I love you, Mama

On this Mothers’ Day, Easter Seven, Sunday after The Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ, I remember - that Black Liberation Theology founder and spokesman Professor James Cone of Union Theological Seminary and the African Methodist Episcopal Church died two weeks ago today. Age 79, Dr. Cone was a prophet proclaiming the blackness of Jesus and God’s identification, some theologians call it “preferential option” for black, brown, yellow, red, poor, and marginalized people.

Which, along with “Black Lives Matter,” is identical, parcel and part in unity, with feminist theology on Mothers Day, and the #MeToo Movement, to free society from all that degrades women and others in our white-male-dominant, so-called “Christian,” culture. 

Which includes male-rule in the three largest world-wide Christian denominations, one being our own Anglican Communion, but in which since mid-20th century, The Episcopal Church is always on the progressive cutting edge forcing change. I have not always been in union with the social-theological crusades of the Episcopal Church, but throughout my adult life, with my son whom I adore, I’ve identified as the father of daughters: I am always on their side no matter what, I vote as one of my daughters, now herself a mother of daughters, hopes I will, and Mothers’ Day may be appropriate to come out and admit this, who and what I am.

Now, Mothers’ Day, and because of James Cone my mind wanders to one of the most thought-provoking theologies I ever read: a book by author, theologian, Professor Clayton Sullivan, Jesus and the Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church. One spring day, members of a small town black Mississippi congregation hear music from far away in the direction of the river, and the music grows louder and louder and louder, coming closer and closer, until a thick mist, like fog, a cloud, swirls on the platform in front of the sanctuary. It’s Easter Day: Jesus and Simon Peter suddenly appear as well-dressed Jewish women. Seeing, sensing their astonishment, Miss Jesus asks the surprised churchgoers, "At times I've come to earth in the form of a man. But this time I've come as a woman. Is something wrong with me appearing as a woman?” And after all, at Exodus Three, God names himself to Moses, eh-Yeh ah-SHerr eh-Yeh I AM that I AM, I will Be what I will Be, Y’hVeh, I Am, clarifying in no uncertain terms that God is not what we imagine, construct, say and believe about God but whatever God says about Him/HerSelf. Just so, the gospel of Miss Jesus opens to be told and loved and pondered, as Good News happens.

Wonderful things do indeed begin to happen for God’s chosen people in Sullivan’s delightful book - - that is until one night late in the story, Miss Jesus and Simon Peter are out driving in their Jeep; and as they cross a river bridge they are shot to death by a white trash redneck bar owner. Which might end the story in tragedy except that Jesus conquers death, and so as the story ends Easter dawns again, they return and The Rapture happens as Miss Jesus and Simon Peter, meeting again at Sweet Pilgrim Baptist Church, gather all the faithful who want to be saved, and soar off toward heaven in their cars and trucks and tractors.

As the salvation caravan passes over town - - coming out to see what all the music and excitement is about, the bigoted, redneck bartender is stunned to see the resurrected Savior and Saint whose heads he had, in cold blooded murder, blown away with his shotgun - - now screams in panicked realization, “Miss Jesus! I didn’t know it was you! I didn't know it was you” - - as we remember Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate, and imagine the judgment addressed by Charles Wesley in the hymn “Lo! He comes with clouds descending” - - (do you ever pay attention to words of the hymns we sing?).

Every eye shall now behold Him

Robed in dreadful majesty;

Those who set at naught and sold Him,

Pierced and nailed Him to the tree,

Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing,

Shall the true Messiah see.

“Miss Jesus! I didn’t know it was you.”

Fearsome hellfire and damnation is not our progressive postmodern Christian theology - - but springtime, azaleas, Easter, feminist theology and Mothers’ Day bring to mind Professor James Cone and the Rev. Dr. Clayton Sullivan, theologian, scholar, professor and author, whose many books include Rescuing Jesus from the Christians. Of which, in our time, nothing could be more apt. 

Sometimes, fables are where the deepest truths are to be found, and, as Moses found out, it is God alone, and not we ourselves, that decide who and what is God: I AM that I AM, I Will Be what I Will Be. Y’hVeh: Miss Jesus.

If, because I am non-sequitur and lost antecedent, you cannot follow this my homily for Mothers Day, that bothers me. But not much, because today is about mothers and children. 

I love Mothers’ Day, grew up celebrating it with beloved Pensacola grandparents and cousins, me learning deeply to cherish, deeply to cherish my mother because my cousins’ mother had died when her two children were two and four years old, so our grandparents were raising them. At our family Baptist church where my mother grew up, on Mothers Day, Margaret and Bill wore white carnations because their mother was dead; while my brother, sister and I wore red carnations and I was tearfully thankful for my mother who in later years I realized had loved me even more than I loved her, because that’s how it is to be a mother. 

So, again lost antecedent and non-sequitur, I ask that you listen carefully this morning as we claim the gospel promise, and pray - -

for those who are born in places we would not be caught dead,

who never go to the circus,

who live in an X-rated world,

for children who hug us for no reason, who bless us each night,

for those who never get dessert,

whose monsters are real,

whose nightmares come in the daytime,

who have never seen a dentist,

who are not doted on by loving parents,

who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,

for children who are victims of gun violence, God in heaven deliver us.

for children who do not have a chance in life,

and who never dream, because in their world dreams cannot come true.

Jesus loves the little children, all the children of the world - -

today we honor the mothers who bore them. 

And, for those of us wearing a white flower,

our mothers whom we will always love, and whom we will never stop missing.

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Mothers’ Day sermon or homily in Holy Nativity Episcopal Church on Sunday, May 13, 2018. The Rev. Tom Weller.