Easter B 07: Mother's Day: Enveloped in Love

Sermon Outline

The Love of God in Christ Envelops Us as a Mother Envel­ops Her Child.

I. In our corruption, many leave God’s enveloping love.

II. But in our desperation, Jesus continues to reach out to envelop us again in God’s love.

III. Thus, it is God’s love in Christ enveloping us even when in this evil world he works repentance in us.

Sermon

Happy Eastertide! What was that? Eastertide? Yes, these forty days from Jesus rising on Easter Day until his ascension into heaven that we celebrated on Thursday are part of what we call Eastertide. Like Christmas and Christmastide, the redeeming work of God does not end on the day of celebration, but his promises are fulfilled on those days, and the live-giving power of his work begins to flow out around the world and through time. And Eastertide still? Yes, even after the ascension, another ten days until Pentecost are this season of Easter. Today is the seventh and final Sunday of these fifty days called Eastertide.

During Eastertide, we continue to listen to God’s Word inform us of the significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Jesus has risen! He has risen indeed!—and he continues to rise through his words into our hearts and minds and souls.

In today’s Gospel, our text, we reach back to the night when Jesus was betrayed to raise in our thoughts the value of what Jesus was saying. Once more before Jesus is crucified, he prays for his disciples—what we call his High Priestly Prayer. Jesus is about to leave the disciples’ sight, no longer be visibly present—first, by dying on the cross the very next day, and then, after rising from the dead on Easter and appearing to them on many occasions over these forty days, by ascending back to heaven. So here’s part of what Jesus prayed: “Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them” (vv 11b–12a, emphasis added).

Did you notice Jesus talks about keeping, guarding his disciples—what he himself has done and now asks the Father to do? Jesus asks the Father to envelop them in his love, even as God’s will is that his Word and Spirit would envelop our whole life in his love for us. Envelop? Yes, like “envelope,” but pronounced differently because we’re not talking about paper that surrounds a letter you mail. Nor are we talking about being enveloped as if surrounded by an attacking army and under siege. That’s not the way love works. Rather,

The Love of God in Christ Envelops Us as a Mother Envelops Her Child—

first in the womb and then in her arms.

How appropriate on Mother’s Day to consider the parallel between mother with infant and our Redeemer with us! Was your life ever better than when you lived in the care of your mother?

I.

So why did you leave? In our Gospel, Jesus anticipates the determination of corrupt human nature to abandon, even renounce his love for us. Jesus must go on in his prayer to admit that already during his earthly ministry, one of his closest friends would leave the envelopment of his love: “I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction” (v 12b). Already by this moment on Maundy Thursday night, Judas has abandoned Jesus to guide those who would arrest him. In our First Reading from Acts, you heard the disciples choosing a replacement for Judas, who “turned aside to go to his own place” (Acts 1:25).

Judas and countless others before and since leave God’s enveloping love because of a corruption that infects all people. What is it? Why do we grow to twist and kick our way out of our mother’s arms and out of God’s embrace? I was the last of my mother’s four children, and I still remember the last time I let my mom take me up into her lap on Mother’s Day. Of course, I was unprepared to give her something for Mother’s Day, so I asked her, “Mom, what would you like for Mother’s Day?” My mother thought for a moment and then gave an answer I think was always on her mind. My mom said, “I’d just like you to be a good boy today.” Then I asked my mom if she would mind asking for something else! How is a boy so young already aware that he is not a good boy and that his mother is distressed accordingly? That is the magnitude of sin in our lives—and the awareness, even from a very young age, that sin is making trouble for us.

How quickly did sin infect humanity with that result? How old was Adam when he was determined to replace God’s design for creation and our relationships with his own—bossing Eve and blaming God? How old was Cain when he murdered his brother Abel? How long after that was it until God said that every intent of the thoughts of our hearts was only evil all the time (Gen 6:5)?

The corruption from Adam in us is so powerful that we would not only twist and kick our way out of God’s design for life in creation, but we would also turn against him, hold him in contempt, and then turn against those around us with contempt as well. It’s a shock to consider our rebellion against God compared to his creative love for us, just as it’s a shock and bitter deep grief when children turn against their mothers. What has God ever willed for you that’s bad for you? What has a godly mother ever willed for her children that would do them harm? Honestly, it has been our self-determination, our will against God’s will and against family and neighbor, that has made all the trouble.

Judas was lured into rebellion against God and antagonism toward neighbor—at least in part—by choosing a false god, money. But why bother with a middleman? In Adam’s image, we insist on being our own gods, as if we had not been given our life by God and by means of our parents. After all, the real idols in history and in our lives are not images carved in wood or stone, but images of ourselves that we worship. What drives social media? Why did taking “selfies” spread like wildfire and to this moment consume so much of so many peoples’ thinking? We make gods in our own images, just as Adam did. We craft an image of ourselves, now digitally, by showing the world how we are in control, how we look better, have more of what is better, and are busy doing more of what is best than anyone else. And if we should see someone challenging our self-idolatry, we war against that person’s image with a torrent of contempt and criticisms.

We have run far, far away from home! But what’s it like to compete on our own among people, when every intent of the thoughts of our hearts is only evil all the time? Desperate.

II.

In our desperation, God calls to us. When the Law shatters our image, God raises us up in the image of his only-begotten and beloved Son. The miserable trial, suffering, and cursed death of Jesus not only impresses on us the consequences of replacing God with our own ego but also demonstrates God’s redeeming and now re-creative work. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is salvation through Jesus Christ our Redeemer.

Jesus doesn’t dwell on Judas’s desertion but immediately rejoices that his disciples will share in truths about God they haven’t yet fully grasped: “Now,” Father, “I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. . . . Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. . . . And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth” (vv 13, 17, 19). The disciples were about to learn truths like these: that God sacrifices himself to restore us, that God, who grieves over each dear child who leaves, never forgets his care for us and so continually reaches out to envelop us again in his love.

The incarnation of Jesus celebrated in Christmas proves the truth of God’s creative power. The incarnation of Jesus according to the promises of God means that his promises to regenerate us in his image are true. The way God sanctifies us by means of his Word with water in our Baptism is true. The meal Jesus instituted with his apostles on that night of our text truly conveys his life to us in his very body and blood with bread and wine. In Jesus’ prayer to his Father on our behalf, the grace and love of God truly envelops us.

III.

God’s love in Christ truly envelops us even in those days when our evil world threatens to have its way with us. Father, Jesus prays, “I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. . . . As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world” (vv 15, 18, emphasis added). While they are in the world, Father, keep them; envelop them in your love.

This world is evil, the domain of the evil one. But the love of God envelops us all—the way our atmosphere envelops the earth and makes it such a beautiful, habitable place. And even as we live in this evil world, God’s Word is at work, regenerating our souls in the image of Christ and inspiring our souls with the power of the Holy Spirit. Thus, if Jesus takes his rightful place in our lives as God, we let go of everything else, especially our corrupt ego, and embrace and hold Jesus tight, the way a frightened child runs to and finds deep comfort in the arms of his mother. Fear of the loss of all things, in the world of idolatry and human corruption, makes us desperate for a safe place. The love of Christ for us regenerates a soul that clings to the source of its regeneration.

And the regenerate soul never outgrows its childlike grasp to our Redeemer’s hand. Remember the enduring command of God to us that provides fulfilment of all the others: “If you are truly my disciples, you will remain in my Word and you will know the truth and the truth will make you free” (Jn 8:31–32, author’s translation). The basic underlying command of God has never changed: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Col 3:16).

John’s Gospel devotes five chapters to the words of Jesus to the apostles—and thus to us—on that evening before his betrayal, arrest, and crucifixion. This side of Easter, we see more clearly how the love of God the Father enveloped the life of the Son and provided for his incarnation, so that he could substitute his life for us and, by doing so, redeem us. The words of Jesus before and after his crucifixion let us see honestly the consequences of the corruption and idolatry we inherit from Adam. An honest look at ourselves under the Law is how God works repentance in us, turning us away from corruption and idolatry and turning us to the loving embrace of God our Father and his holy Church, our mother.

Here, in the loving arms of God, he reminds us that our soul is regenerated in the image of Christ. God’s regenerating work brings us back into his loving arms and thus back into communion with our family also. He even makes us his ambassadors to the whole human family. What an embrace!

Happy Eastertide! Happy Mother’s Day! Amen.