Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
Mother’s Day
May 10, 2009
CHRIST AT THE CENTER: THE FAMILY OF
FAITH
THE MOTHER OF GOD
Scripture: Luke
2:15-20, Mark 3:31-51, John 19:25-27
INTRODUCTION
As most everyone here probably
knows, Mother’s Day does not appear in the church liturgical calendar. That’s because this celebration is an
American invention, going back to its conception in 1858 when a
Jarvis died on the second
Sunday in May of 1905, and her devoted daughter, with the same name, took up
the cause. Primarily through her
persistence, in 1914 the U.S. House of Representatives made the second Sunday
in May an official national holiday with the proclamation coming from President
Woodrow Wilson.
More than 40 other countries
have also established similar celebrations, but it was not so with
Mother-In-Law Day, which was tried in 1934 and failed to gather much support.
So Anna Reeves Jarvis from
I
Now with all of that said,
even though this is not a religious holiday, any preacher who ignores Mother’s
Day might risk being struck dead in the pulpit.
Why? Because deep down in our
hearts, we want and we need to thank our mothers for the sacred gifts of life
and love which we have received from them – and what better place to do that
than right here in worship?
Moreover, if you read the
Bible from Genesis to Revelation, there is a steady stream of recognition given
to mothers, beginning with the fifth commandment: “Honor your father and your
mother” (Exodus 20:12, Deuteronomy 5:16)…continuing with the Proverb: “A good
woman, who can find?...Her children will rise up and call her blessed”
(Proverbs 31:28)…and extending on into the New Testament, where the Apostle
Paul wrote to his young protégé Timothy: “I am reminded of your sincere faith,
a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and
now, I am sure, lives in you” (II Timothy 1:5).
But there is one mother in Holy
Scripture who stands above all the others, and her name is Mary, the mother of
our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Mary
is the most prominent woman in the four gospels, and has been described by a
number of Biblical scholars as “the first disciple” – the first person to have
faith in Jesus and proclaim Him to others.
(See “Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary” by Beverly Roberts
Gaventa and Cynthia Rigby, Westminster John Knox Press, 2002; and “Mary, The
First Disciple,” an article by Jon M. Sweeney, Presbyterians Today, December
2006, pages 18-20)
Mary was also the only person
who could have intimately described Jesus’ birth, she walked beside Him during
His life and ministry, and witnessed with her own eyes His crucifixion, death
and resurrection. So it can be said
without reservation that Mary knew more about Jesus and was closer to Him than
anyone else…ever.
Just a few minutes ago, we
read from Luke chapter 2 those familiar words in the Christmas Story about the
shepherd’s visit when Jesus was born in
So when the shepherds showed
up to see the child and to tell everybody what had happened, the Bible says
that “All who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured all these words and
pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:15-20).
You see, Mary already knew the story and was in on the secret before
anyone else found out. (My mother Emily
Jane, rest her soul, also seemed to know things before the rest of us did – was
that true about your mother too?)
The evangelical theologian
Timothy George goes on to say that:
“Mary was not only the point of
Christ’s entrance into the world…she was the mother who cared for the physical
needs of Jesus the boy, nursed Him…and nurtured Him, and taught Him the ways of
the Lord. Doubtless she was the one who
taught Him to memorize the Psalms and to pray, even as He grew in wisdom and
stature and in favor with God and others” (Luke 2:52). (From an article by Dr. Timothy George, “The
Blessed Evangelical Mary,” Christianity Today, December 2003, pages 34-39)
However, it wasn’t always
easy for Mary to comprehend the mission and the meaning of her Son’s calling
and ministry.
In the third chapter of Mark,
as Mary and members of Jesus’ family came to find Him by the
On the surface, this is not a
warm and fuzzy Ozzie and Harriet kind of story.
But underneath it all, I think we can agree that Jesus was not negating
or excluding His own mother and siblings as much as He was trying to include
others in God’s extended family, especially the least and the lost and those
who had been left behind by their community (which is something we take very
seriously here at the corner of 16th and Peachtree, especially all
of the homeless men, women and children who come to us every week.
The gospels finally lead us
to the foot of the cross, where Mary is standing with a broken heart as she
struggles to bear the loss of her Son.
With the last breaths of life left in Him, Jesus looks down in
compassion toward Mary and John, saying “Woman, behold your Son” and to John,
“Here is your mother.” And from that
hour the disciple took her into his own home (John 19:25-27)
II
There is no Biblical or
historical proof about what happened to Mary after that moment in time, except
the one reference to her being present in the Upper Room with all of the
disciples after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension (Acts 1:14), indicating that
Mary did have an important place at the table as the early church was born.
But then, beyond the Biblical
record, nobody knows for certain what happened. One legend claims that Mary
finally moved with John to the city of
In either case, after Mary
was gone, the debate began about her role and the position she would hold in
church tradition. During the fifth
century (431 A.D.), at the Council of Ephesus, Mary was given the name
“Theotokos,” which translated from the Greek means “Mother of God.” The purpose of that title was not so much to
exalt Mary as it was to assert and affirm both the divinity and the humanity of
Jesus.
But as the Roman Catholic
Church developed its theology and doctrines over the years, Mary was exalted
and eventually venerated into “perpetual virginity” (the belief that she had no
children after Jesus and remained a virgin throughout her life); and to “the
immaculate conception” (declaring that she was born without the stain of
original sin); and finally to “bodily assumption” (claiming that Mary was taken
up, body and soul, into heaven without seeing corruption).
During the 16th
century, as the Protestant Reformation swept across
The question is: Do we
Presbyterians still believe that is true today?
The answer, according to our Book of Confessions, is “Yes we do,” and
then some.
In our “Brief Statement of
Faith,” adopted by the re-united Presbyterian Church (USA) here in
“We
trust in Jesus Christ,
Fully human, fully God…
We
trust in God,
Whom Jesus called Abba, Father…
Loving
us still,
God
makes us heirs with Christ of the Covenant.
Like
a mother who will not forsake her nursing child,
Like
a father who runs to welcome the prodigal home,
God is faithful still…
With
believers in every time and place,
We
rejoice that nothing in life or death
Can
separate us from the love of God
In
Christ Jesus our Lord.”
That is “incarnational
theology” my friends. And that is what
we believe as Presbyterians. And just in
case you missed it, that is also what we confess every Sunday as we stand to
say The Apostles’ Creed:
I
believe in God the Father Almighty,
Maker
of heaven and earth;
And
in Jesus Christ His only Son, our Lord;
Who
was conceived by the Holy Ghost (and)
Born
of the Virgin Mary…
You see, the great mystery
which has been revealed to us is this: the Creator God out there, beyond our
complete comprehension, has come down here, in person, in the person of Jesus –
born of the Holy Spirit and Mary His mother – to show us as our Savior and
brother how to live and to forgive and to love one another.
CONCLUSION
That is what we believe
here. And just to be sure you don’t
leave this place today with the wrong impression, all of the Protestant
denominations, and the Eastern Orthodox Christians, and our Roman Catholic
sisters and brothers believe it too.
There was a time when I
didn’t know that was so. I have told you
before about walking home from school as a young boy, talking with my Catholic
friends about Jesus and Mary. They said
she was just as important as he was, and I said that she wasn’t. They said she was divine, and I said she
couldn’t be.
That afternoon we wound up in
Jimmy Marturano’s basement with boxing gloves on to determine who was right and
who was wrong. He knocked me down flat
with one punch, and I thought I had set the Reformation back into the Dark
Ages.
But what I had not remembered
until I began to write this sermon was the year when that happened. It was the fall of 1962, and of course, none
of my young friends or I had any idea that Pope John 23rd had just
convened Vatican II in October, when he opened the doors to a new era for
dialogue and deeper understanding between Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant
Christians, together with Jews, Muslims and other faith traditions.
Almost 50 years later, we are
still trying to find ways to cooperate and work together for peace, justice and
reconciliation in this war-torn and weary world.
We still have a long way to
go – but who knows – perhaps the time has come for Protestants to re-discover
Mary as the “Theotokas,” the Mother of God…and for Catholics and other
Christians to find a way to honor and include women in ministry as much as they
honor and revere Mary as the mother of Jesus.
I don’t know about you, but I
believe that is a Mother’s Day dream which some day, some way, could come
true. Behold - Mary the Mother of God,
and Jesus Christ, her son our Lord, who is and always will be the Savior of the
world!
In the name of the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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