Special thanks to Rev. Mark Buetow for a couple phrases in the section on “mom” and in the conclusion. The rest can be blamed on me.

 

Today is a high holy day in the Christian Church. It is Pentecost. Of course, it is also Mother’s Day. Woe be to the preacher who does not preach about mom on Mother’s Day! So today is all about the Holy Spirit and mom. Fortunately, a connection between the two is not difficult to make.

 

We all have mothers. Some of you are even mothers. Every person that has ever walked on this earth has had a mother. You may not have known her and some are better than others, but we all have a mother. Even with all the human manipulation of procreation, mom remains a necessary part of the equation. This is the way that God has set it up. Mothers are the means through which God brings new life into this world. There are no storks making deliveries. Babies do not simply fall out of the sky.  Moms give birth. God established this order and ordained these means. Of course mothers are not simply for giving birth. They are also God’s means for protection, nourishment, and the care of children along with the father and husband. The family is an important institution in God’s eyes. It is so important that God gave the commandment, “Thou shalt honor thy father and mother.” Luther encourages us to ask, “What does this mean?” It means “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” In other words, mom is God’s gift to us and we should treat her accordingly–honoring, serving, obeying, loving, and cherishing her. God gave her to care for us. She was given to feed us when we were hungry; put us to bed when we were tired; put a band-aid on our knee it was scraped; scold us when we were bad; console us when we were distraught. When you needed clothes or food, God did not have them suddenly appear out of thin air. He gave you a mother to provide such things.  Sometimes, of course, moms do not do their jobs. God still provides grandmothers who fill the role. Sometimes, another woman steps in and does the job. Sometimes, dad doesn’t do his job, and mom needs to fill that role too. In any case, moms accomplish much in our lives. For this, we give thanks this day for our mothers. Woe be to the husband or child who does not get mom a card or giver her a call on this day! If you are a mother, learn and believe today that God has given you this role to nurture your children. You are God’s established means for care and provision.  

 

On Pentecost we also celebrate another gift of God, the Holy Spirit. It was 50 days after Passover and Jerusalem was filled with pilgrims who had come to celebrate the Feast of Weeks. It was a high holy day in the city. People were there in obedience to the Lord’s command, “On the day of first fruits, when you present to the Lord an offering of new grain during the Feast of Weeks, hold a sacred assembly and do no regular work.” So the faithful from all over the empire gathered in Jerusalem on Pentecost, the fiftieth day, to present a freewill offering of new grain to the Lord in thanksgiving for His provision. The disciples, Luke tells us, were all together in one place on that day, waiting for the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to send them the Holy Spirit. Suddenly, a “mighty rushing wind” filled the room and “divided tongues of fire” rested on them. The message was clear: God Himself was present. God answered Job out of the violent, rushing wind. God descended on Mt. Sinai in fire. Both the rushing wind and the tongues of fire were signs that God was in their midst. Actually, God was in them.

The disciples were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages. The scene must have been something. The pilgrims begin to gather around to hear these Galileans speaking in these different languages. They were amazed and astonished. The crowd consisted of diverse people from far-off places and distant lands. Still, this linguistically varied mob understood what was being said by the Spirit-filled disciples. Some asked that question we have learned to know well from Luther’s Small Catechism, “What does this mean?” Others dismissed them as being too Lutheran in their piety, “They have had too much wine.” What did it mean that all of these people from all of these places understood the disciples’ preaching? 

 

It meant that these were the last days. The Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples to destroy the effects of the disobedience at Babel. God was gathering a new community. He was creating a new people by His Holy Spirit, a people who shared the language of salvation in Jesus Christ. This is how Peter explained the events on that first Pentecost. The people were not drunk. It was too early in the day! Rather, the events were the fulfillment of God’s promises to pour out His Holy Spirit in the last days so that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord might be saved. Now, Peter told the crowd, these promises were being realized in their midst. By the power of the Holy Spirit, Peter obeyed His Lord Jesus Christ and called the people to repentance for their sins. He also called them to Holy Baptism in the name of Jesus Christ so their sins could be forgiven and they could receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit worked through the Gospel and 3,000 were baptized and added to their number that day. God had poured out His Holy Spirit and gathered in the first fruits of His harvest of souls.  Members of that diverse, divided mob had been united in Jesus Christ. On that day, God gave His Holy Spirit and created a new community of faith, the Church. The Church is God’s gift to the Babel of the world. The Babel of this world is a community of division, sin, death, condemnation, enmity and hatred. But Christ’s Church, created and sustained by the Holy Spirit, is a community of unity, forgiveness, life, salvation, peace and charity. God’s Church stands in radical distinction to man’s Babel.

 

So where is this connection between the Holy Spirit and mom? Well, the Fathers had a saying, “You cannot have God as your Father without the Church as your Mother.” God gifts us with mothers to give birth, nourish, and care for us. In the same way, God gifts us with the Church to give birth, nourish, and care for our faith. The Church is God’s means to bring the life of the Gospel to the world. So what is the Church? Is it a building? No. Is it a gathering of people with common ethnicity, socioeconomic status, or language? No. Is it established in human structures and politics? No. The church is God’s people gathered around Jesus Christ and His gifts. Luther wrote, “God be praised, a seven-year old child knows what the church is: holy believers and ‘the little sheep who hear the voice of their shepherd.” God established the Church as the community where His people gather around the font, the pulpit, and the altar. At the font, the womb of the Church, your faith was born. At the pulpit, the mouth of the Church, your faith is guided and established in Christ. At the altar, the table of the Church, your faith is fed and nourished by Christ’s body and blood. In those gifts the Holy Spirit is at work through the Word to create, sustain, and strengthen Christian faith. Luther’s catechism makes this paradoxical claim: I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me through the gospel, enlightened me with his gifts, made me holy and kept me in the true faith. I believe… that I cannot believe. We are incapable of producing faith on our own. We are not smart enough. But the Holy Spirit worked and continues to work through the Gospel gifts to produce, strengthen and nourish faith in us. So we gather in the Church to receive the gifts of Jesus Christ and have confidence that forgiveness of sins, eternal life and salvation are ours. In those ordained means the Holy Spirit is at work. The Father’s were correct “You cannot have God as your Father without the Church as your Mother.”

 

Such a statement it troublesome to many. We Americans are rugged individualists. Teddy Roosevelt and all that. The claim that the Church is so essential for faith bothers us. We would presume to walk through the woods like Thoreau or gaze into the sky like Emerson and think we are in a good spiritual place with God. We presume that our time spent in the coffee shop, on the golf course, or in the fishing boat is quality time with God. Such presumption is foolish. It is as foolish as trying to build a tower to reach the heavens. It reflects our prideful arrogance to think we can find God on our own terms, rather than the ones He established. Our God established the Church as the community where His gifts are distributed. Remember the Fourth Commandment? It means “We should fear and love God so that we do not despise or anger our parents and other authorities, but honor them, serve and obey them, love and cherish them.” In other words, the Church is the authority given by God for the sake of our faith and we should not despise it. Like our mother, God gave us the Church to care for us. So listen to your mother. In the Church, our Lord attaches the certain promises of His Gospel and Holy Spirit to the gifts of His Word and Sacrament. Believers know that Christ is present in the Church for the sake of our faith.

 

So on this Mother’s Day, let us give thanks for our Mother, the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. We do not give thanks because She is perfect. Rather, she is far from it. The Bride of Christ is actually quite unattractive. After all, it is made up of people like us, sinners who sin. We give thanks for the Church because it is God’s gift to us. We give thanks for the Church because we know that the Holy Spirit is at work through God’s means to forgive our sins and increase our faith in Christ. In the Church, gathered around Word and Sacrament, we know that our God protects us, nourishes us, and cares for us. We know this because Christ has accomplished our salvation and the Spirit has taught us this truth. No need to be afraid. The peace of Christ is yours. So happy Mother’s Day to mom. And a blessed Pentecost to all in Christ Jesus.  INJ