Mother Jesus

The sermon preached by Fr. Ernie on November 20, 2022.

Mother Jesus

by Ernest Boyer

 Did you notice that the vestments I’m wearing today are white? For the last 22 weeks I’ve worn green each Sunday, but today I’m wearing white. That’s because today we’re celebrating something called the feast of Christ the King. This is a relatively new addition to the liturgical calendar. It was first introduced nearly a hundred years ago, in 1925, but the idea of Christ as a king goes back at least as far as the Middle Ages. Of course, there are biblical allusions to the idea too. Most of these are based on Jesus’ talk of a kingdom. The thing is, Jesus himself always referred to this as the kingdom of God. In other words, he saw it as his father’s kingdom, not his own.

 The only direct reference to the idea that Jesus himself might be a king is in today’s reading, but what a strange reference it is! It’s true that Pontus Pilate had ordered that Jesus be crucified under a sign that read, “The King of the Jews,” but he had done this to mock Jesus. It was there to ridicule Jesus’ talk of a kingdom. The Roman soldiers who were there to oversee the execution pick up on this. They begin to taunt Jesus saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” Only one person takes the title seriously, and that was one of the two criminals who were being crucified along with Jesus. He says to him, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” And Jesus’ answer? “Truly I tell you,” he says, “today you will be with me in Paradise.”

 I find this among the most powerful stories in the bible, and also among the most poignant. Here are two men in their last hours of life. One turns to the other in hope and trust, and asks him to do what no human being can be expected to accomplish. He asks him to guide him safely across that dark and mysterious border that divides life from death and carry him to life eternal, and Jesus replies without hesitation. “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

It’s a beautiful story, a deeply comforting story, but if it is a story of a king it is a very strange one. This is a king who is mocked and rejected, a king who is apparently helpless, utterly without power, and yet who is at the same time the very heart of compassion and mercy. In many ways this is a king who is the very opposite of everything we imagine an earthly king to be.

 So why call him a king at all? I have to admit that “king” is not a description of Christ that I easily relate to. I’m an American, after all, and America’s history with kings is not a happy one. Furthermore, history has demonstrated that when you equate God with kings, kings begin to think of themselves as God’s representatives on earth which means that they begin to act as little gods themselves, and that is never a good thing. The fact is, people began to talk of Christ as king in order to emphasize that, like God, Christ is all powerful, but there is even a better word for king for that. That word is “god” itself. We have only to say that “Jesus Christ is God” and we’ve said all we need to say concerning Christ’s power. We’re saying that, in this, Christ and God are one.

 And yet there are ways in which they are separate, too. If God is Jesus’ father, that makes Jesus his son, so in that way they are different. But how are they different with regard to us. Personally, I like the answer suggested by Julian of Norwich. Despite her name, Julian of Norwich was a woman. Some people refer to her as Dame Julian of Norwich to make that clear. The truth is, we don’t actually know her real name. The woman later known as Dame Julian lived in England from 1343 to sometime after 1416. Those were terrible years, a time of plague — the Black Death — and rebellion, a time when many, many died. Julian herself nearly died of illness, but as she lay at the edge of eternity she had a series of visions of Christ who spoke to her and told her things that left her totally transformed so that when she finally recovered she decided to withdraw from the world and devote herself to prayer. She left her home and moved into a tiny room at the back of St. Julian’s church in the city of Norwich England, from which she then took her name. She lived there all the rest of her life. She spent her days praying, talking to pilgrims who came to her for advice, and writing down all the things that Christ and had told her in her vision, collecting this into a book called Showings: revelations of divine love.  

 It’s a lovely book, one of the first written in English. It truly is a revelation. I love it especially for how she talks about Jesus. In her telling, Jesus is not only the son of God, which since God is our father too, makes him our brother. This is amazing enough, but for her, Jesus has an even more intimate relationship with us. That’s because, despite his gender, Dame Julian sees Jesus as our mother. This is how Dame Julian sees the trinity. As she writes:  “God almighty is our loving Father, and God all wisdom is our loving Mother, with the love and goodness of the Holy Spirit” as our guide. Again and again she refers to the second person of the trinity as “Jesus our mother,” or simply as “Mother Christ,” saying “as truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our mother.”

 As Julian sees it, like a mother, Christ came to give birth to us, giving birth to our living souls. Like a mother he teaches us and guides us. And also like a mother he feeds us spiritually with his body. As she writes:

This fair lovely word ‘mother’ is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things. To the property of motherhood belong nature, love, wisdom and knowledge, and this is God.…The kind, loving mother who knows and sees the need of her child guards it very tenderly, as the nature and condition of motherhood will have. And as the child grows in age and in stature, she acts differently, but she does not change her love.…So [Jesus] is our Mother by nature by the operation of grace…And he wants us to know it.

 This is challenging stuff. I know it’s hard to get your head around it. Jesus was a man, after all, and men cannot be mothers. At least not literally. And yet there are some very ordinary men who attempt to fill the role metaphorically. I know a man who had to raise his children alone after the death of his wife, who spoke of this often. “I’ve had to be both a mother and a father to them,” he said, “and it was hard. Very hard.” And yet Jesus is someone else entirely. He can do what no human can. He is certainly our brother. Perhaps it is not too much to think of him as our mother too.

 Personally, I believe Dame Julian is telling us something truly profound, something that she herself had come to experience. For her, describing Jesus as our mother genuinely captured the fullness, the beauty and the transformative power that characterized her bond with Jesus. It can be that for us too. She’s named an intimacy of connection that can actually describe everyone’s bond with Christ. In my opinion it, describes that tie to him far more accurately than referring to Christ as “king,” for example. Of course, it does no harm to attach both terms to him, but for me calling Jesus mother says so much more and says it so much better than it does to call him king. Jesus is our mother. He nurtures us. He sustains us. He teaches us. He guides us. He protects us. He loves us. And in the end, he guides us through the dark barrier of our final days and carries into the light of eternity. No king would that. No king could do that. But a mother would. Perhaps that’s all we need to know. AMEN.    

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