Mother's Day

When God chose to show us what we should be, in the ultimate human, the ultimate image of God, God came into the world in Jesus, through a young woman who would have the awesome responsibility of raising a little boy to become a man who would show us what God is like and what a human, the image of God, should aspire to be.

We don’t know very much about Jesus’ childhood, or his teen years.  We know he was a pretty bright young man, confounding scholars with his understanding; but we know little about how he dealt with all the angst and confusion of being a teen.   I expect he dealt with all the struggles that any teen boy faces, and I expect that the unconditional love of his mother helped him grow and mature to be the brilliant expression of being human that he would demonstrate in his brief years of healing and teaching.

Richard Rohr noted this morning: “Most people (though not all) have experienced unconditional love not through the image of a man, but through the image of their mother. She therefore became the basis for many people's eventual God image, presuming it was a good God image. (I am convinced that many people sour on religion because the God they are presented with is actually less loving than their mother and/or father!)”

He continues: “For much of the human race, the mother is the one who parts the veil for us. She gives us that experience of grounding, of intimacy, of tenderness, of safety that most of us hope for from God. However, many people also operate from a toxic and negative image of God. For those people, little that is wonderful is going to happen as long as that is true. Early growth in spirituality is often about healing that inner image, whether male-based or female-based.”

When you think about it, for the past 2,000 years, the male dominated Church has done a gross disservice to humanity by projecting God as violent, vindictive and totally male; a god in the image of the rulers of this world.  We would do well to see mothers as the image of God too, showing God’s unconditional love, tenderness and safety.

Richard Rohr continues: “Most of us know that God is beyond gender. When we look at the Book of Genesis, we see that the first thing God is looking for is quite simply “images” by which to communicate who-God-is (Gen 2:26-27)”

He concludes: “God is just looking for images—“images and likenesses” of the Inner Mystery. Whoever God “is,” is profoundly and essentially what it means to be male and female in perfect balance. We have to find and to trust the feminine face of God and the masculine face of God. Both are true and both are necessary for a full relationship with God. Up to now, we have strongly relied upon the presented masculine images while, in fact, our inner life was more drawn to our mother's energy. That is much of our religious problem today.”

Something to think about, especially today, as we honour mothers, who can teach us a lot about what God is really like.