Sermon

May 8, 2005

A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on May 8, 2005 by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

In an article in the journal “ America ,” John Kavanaugh reflects on the life of Ann Manganaro, a nun and physician who worked in El Salvador . He recalls being with her when she worked to save the life of Tamika, a premature baby girl so small she could fit in the palm of Ann’s hand. After weeks of the best medical care and all the holding and caressing Ann could do, Tamika died. After they buried the tiny body, Kavanaugh says he was overcome by the futility of all that effort, and complained to Ann that it had all been meaningless. “What,” he demanded, “What on earth did Tamika ever have?” “Well,” Ann replied, “she had the power to evoke love from me.”

Today we celebrate both Mother’s Day and one of Christianity’s most sacred moments, the ascension of the risen Christ into heaven. It is not as odd a combination as it might seem, for both celebrate the power that calls us into action—the power to evoke love from us. Most of us who learn to be loving, caring, responsible people are taught to act in loving ways by someone who mothered us. In a sense, we become adults when we graft into our hearts and minds all the lessons about caring for one another that we learned when we were children and begin to act them out. For the Church, the Ascension enshrines the process of grafting into our hearts and minds the love that Jesus taught and learning to act it out on our own. The Ascension is that historical moment in which Jesus’ friends came to understand that the Resurrection appearances of the risen Christ were ending, but that Christ would remain alive within them forever, forever empowering them to do Christ-like acts of love on their own. “You will receive power,” Jesus tells them, “when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses…to the ends of the earth.”

I sometimes detect a little ambivalence about celebrating Mother’s Day. Those who have been disappointed in their mothers may have good reason to feel a little emptiness on this day. Those of us who aren’t mothers might feel a little empty, too. Some of us may be a little wistful because we want mothering that we don’t have. But we forget that what we celebrate today is the ability to nurture, the ability not just to feel love, but the ability to act on it. What we honor in the mothers around us today is their ability to evoke love from us. As we honor that, we honor our own ability to love.

Sometimes it takes a strategic withdrawal to spur us from simply feeling warm fuzzy feelings of love into actual responsible action. I will never forget the agony that I experienced as a parent the first time I insisted that one of my children leave home and live on her own. I was convinced that I would never see my beloved daughter again after I insisted that she go off to make a life for herself. How wrong I was. In a very short time she amazed me by coming back into my life as an adult with a plan for her life and a sense of confidence in herself—and eager to make a contribution to the family finances.

And make no mistake about it, where there is no responsibility there is no love. In “First Things First,” Roger Merrill tells about a busy friend moving into a new home and hiring a landscape designer to create a garden that would need little care. As he talked about his vision for the garden, Fred kept stressing that he was hardly ever home long enough to do any actual gardening. Finally the designer gave him the hard news, “Fred, I can see what you’re saying. But there’s one thing you need to deal with before we go any further. If there’s no gardener, there’s no garden.” I think it was absolutely necessary for Jesus’ resurrection appearances to stop if his friends were ever to understand that it was time for them to translate the love of Christ into their own actions. If we can understand that we have to take the responsibility for our loving actions, we learned it through the nurture that someone gave us—and from their encouragement to stand on our own two feet.

Today I propose that all of us—male, female, young and old—that all of us recommit ourselves to nurturing. Let us recommit ourselves to being gardeners: to helping those around us grow. Let the gifts we offer the mothers in our midst stand as symbols of that recommitment. Let us not only honor what they have given us, let us also honor their ability to stir us to action, their ability to evoke love from us.

AMEN