MOTHERING SPIRIT
A sermon preached by
Rev. Dr. Randle R. (Rick) Mixon
First Baptist Church, Palo Alto, CA
Sunday, May 11, 2008
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:4-13
It is very uncommon – perhaps the only time it will happen in the lives of many of us – for Pentecost and Mother’s day to fall on the same Sunday. What is a preacher to do? How is he to choose between celebrating the birthday of the church and the sacred honoring of mothers and motherhood? Or is such a choice necessary? In the past few weeks we have been immersed in texts from the gospel of John that place a particular emphasis on Jesus’ relationship to the Father. Shouldn’t God’s Mothering Spirit get some consideration as well?
It is true that both the Hebrew and Greek words used for spirit are feminine nouns and a case has been made for understanding the Holy Spirit as the feminine being of the Godhead. The Holy Spirit has also been linked to Sophia or sacred Wisdom as the feminine manifestation of God. So today, I propose we consider the Mothering Spirit; how the best and essential qualities of mothering are present in the life and work of the Spirit and how they help to shape the life of the church.
In a classic text of Objection Relations theory, The Reproduction of Mothering, Nancy Chodorow, psychoanalyst, professor of sociology at the University of California in Berkeley and pioneering feminist, argues that there are some basic human qualities, necessary for human health and wholeness, that come from mothering. Among these qualities are nurture, support, connectedness, empathy, and sustaining the life-giving web of human relationships. One could argue that these are essential qualities the Spirit brings to the church – nurture, support, connectedness, empathy and sustenance of a life-giving web of relationships. In our words of preparation, O. Wesley Allen says that “…the story of Pentecost…is about divine immanence – God present with and through the community of faith…about how God is present in the church and the results of God’s continual spiritual presence” (O. Wesley Allen, Jr., New Proclamation: Year A, 2008, Easter to Christ the King, p. 67.) Perhaps one way God is present is as this Mothering Spirit.
Now, I am not and never will be a mother. The recent appearance of a pregnant man on Oprah notwithstanding, I’m sure that statement is not a surprise to any of you. One of difficult lessons I am still struggling to learn about mothering – from my own mother and others whom I have encountered – pertains to the fierce allegiance mothers have to their offspring. Perhaps it is because mothers have literally carried their children inside their own bodies that they are willing to give their children one more chance, and one more, and one more. Long after I would have set and enforced limits with what I perceived to be an overly dependent child, I can hear the motherly voice saying something like, “He is my baby, how can I let him do with out; she is my darling, how can I say ‘no’ to her?”
I can make an eloquent argument about enabling dependency, setting limits, tough love and the need to grow up, but I suspect that the Mothering Spirit is something like those mothers who find it difficult, if not impossible, to let their children go. However, this is not the time and place to explore those arguments. Though I do believe that there are times that the most loving thing a parent can do is let a child go, to find his way, to sink or swim on her own, nurture, support, connectedness, empathy and sustenance of the web of relationships are still essential to human life, to human health and wholeness.
On this Pentecost we are not using the traditional text from the second chapter of Acts about the coming of the Holy Spirit. During Eastertide we considered the promise of the Spirit in John’s gospel. The Spirit comes as an Advocate, a Counselor, a Comforter. What could be more powerful than a Mothering Spirit who advocates for her child, who gives wise counsel to her offspring, who comforts her little ones in their times of anxiety and distress? In that room, closed and locked, where they huddled in fear, Jesus appeared mysteriously among them, offering them peace and well-being, and after establishing who he was, “…he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’” (John 20:22.) So simply, he gave them the gift of new life and the power to live it.
In the beginning God fashioned human beings from the dust of the earth and breathed life into them; now Jesus takes these very ordinary folk who have become his followers and breathes new life into them. This giving of the breath of life is the quintessential act of mothering. It is mother who carries life in her womb, nurturing, supporting, sustaining, until the child can somehow grasp life on his or her own.
In today’s text Paul is particularly concerned about contentiousness within the church of Corinth. There are a number of issues with which they are struggling but the focus here is on the gifts of the Spirit. Apparently, some in the church are arguing that their gift – in particular the gift of speaking in tongues – is superior to the other gifts. It’s the old argument that “…though your gift may be perfectly fine, if you don’t have what I have, well…you just ain’t got it!” How many mothers have had to deal with this kind of sibling rivalry? Paul is not at all happy that this kind of thing has surfaced in the church. How did they miss the word that God does not operate like this, that this is not Jesus’ way, that the Mothering Spirit gives good gifts to all her children and all the gifts are valuable?
Do mothers take sides? Do they have favorites? Do they give more to some of their children than others? I suppose in the human framework we would have to say “yes.” But in the realm of God in which the Mothering Spirit operates as an ideal, this is not the case. Every gift has a place, every child has a role, every gift and every child is valued and valuable. Paul lists some gifts – wisdom, knowledge, faith (that moves mountains,) healing, the working of miracles, prophecy, discernment among the working of spirits, speaking in tongues, interpreting the tongues. Where you come from, who your parents are, what your status is doesn’t matter to the Mothering Spirit; she gives good gifts to each and everyone of her children, and, furthermore, she nurtures and sustains a web of relationships in which every one of those gifts has an essential place and everyone of those children has a vital role.
In his commentary on this text, William Barclay says, “The Church has too often acted on the apparent assumption that the special gifts which the Church can use consist of things – like speaking, praying, teaching, writing - all more or less intellectual and academic gifts.” He goes on, “It would be well if the Church would realize that the gifts of the man [or woman] who can work with his [or her] hands, of the crafts[person], are just as really special gifts and just as really come from God” (William Barclay, The Daily Study Bible: The Letters to the Corinthians, p. 120.) This made think particularly of Bob Griffin and Javier spending the whole day Friday working on the church plumbing. That may not seem like a big deal to you, but it sure feels like a gift to me given my own inexperience and awkwardness with a wrench.
The body absolutely needs a wide variety of parts in order to function. No part has the right to devalue or dismiss another part; no part has the right to claim superiority, to say “Mom likes me best.” Barclay goes on to argue that, in the life and power of the Mothering Spirit, the body of Christ has 3 key characteristics – (1) we ought to realize we need each other; (2) we ought to respect each other; and (3) we ought to sympathize with each other (Barclay, p. 127.) It is not possible to be a disciple of Jesus, a member of the body in isolation. The Mothering Spirit insistently shows us how we need each other, how the web of relationships is essential to life, especially the new life into which we have been baptized. It is not enough to be connected to one another genetically or through family ties, we need to treat one another with the deep and abiding respect due to a child of God, a sister or brother in Christ, an offspring of the Mothering Spirit. It is not enough to be casually connected; as members of the same body we empathize with one another. When one member suffers, we all feel pain; when another rejoices, we all experience joy. Through the power and presence of the Mothering Spirit, we can draw just that near to one another; then carry that very compassion to the whole of creation.
When we were putting together the bulletin for today, we needed something to go on the back of the reprinted hymn, so I printed out Julia Ward Howe’s original declaration of Mother’s Day. Amelia added the lovely graphic; the original version had a photograph of Julia Ward Howe. It is a very old yet still striking picture of what appears to be a truly formidable woman. You see the Mothering Spirit is not all sweetness and light. She can be as fierce as a mother bear protecting her cubs. Howe’s words seem to come thundering down through the ages as the Mothering Spirit pleads for peace. “We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,” she says. “Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons [and now we can add daughters, too] shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons [and daughters] to be trained to injure theirs…As men have often forsaken the plough and anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace…Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God…”
This Mothering Spirit is a powerful force –for life, for new and abundant life with all its many gifts, for the unity of the body, for the great web of relationships. In this season of Pentecost may we be found open to her coming again to empower even us to be the church, the very body of Christ. Amen.