John 15: 9-17 

The story has become a family legend. My younger brother had missed school several Mondays in a row and somebody in the school sent a threatening letter home. Momma read the letter and it made her angry. Somebody was saying unkind things about her baby boy and Momma went on a mission. My brother tells me that if the ink had spilled on the carpet, the whole house would have burned down – it was that hot. As I heard the story, the letter from the school was probably appropriate, though I never tried to explain that to our Mother because she would have gone on a mission at me. You see, our Mother, who could be really tough in the discipline that she expected from us, was determined to protect her children against things that were dangerous or unfair. When it came to her children, Momma had a mission.

So what is Momma’s mission? Is there a God-given task that applies to all mothers, or at least, to most. There seems to be an exception to every rule.

First, Mothers are given the first opportunity to demonstrate the intimacy that God wants to have with all of God’s children. It is available to mothers in a way that it is available to nobody else.

I’m thinking, first, of that time of pregnancy. As two cells become four and four multiply to more and the fetus begins to grow and the heart begins to beat and the fetus begins to look and act like an infant, the totality of life is experienced from within the mother’s body. The child abides in the mother. And it is the mother’s body that supplies everything that the little growing body needs and so the mother abides within the child. Momma abides in the child and the child abides in the mother and it sounds like a verse from the Gospel of John,

Remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself. John 15:4 (NIV)

The New Revised Version uses the translation, “Abide in my and I will abide in you.”

Let me draw it for you. Just as the baby lives in the mother and the mother lives in the baby, so Jesus invites us to live in him and promises to live in us. It is a portrait of maximum intimacy.

In the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul says this to the people of Athens.

For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring. Acts 17:28 (NIV)

In God, we live and move and have our being. As the infant lives within the mother’s body, so we live within the spirit of God! And what happens when the baby is born? When the relationship is relatively healthy, we know that the boundary that separates mother and child is never as firm as it is between other people. Most mothers will say, “When it happens to my child, it happens to me.” When my child suffers, I suffer. When my child succeeds, I am successful.”

Rudyard Kipling caught the spirit of this in a simple poem called “Mother o’ Mine.”

If I were hanged on the highest hill,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

I know whose love would follow me still,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

If I were drowned in the deepest sea,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

I know whose tears would come down to me,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

If I were damned of body and soul,

I know whose prayers would make me whole,

Mother o’ mine, O mother o’ mine!

Kipling points us to the next opportunity that is given to mothers in unique ways. Did you hear the sense of unconditional love? In his mother’s love, he echoes the words of the Apostle Paul when he writes about God’s love.

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:8 (NRSV)

Or you may hear in Kipling’s poem, the maternal echoes of the story of “The Prodigal Son.” In that story, Jesus tells about a father whose love is so strong that the son’s sin was unable to break it. Momma is not the only one with this kind of opportunity but Momma has a special place in the delivery of God’s unconditional love for God’s children.

However, intimacy and unconditional love are only a part of Momma’s mission. I believe that the parents role to help grow “fruitful” human beings. Listen to what Jesus says about his relationship to his disciples.

I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. John 15:15-16 (NRSV)

For Jesus, the teacher of discipleship, the goal was maturity and the mark of maturity is fruitfulness. Listen to this: He also said, I no longer call you servants but I have called you friends! In friendship there is a kind of mutuality, a sharing of concern and opportunity that is simply impossible when one is mature and the other remains in immaturity. Jesus’ goal in discipleship is maturity.

Momma, that is your mission too! Momma’s mission is to grow the child form a state of immature dependence to a mature mutuality where the mother and child can call one another “friends.”

And, in becoming friends, Momma’s mission is to prepare the child for fruitful living. If the child never makes the break to maturity, if the child never makes the break to fruitfulness then something has gone wrong.

In this graduation season, some of the mother’s here are suffering from their own success. The child is graduating and planning to move to the next stop in life and in the process is leaving home and the parent’s hearts are breaking. Something precious is being lost, that at-home, close-by, parent-child relationship. You have every right to be sad. Something precious is being lost, changed, and the loss is not comfortable.

But I offer to you what I was led one night to say to my first child. The only thing worse than you growing up is if you did not! When the child grows up, there is an element of sadness for the parents and child. When the child cannot grow up, there is tragedy. A mighty potential has been lost.

What I have just done, either for you or to you, is use Jesus’ relationship with his disciples as a model for parenthood. I think that it fits as long as you remember that you are not Jesus and neither was your mother! Momma, Pappa, let me clear; perfection is not an option! We are all dependent upon God’s grace and pardon and we will forever be.

As you walk the journey to maturity with your children, be patient with all of you. What really matters is the love that you have for one another. Even Jesus said at the end of our scripture today, “This is my command: Love each other.”

When in doubt, love. When in doubt, forgive and start over again. When in doubt, be there and trust that God will be there too.