, and that we should try to live our lives modeling his love for us. Amen.

05/24/2026

May 24, 2026
A message for the Day of Pentecost from Marie Jucknik

We invite you to read the lessons for today: Acts 2:1-21;
Psalm 104:24-34; 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; and John 20:19-23

Good morning and welcome to Pentecost Sunday!

You know, there are moments when someone walking into a room changes the atmosphere of that room instantly. Maybe you’ve experienced the boss walking in unexpectedly and suddenly everyone gets quiet… or maybe someone walks in an says, “We need to talk,” and immediately your brain starts writing a disaster movie no one asked for.

That’s what makes our Gospel lesson from John so powerful.
Because when Jesus walked into that room, the disciples were probably expecting shame… maybe even judgment. Instead, the very first thing He says is, “Peace be with you.”

The disciples are gathered behind locked doors. Not because they’re relaxed or planning Easter brunch. They are afraid. Afraid the authorities may come for them next. Afraid everything they believed has fallen apart. And maybe, if they are being honest, afraid to face themselves.

After all, in reality Peter denied Jesus, and most of them ran away. So these are not bold heroes in this moment. These are scared, disappointed people hiding in a locked room.

And honestly, I think that’s why this story feels so real.

Because most of us know what it’s like to sit in rooms filled with fear. Fear about our future, our finances, our families… or fear that we’ve failed somehow. Fear that we’re not strong enough, smart enough, faithful enough… or that things may never get better.

Sometimes we lock doors around our hearts the same way the disciples locked those physical doors. We hide behind busy schedules, humor, anger, distraction, or pretending everything is fine.

But the thing is, locked doors have never stopped Jesus.

And I love that John says, “Jesus came and stood among them.”

He didn’t wait for them to become brave first. He didn’t wait for them to figure out their faith. He didn’t stand outside knocking saying, “Let me know when you’ve got yourselves together.”
He came right into the middle of their fear.

And what amazes me most is what He does not say.
Jesus doesn’t walk in and say, “Peter, explain yourself.”
He doesn’t ask, “Why did you all abandon me?”
He doesn’t say, “Where were you when I needed you?”
Jesus doesn’t come with condemnation.
He comes with peace.

“Peace be with you.”

Not because their failure didn’t matter. Not because Friday wasn’t painful. But because in Jesus Christ forgiveness has the final word.
And that matters today because there are so many people walking around carrying guilt over things Jesus already died to forgive.

Some people believe God is permanently disappointed in them.
That He’s keeping score and every failure pushes Him farther away.

But this passage reminds us that the risen Christ comes near to broken people, and His first word is peace.

Then Jesus shows them His hands and His side with the scars still there. Because the resurrection didn’t erase the wounds. It redeemed them.

And maybe we all need to hear that today. God does not ignore wounded places. He brings peace into them.

Then Jesus says it again: “Peace be with you.”

And I don’t think that repetition is accidental.

Because sometimes we need to hear peace more than once.
Anxiety comes back. Grief comes back. Fear sneaks up on you at 2:00 in the morning and suddenly your mind is running laps you never asked it to run.

So Jesus says it again: “Peace be with you.”

Not the kind of peace the world gives. Not peace based on perfect circumstances or having all the answers. This peace is the deep assurance that even in uncertainty, Jesus is present.

Then something remarkable happens.

Jesus says, “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”
Now imagine how impossible that must have sounded.
The disciples are still afraid. The doors are still locked. Their circumstances haven’t magically changed, and yet Jesus sends them anyway.

Why?

Because He was never planning for them to do it alone.
John says, “He breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit.’”

Sit with that image for a moment.

Because in Genesis, God breathed life into Adam… and now the risen Christ breathes new life into His disciples.

This is more than comfort. This is empowerment.

Jesus doesn’t simply calm their fears and leave them hiding safely in the room. He fills them with His Spirit so they can move forward.
The peace of Christ is not weakness. The peace of Christ gives courage.

And that is the message of Pentecost Sunday.

Pentecost is often pictured like our first lesson from the Book of Acts with rushing wind and tongues of fire and honestly, I love that image.

But today, in John’s Gospel, Pentecost also looks like ordinary people being filled with the Spirit of God and becoming bold enough to live differently.

The same disciples who hid behind locked doors became the people who carried the Gospel into the world.

Not because they suddenly became impressive people… but because the Holy Spirit was alive within them.

And the same Spirit still moves today.

The Holy Spirit still gives strength to weary people, wisdom to confused people, courage to anxious people, and peace to troubled hearts.

Some of us grew up thinking the Holy Spirit was only about dramatic moments in church services or something mysterious or distant. I think I’ve even told you about my childhood and thinking the Holy Spirit was a slightly grown up version of Casper the Friendly Ghost.

But sometimes the work of the Holy Spirit looks much quieter than that.

Sometimes it looks like patience when you normally would lose your temper, hope when life feels uncertain, or choosing forgiveness when resentment would be easier. Sometimes it looks like getting up one more day when you feel exhausted.

That too is the Spirit at work.

So, as we leave here today let us remember that the disciples could not go forward alone, and neither can we. That is why Jesus breathed His Spirit into them, and why through His Word and Sacraments He still gives that same Spirit to His people today. Not so we can stay comfortable behind locked doors… but so we can move forward with peace and purpose.

Because the same Jesus who spoke peace to the disciples still speaks peace into our anxious hearts today. Amen.

05/24/2026

May 17, 2026

A message for the Seventh Sunday of Easter from Jeff Meyers

We invite you to read the lessons for today: Acts 1:6–14;
Psalm 68:1–10, 32–35; 1 Peter 4:12–14, 5:6–11; and John 17:1–11

As we were leaving church last week a woman, who I apologize, I don’t know her name, came back and shook my hand and said that I really did an awesome job with these messages. And I said, thank you, I do my best, and that I always appreciate a compliment, but I also thought to myself, you have a very small sample size, you should have been here for some of the bad messages I’ve given, of which, I think this one may fall under. We talked for another few seconds and I told her that I’m not trained, or qualified in any way really, to be giving these messages up here, that I am trained to teach math. And she said something that I have thought about a little bit since. She said, and I’m certainly paraphrasing, that we are just vessels for what God wants us to do. And I thought, wow, here I am, I’ve been doing this for over 5 years, and I’ve been an egotistical jerk the entire time. And look, I am a lot of things, and if you ask the high school students I teach most of those things are bad, but I don’t think egotistical is usually one of them. So, what do I mean? See, and maybe this just makes me a bad Christian, or one who just doesn’t get it, but I thought that I was the one doing this job. And, yes, I am, with Marie of course, but for this Sunday, I am the one doing this job. I write the message with help from ideas and teachings from the Internet. I run the service, deliver the message, I understand that on my Sundays I am the one doing all of this. It’s my time, my energy, and sometimes my frustration, like I’m having with this message (this was a tough one). But I have help. And I don’t mean Samantha, although she is also a huge help, because she often reads these and just rolls her eyes when I make a bad joke or asks me to clarify what I mean by some things. But I am just a vessel for God’s will. It is with God’s help, that I am up here. I am qualified to give these messages, not because of anything I’ve done, but because God has given me the framework for these messages and I just have to convey his teachings the best way I can, with his help of course. And I was blessed with a loud voice and the ability to not be terrified to speak in public as many people are, in fact I rather enjoy it. Those traits are gifts from God. Quick aside, and I may have mentioned this before, but when Marge Dally was able to get to church, I had just started giving these messages. One day after church she pulled me aside and told me how she really enjoyed my messages. I said the same thing I usually do. Thank you, I do my best. And then she said, yeah, and I can hear you, you're so loud. I haven’t been able to hear sermons in years. But it’s more than having a loud voice. God gave me an opportunity to be up here, to do his will, and I took it. But it’s not like God just gave me this opportunity and then left. No, he is with me all the time, guiding me to make sure that what I say up here is his will. That I am a vessel to help get his message across. His message, not mine. I wouldn’t be standing up here if it wasn’t for him, in so many different ways.

So, what does this have to do with anything that we heard this morning? Well, in our first reading from the book of Acts, the disciples are caught looking at the sky just after Jesus has departed for his rightful place in Heaven. I’m sure there is a little bit of a ‘what now’ feeling. I would imagine, on a much different level, that it is similar to seeing a child move out, or go to college. The parent, who has invested so much time and energy in raising the child, watching the child grow up, kind of takes a deep breath and says, okay, now what do I do with the rest of my life. Of course, I haven’t had these moments yet, and there are some in this room who can speak to this much better than I can. Jesus has been part of the disciples' lives for years. They have followed him, eaten with him, and obviously have come to believe in him. And he just left. It’s not that he couldn’t teach them any more or prepare them anymore, he could have. But it is the disciples time to take the lead. And that is when the two men in white robes come and essentially ask what are you doing, standing here, staring at the sky? You have work to do. Jesus is no longer here with you in an Earthly form. Your job as his disciples is to no longer watch and learn from Jesus, at least not directly. Your job as disciples is to now go and spread the word, and start, and be the church.

And I think it is the same for us. Yes, it is fine to read the bible, you should. It is fine to come to church and sit in the pews every Sunday, you should. But Jesus has left the church to us. He’s left the job of maintaining his church, and growing his church, to us. It isn’t enough to just watch, to just listen. We have to be active as well. That could be by being up here, or being the organist, or the greeter, or bell ringer, or communion assistant, or lector, or helping with the rummage sales. Or it may not. It may be going into our daily lives and just living how God would want us to live and then letting people know why you live that way, or what rules you follow. I know I’ve used this quote from Ben Franklin before, but I’ll use it again: “Well done is always better than well said.” It is great to say that we follow Jesus. It is great to learn, to listen, and to say we are good Christians. But well done, being a good Christian through activism, is always better than just saying you are a good Christian. Because you become active, it is Jesus and God coming through you. You become his vessel. You don’t have to be up here preaching to be a vessel of God. You can do it by taking action. Whenever your actions show the will of God, then you are a vessel he is using to get his message across.

And one more thing with this reading. Here are the disciples, Jesus’s closest friends, staring at the Heavens, probably wondering where exactly Jesus has gone, and I’m sure that there are times in our lives when, either figuratively or literally, we look to the Heavens and wonder just where God has gone. But we know he hasn’t gone anywhere. He is still with us, and we are his vessels. We are trying to bring a little bit of Heaven, a little bit of God’s peace here to Earth, and we do it by hearing God’s call and doing what God wants us to do. If we are true followers of God and of Jesus, then it is them that lead us in our decision making.

So, what would I want you to take away from this message? Well, remember that even though we can’t see Jesus, that Jesus isn’t going to physically come down from heaven to give next week’s message or help set up our next rummage sale, that it is still him helping us to do the work. It’s just more in a supervisor role instead of a laborer’s role. He’s obviously not doing the physical work, but when we choose to follow Jesus, it is his will that is being done through us. He’s given us the blueprint that we need to follow to be good Christians, good employees, if you will. And how can we best do his will? Well, a good employee of course listens to his or her boss and then tries to actively do what the boss tells him or her to do. If they just listen to what the boss wants done and then do nothing, not only are you not a great employee, but you’re probably getting fired. It is the same for us as Christians. If we just listen to God's will but aren’t willing to be vessels for his message, then we aren’t really doing God’s will, we just know what he wants done, and that isn’t good enough. Amen.

05/12/2026

May 10, 2026

A message for the Sixth Sunday of Easter from Jeff Meyers

We invite you to read the lessons for today: Acts 17:22-31;
Psalm 66:8-20; 1 Peter 3:13-22; and John 14:15-21

It is a special morning here at St. John’s and all over the United States, and I’m not talking about the 6th Sunday of Easter, although that of course is also special. No, I look around the room, and I can’t help but remember that today we recognize Mother’s Day.

For some of us, this is a day of pure celebration and hopefully a day where you don’t have to cook a meal, or do the laundry, or any of the other household chores that so often fall to the mother that so often get taken for granted. I am so blessed, not only because I have a mom that lives just up the street, that is still active in my life, that spends time with Landon and Ethan and comes to their activities, and who still cares for and loves my dad, for reasons that only she can understand... I mean, I’m kidding. I’m also blessed for Samantha, my wife, who is a wonderful mother for my boys, and who still cares for and loves me for reasons that only she can understand... I mean, again, kidding, kind of. You want an example of why I say that? The boys and I picked out a Mothers’ Day gift I think she is really going to enjoy, and thanks to Amazon, it will be delivered just in time for Thursday, May 14th. For the record, today is Mothers’ Day, and it’s Sunday, May 10th... oops.

I also understand that, for others, it’s a day of quiet remembrance of mothers who have left us, and are spending their Mothers’ Day in the kingdom of God the Father. And for some, maybe it’s both. Maybe it’s a day where you remember your mom, and take some time to miss her and to remember some of the memories that you had with her, and I hope you all take the time to do that, but it’s also a day that is also filled with blessings of kids and maybe even grandkids visiting. And by the way, my boys love Mothers’ Day too, because for the last few years we’ve made it a tradition to go with Samantha’s side of the family and spend time with her mom and dad and two brothers and their families while getting ice cream at Daisy Dairy Bar, and my guys really do enjoy spending time with... Daisy’s ice cream, although it is a brief amount of time.

But isn’t it interesting how our readings for today, the ones assigned for this specific Sunday long ago, seem to fall perfectly into the themes of motherhood, care, and the "nurturing" heart of God?

Take our gospel for example. In our Gospel from John 14, Jesus makes a promise that sounds very much like the promise of a mother. He says, "I will not leave you orphaned." The word he uses for the Holy Spirit is the Advocate, but with a little bit of research, the original word, before translation, was the Paraclete. And I thought the first time I read it, why is Jesus saying that he won’t leave us a bird? I’ll let that one sink in for a second. Then, I read it again and saw the “l”, and researched that in Greek, this means "one called to walk alongside." If you think back to your childhood, or perhaps as you’ve done with your own children and grandchildren, who is the first person "called to walk alongside" a child? It is the mother, or in some cases the one who stepped into that mothering role. Remember, you don’t have to be a biological mother to be a mother. All I need to do is see my brother in law and his wife with their adopted daughter to remind me of that.
Like the Holy Spirit, a mother is often the one who speaks up for us when we have no words, who stays in the room when we are afraid, when the dad mumbles something like “toughen up and go back to bed” before rolling over and pulling the covers back over his head, and whose very presence says, "You are not alone." Jesus is telling us that God’s love for us is as a mother’s. Yes, God loved us first, but his love is extended through a mother, and her love for her child is similar to God’s love for us as well. Maybe God thinks that before a child can truly understand who God is and how he loves us, we need a human, a mother, who can share that same kind of love, even if it is not as strong as God’s love for us.

Then we look at our first reading Acts 17, where Paul is speaking in Athens. He says that God is the one in whom "we live and move and have our being." Fun fact, I had about a page and a half written on Paul in Athens before I scrapped it and went in this direction because the first sermon wasn’t going well. It was going so badly, that I was actually talking for a sentence or two about the fact that the Greeks had a shrine dedicated to buttocks. It was not my best work, so here we are with this one. Anyway...

For those of you who have carried a child, and clearly I am not an expert here, you know how it feels much better than I do, or for those who have provided that foundational home for a child through adoption or care, you know exactly what that means. For those first nine months, a child literally lives, moves, and has their being within their mother. They are sustained by her breath and her life. The baby can’t live without the mother, and we can’t truly live without God. Paul use this imagery to describe our relationship with God. God isn't a distant statue on a hill in Athens. God is the environment in which we exist. Just as a mother provides the first "world" a child knows, God provides the grace that surrounds us every moment of our lives.

Then in 1 Peter 3, we are told to "always be ready to make your defense... yet do it with gentleness and reverence."

If that isn't a description of motherhood, I don't know what is! Think of the mothers and grandmothers in this congregation. Think of the ways you have defended your families, maybe not physically, but I bet at some point your child or grandchild had something happen that you needed to protect them. Or perhaps you’ve done something to protect your homes, even if it is as simple as getting rid of a wasp that got inside, or in Samantha’s case, killed that spider that you are very afraid of. And, most importantly, you have passed down the faith protecting their spirit, or at least giving them a chance before they could make their own decisions about their spiritual life. And do you know what? I bet you didn't do it by shouting from the rooftops. I bet you did it with gentleness. You did it by teaching a child their prayers at bedtime, by showing them how to forgive, and by modeling how to keep going when times were hard and the world was unkind, or unfair.

And finally, even Psalm 66 gets into the act, saying, "Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer." I want you to think about the millions of "mother prayers" that have been whispered in the dark over the centuries. Prayers for a fever to break before there we no medications to help, prayers for a child to come home safely, prayers that you raised your child well enough that they can be an independent adult. The Psalmist reminds us that God is the Great Listener. Just as a mother can pick out the cry of her own child in a crowded room, our Heavenly Father hears your specific voice and will comfort you when you need it.

So what would I want you to take away from today’s message. I want you, I want us, to give thanks. We give thanks for the women who have been motherly figures to us, here with us now, or with God in Heaven. I want us to give thanks for the time we got to spend with our mothers, even if it seems like it wasn’t enough. I want you to give thanks for everything your mother taught you, and realize that the first person who loved us shows us an extension of God’s love. I want us to give thanks for those mothers in your life who have held your hand when you needed it, and stayed in the dark room when you were scared, and realize that today, though we are grown, that that is exactly what God does. That is one of the messages of the day. Even if your mother is no longer with us, Jesus himself tells us in our gospel lesson today that we are never orphaned. He is always with us. And as long as you carry part of your mom’s teachings, and carry the traits that she had or has, then she never leaves you either. I wish all the mother’s of the congregation a happy and blessed Mothers’ Day. Amen.

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