Motherhood and Discipleship

Today is a wonderful day, a day for celebrating mothers and motherhood. But the church often runs the risk of preaching a sentimentalized motherhood, the Harriet Nelson and June Cleaver model of motherhood. If we preach or teach this ideal or sentimentalized American motherhood, the one that we read about in Hallmark cards and in the parenting books, we would describe only a few, we would alienate many, and we wouldn’t need the gospel. But this is church, we are the people of God, and we have no business leaving the gospel behind. So, how do we talk about motherhood today? What Word from the Lord speaks good news into the lives of our mothers and into the lives all children of mothers, both young and old, today?

As Christians, we believe that our identity is not first and foremost defined vocationally, whether that is occupational or functional (like motherhood). We are not even first defined relationally. We are first and foremost defined by a relationship, our relationship to God. That relationship defines our calling, our vocation, and all of our relationships in the world. (See Luke 8:19-21; 11:27.) So, as Christians, who live together in the community of faith, we believe and affirm that motherhood flows out of the discipleship of godly women, whether they are biologically mothers or not.

Before any of us are mothers or fathers, before we are sons and daughters, before we are grandparents and grandchildren, we are disciples. All that we are and all that we do in these other relationships must flow out of our relationship with God. We must be tapped into the vine (Jn 15:1-8; 1 Jn 4:7-21). That means that our lives as parents and as children are ministry; they are an expression of discipleship, of fruit bearing. Of course, we know that we can only bear fruit if we are tapped into the vine, but we also know that the fruit is not simply the success or failure of our own hands or the result of our own efforts and methods and skills. We trust and believe that God is a part of the process. We believe that all of this flows out of the vine.

John affirms that we are nothing if we are not disciples, abiding or remaining in the love of God first. We trust that as we live as disciples, as we continue to abide on the vine, to remain and dwell in God’s love, that God is at work in ways that we cannot imagine and cannot understand in the moment, that God is doing the work that only God can do.

If we abide in God, God abides in us and is present in the midst of both our successes and failures. Isn’t that liberating? God is present in what we would consider success and failure, transforming them both in ways we can’t imagine. This saves us from a sentimental ideal of motherhood without gospel, without grace. It protects us from our own expectations and from the expectations of our world.

We realize that God is the foundation, the source. All else is predicated on this essential and fundamental relationship! By abiding, we live in love, we learn love, and we come to understand God’s love for us and others. It is only out of that experience of dwelling in and abiding with God that we can truly love others. The love of God becomes the well spring of our relationships with others. That is gospel. No matter how classical or quirky we might be as mothers or fathers, sons or daughters, as long as we abide with God, his endless, limitless love becomes the source of our love for others. We learn to love by abiding in God. It is there, in relationship with the One who is Love, that we learn to live out the self-giving, creative love of God that gives the only true life to others.

Now, this is not an easy cure all. We still have struggles and problems as parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren. We will make mistakes; our kids (and parents) will stumble and fall; we will fail to live up to the sentimental ideals again and again. BUT, we realize that our value is not first found in our ability to live up to the so-called ideals. We are disciples first. We are encompassed by the ever present, abiding love of God. That may not solve every problem or take away all of the pain, but it can surely transform the journey!