The Gospel for the 6th Sunday of Easter is John 14:23-29
I don’t often bring Mothers’ Day into the pulpit. And I excuse myself on two grounds: first, it’s not a religious observance. And second, what message is there for a preacher to bring on Mothers’ Day?
This year, I want to give it a try. That’s largely because Wendell Berry came to town a few days ago. Like some of you, Diana and I were regaled by that 76-year-old poet-essayist-novelist-critic-activist-farmer, and for me the crowning moment of that evening was his reading one of his poems, at the request of someone in the audience who had come armed with her favorite Wendell Berry poem.
Hunting for it later in the anthologies I have at home, I found not that poem but another, entitled “To My Mother”, published in his 1994 volume “Entries”, when Berry was sixty. And if you’re thinking you’re about to hear it, you’re right.
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.
So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,
prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,
and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it
already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
Now, that could be a good moment to just sit down and leave the rest of this sermon up to you.
But I have it in mind to read that poem once more before I’m done (if Mr. Berry were reading it, this might not be necessary—but I’d like one more chance to do justice to his words), and between now and then I’d like to visit our Gospel.
There we hear Jesus say, “I have said (many) things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”
The unique impact of inspired words, Jesus speaking to his disciples, Wendell Berry speaking to his audience, embodies a message not just by the rightness of the words, but by the truth and integrity, the beauty and the appeal, of the speaker. The Word becomes flesh before it becomes memory, and the Word becomes indelible memory when inspiration is conveyed by incarnation. Truth becomes personal when the truth-bearer succeeds in conveying to us love. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things, comprehends all things.
Jesus has done this embodying for his disciples, by the time we hear these words of his. And now he prepares them for his departure by assuring them that there is more to come, more experience of truth, beauty, inspiration, and love, because God will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to keep teaching them/us and to remind them/us of all that Jesus has said and done and been. The Spirit, the Advocate, is the very presence of the One we can’t do without.
Which convinces me, all the more, that we’re right to conceive of the Holy Spirit as revealing the feminine in God. If you have your mother as advocate, you are represented by one who may know you better than you know yourself.
An advocate is one who intercedes for another person, pleads the case of a person, defends that person, sees and speaks the truth of that person, to ensure justice and wellbeing for that person.
The most and best I know of motherhood I learn from watching the mother of my/our children. She knows them in full, intuits what may not yet be explained, finds ways to teach them by calling to mind what they know and what she knows, all in a knowing so complete that by it can be seen the best that they, her/our children, might do and be.
I think it’s time to hear Wendell Berry’s words again.
To My Mother
I was your rebellious son,
do you remember? Sometimes
I wonder if you do remember,
so complete has your forgiveness been.
So complete has your forgiveness been
I wonder sometimes if it did not
precede my wrong, and I erred,
safe found, within your love,
prepared ahead of me, the way home,
or my bed at night, so that almost
I should forgive you, who perhaps
foresaw the worst that I might do,
and forgave before I could act,
causing me to smile now, looking back,
to see how paltry was my worst,
compared to your forgiveness of it
already given. And this, then,
is the vision of that Heaven of which
we have heard, where those who love
each other have forgiven each other,
where, for that, the leaves are green,
the light a music in the air,
and all is unentangled,
and all is undismayed.
