A Mother's Day Message

(Posted May 12, 2023)
"I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”—Jesus

By Rev. Pat Kriss

Even though Mother’s Day may be a manufactured event – a “Hallmark Holiday,” as some people call it – it still touches people differently. For those of us who have - or had - wonderful, caring mothers, the day can be filled both with gratitude or even a deep sense of loss. For people who had less than ideal relationships with their moms, it can resurrect the main question they may have: “Why?” And then for all of us, all who have lost a mother or who never knew their mother, we can find ourselves feeling orphaned.

But Jesus tells us in this Sunday’s Gospel, "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.”

The Role of the Creator

He said these words as he told the disciples he would soon be going out of their sight, and yet they would see him in their daily lives. This begs the question, where would the disciples see Jesus after he ascended to God?

The answer to that is that God’s great role as creator is not left to men alone, but also to the women who not only birth new life - all the people in our lives who have nurtured us, protested us, taught us, worried about us and rejoiced with us. Women and men. I know that my own life has been blessed by many caring people who have stepped in and cared for me as if I were their own when there is no DNA between us to make us kin.

Taking a Page from the 'Gospel of Peter Pan"

But DNA or not, what all of these living examples of Christ on earth have in common is one thing: COURAGE.  Courage is a primary virtue of mothers, and those who mother us through the tight passages of life, giving birth to hope in us when hope seems far away. In my own life I was blessed to have a wonderful mother who knew that beyond the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, there was the beautiful “gospel of Peter Pan.” I’ll share that joyful one with you all this Sunday as we have a light-hearted Mother’s Day together.