In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Even though Mother’s Day is not a Church holiday, but a secular one, that, of course, does not mean that the Church has nothing to say about it. On the contrary, motherhood is such a high and noble vocation that Jesus even uses it to make a comparison between the joy that a Christian has in heaven and the joy that a mother feels after she gives birth to a baby. As Jesus says in our Gospel reading today from John chapter sixteen, “When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So, also, you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice.” Given these words of Jesus then, it is entirely appropriate that we would spend some time this morning talking about God’s gift of motherhood and what the Bible teaches us about it.
The first thing that the Bible teaches us about motherhood is that it is God’s institution. When we say that something is God’s institution, what we mean that it is something that God Himself made and that He Himself established. We human beings did not bring into existence the very first mom, nor are we ourselves truly responsible for who becomes a mom today. That is something that God does. God made Eve, whose name means,” the mother of all living,” and God gave her to Adam, and then God blessed their union with children, making her a mom.
Not unlike marriage, fatherhood, and the pastoral office, motherhood is the creation of God Himself. And since it is His creation, and not ours, He is the one who tells us what it should look like and what should happen in it. It is God who places individuals into the vocation of motherhood and it is God who determines what they should do when they have been placed into it.
Only women can be moms. It is a sad thing that this truth needs be said out loud today, but it does. A man cannot be a mom. A man cannot have babies. Despite what some news media outlets report these days, there is no such thing as a man who got pregnant. That is impossible. Not all women are mothers, but all mothers are women. And a woman is a biological female. A woman is not a man who feels like a woman. A woman is not a man who dresses and acts like a woman. A woman is someone who is born with the body parts and genetics, which, when working properly, are capable of conceiving and bearing a child.
Yes, motherhood also, of course, includes adoption. Women who have not been able to give birth to children of their own, but who instead, take into their own homes and raise as children the children that were born to others who could not take care of them are still moms. They are no less moms than those who carried their children in their own wombs. Even while He was hanging on a cross, dying for the sins of the world, our Lord Jesus Christ said to the His mother Mary in reference to Saint John, “Woman, behold, your son.” And from that hour forward the Bible tells us that John took her into his own home. John treated Mary like his mother, because she was his mother. Because adoption makes real moms.
But again, you still need to be a woman to be a mother. Motherhood is not some random and meaningless design that has no purpose or rationale behind it and that anyone can enter into if they want to. God knows what we need. God knows that children need a mom and a dad. God knows that two dads will not work and God knows that two moms will not work either. God teaches this truth to us in creation itself, in which we see that without a mom and dad a child cannot be born to begin with.
Not having a mom is not the way that God designed it to be. Not having a dad is not the way that God designed it to be. God designed it so that children would have one mom and one dad. Sometimes, due to circumstances that are completely out of our control, and sometimes due to our own sinful behavior, children are deprived of their father or their mother. But this is something that we grieve. It is not something that we celebrate. And it is certainly never something that we actively try to bring about.
There are some things that only moms can teach. And there are some things that only dads can teach. When the Bible talks about what moms do and what dads do, those things are not identical. The offices of motherhood and fatherhood are not interchangeable. Like husbands and wives, moms and dads are each called to do their own part for the sake of those whom God has placed in their lives. The most important thing that moms can do is to see to it that their children are raised in the Faith. Yes, God calls on fathers to be the heads of the household, or the spiritual leaders, who are the main teachers of the Faith in the home. But godly mothers support and encourage them in this task. And when there is no father present, or when the father refuses to do his job, mothers take up the task themselves. They do what Lois and Eunice did, who out of all the women who ever lived, out of all those who accomplished things that this world calls great, the Holy Spirit saw fit to record in the pages of Scriptures simply for passing on the sacred deposit of the Faith to young Timothy. We Christians support the vocation of motherhood as God designed it to be and we treat with the highest dignity and respect because God’s Word teaches us that motherhood is His own institution.
The second thing that the Bible teaches us about motherhood is that motherhood is a blessing. Motherhood is not just God’s institution. It is not just something that God created and established. It is something that He created and established for our good and the good of the whole world. Yes, motherhood comes with many unique challenges and crosses as every mom will surely tell you. But motherhood is not itself a cross. Motherhood is a blessing. Motherhood is a blessing because children are a blessing.
In the very beginning, even before the fall into sin, the Scriptures tell us that God blessed Adam and Eve, and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” That is what God thinks about motherhood and that is what He thinks about married couples having children. He blesses it. He gives it His own divine approval and support. God shows us even at the beginning of creation how much He Himself values the vocation of motherhood and the act by which a woman becomes a mom in marriage.
The world we live in today has a very low view of motherhood and a very low view of things like childbearing. Even though God blesses marriage, and even though God offers His unique blessing to husbands and wives being fruitful and multiplying in marriage, many people, and especially young people, are taught to avoid these blessings.
Young men and women are told that they should avoid getting married and having children until they have accomplished all of the things in life that they want to accomplish, because getting married and having children will only get in the way of those things. They are told that getting married and having children is a hinderance to more important things in life like their career and traveling the world. They are told that a life-long commitment to just one other person, where one of the main intentions is to bring forth and raise up godly children, is a waste of their time or at least that it should be thought of as an afterthought. Young people burn with lust, and instead of encouraging them towards chastity and the pursuit of a pious spouse, they are told to play pretend marriage with others, and enjoy all the pleasures of marriage without any of the responsibilities. Even when young people do get married and begin to think about having children, often times they are told to make those decisions based on things like money and personal goals. They are told to limit the amount of children that they have so that they can continue to do all things that they liked to do before they had kids. And in the worst possible cases, when children are seen as too inconvenient or too burdensome, young moms are encouraged to end the lives of their children while they are still in the womb.
But what is missing from all of this is the Word of God. What is missing from all of it is Jesus. You can search the whole Bible and you will not find a single passage that speaks in a derogatory way about Christian men and women getting married with honorable intentions, having children, and living a simple life where they raise those children in the faith. You will not find one verse in the Bible that teaches you to put pleasure, having a career, sight-seeing, living in a big house, and driving a nice car above being a faithful mom or dad who welcomes God’s gift of children and raises up little ones in the instruction and fear of the Lord. What you will find though are passage like this one from Psalm 127, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them.”
Putting off marriage and having children for selfish reasons and treating those things as burdens instead of blessings is wrong. Limiting the number of children that you have in marriage purely because of worldly things like money and convenience is wrong. Motherhood is always a gift and never a curse. It is true that not everyone receives the gift of motherhood just like not everyone receives the gift of marriage. There are many gifts in this life that not everyone receives. God gives different gifts to different people when are where He wills it. Some people, like Saint Paul himself, serve the Church as single people their whole lives, and God smiles upon their service for the sake of Christ. Some people do not want to be married, because they do not struggle with living a chaste life outside of marriage, and that is a wonderful thing too. Some people want to be married, and some people want to have children, and God, for reasons known only to Him does not permit it to happen. But desiring a certain gift, and not receiving that gift does not mean that God does not love us. It does not mean that we are more or less valuable in the eyes of God. Our worth comes not from how many children we have been able to have, but whether or not we are God’s child. And yet, we can still recognize the great gift of motherhood and of children, even if it is not God’s greatest gift.
The greatest gift that God gives us is eternal life. The greatest gift that He gives is the life that Jesus won for us when He laid down His life for our sins on the cross. There is nothing that we have in this life that can compare with that. There is nothing in this life that we can take out of this life with us when we die. We cannot take our money with us when we die. We cannot take our job with us when we die. We cannot take our house with us when we die. All of the achievements and promotions we received from work won’t matter when we die. None of the sites we’ve seen in this life will compare to what we will see in eternity. But it is possible to take one thing with us. By God’s grace, we can take our children with us. Whether they are our own children or the children of others that we have cared for as our own, if they are taught to believe the Gospel and trust in Jesus, will see them in heaven for all eternity. We will stand arm in arm with them on the Day of Judgment and not be put to shame. And this truth impresses upon us other truths. It teaches us to value children. It teaches us to value marriage and motherhood.
The third and most important things that God’s Word teaches us about motherhood is that our true mother is the Church. Jesus tells us in Matthew chapter 12 that “whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” And the apostle Paul writes in Galatians chapter 4 that the Jerusalem above, meaning, all believers, “she is our mother.” The Bible tells us that our true family is the household of God. It tells us that our true mother is the Church.
The reason why it so important for us to see that our true Mother is the Church, and the reason why is it so important for earthly mothers and fathers to teach their children to see this truth too, is because even though our earthly moms are wonderful, even though they are true gifts from God for which we should give thanks, there is one thing they cannot do for us. They cannot save us from our sins. Only Jesus can save us from our sins. And we receive the forgiveness of sins only through the Church. We receive the forgiveness of sins that Jesus won for us on the cross only through the means of grace that God gives us in Church. We are brought into the family of God, only by the work of the Holy Spirit, who calls us by the Gospel. We are made God’s children only by the power of the Holy Spirit, who causes us to born again through the waters of Baptism in which He washes away all of our sins.
Maybe you have a bad relationship with your mom. Maybe you have done or said things to your mom that you regret or maybe she has done or said things to you that you resent. Maybe you desperately want to be a mom, but have not been able to be one yet. Maybe you are bitter about being a mom and secretly wish at times that you weren’t one. Maybe you are convicted over the things that God’s Word says about motherhood and marriage. And maybe you struggle to honor those things in the way that you live your life. But whoever you are, and whatever struggles you are dealing with because of your sins or the sins of others, there is hope for you.
There is hope for you because there is one who was also born for you. There is one who when the fullness of time had come, was born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law. Jesus Christ is the hope of all. He is the hope of sinful mothers. He is he hope of sinful children. He is hope of all those who suffer for their sins and sins of others, because He suffered the true cost for all of the world’s sins on the cross. In this world that is full of sin, in this world that looks down on God’s institutions like motherhood, and chaffs in anger over how God has lovingly designed marriage and families, in this world that thinks little of the little children, we do not only bring the Law of correction which uncover sins and calls people to repentance. We point people to the Gospel. We point people to the Christ Child that was born of His virgin mother, born to die, and through His dying give us new life.
No, Mother’s Day is not a Church Holiday, but that does not mean that the Church has nothing to say about it. On the contrary, God’s Word holds up the vocation of motherhood as a high and noble calling. It teaches us that motherhood is God’s own institution. It teaches us that motherhood is a blessing because children are a blessing. And it teaches us that our true mother is the Church. May the Lord help us to receive His teaching about motherhood with thanksgiving, and honor our moms with the respect that they deserve. In Jesus’ Name. Amen.