We've been involved in various ways with the theme of peace-making.  Last week we dealt with conflict - generally as well as specifically within this congregation - with an invitation to enter a new no-man's land.  Today is Mothers Day and an occasion to get at peace and living out the ways of peace in another way.

It is the best of our humanity and at the heart of religion to live out and work toward peace.  And one of the ways we do this is by honoring our Mothers as our earthly source and also by looking broadly at the Source of all things.  Celebrating our Mothers and those Mother figures in our lives as well as affirming and polishing our connection to the source of all things and all people. 

Part of the background for today's remarks comes from the information we have about the life and living of Jesus.  Jesus, we know, had a Jewish Mother!  While Jesus died at a young age, put to death, executed around the age of 32 or 33, we can imagine certain portraits, snippets of family life and engagement - and more specifically the orientation to his own Mother. 

It is important to remember that Jesus was part of a family.  His often romanticized, sterilized, perfected life often leaves out the nitty-gritty, human dimensions we have come to know and affirm. The tradition's tendency to elevate and remove Jesus from the ebb and flow and heights and depths of humanity, and from first c Palestinian affairs and family life has been a disservice and, quite frankly, an embarrassment.  In learning about, imagining and suggesting certain things about Jesus' family connections and loyalties - as well as the ways he looked beyond familial ties, we can find encouragement, guidance and challenge for the living of our days. 

I've known for some time the theme for this day and have lingered in some thoughts of Mothers in preparation.  Last week I visited my Grandmother in Holland.  This is my Mother's Mother.  She is 99 years old.  Grandma Luella, or Grandma Lou (while growing up, some of the kids could not yet pronounce their 'Ls' so she was for a while known as our Chinese Grandma - Gramma Wu!) She is the senior member of our broader family and an inspiration for us all.  When my Dad and I walked in the room, we noticed she was combing her hair with a wide-toothed comb.  She was waiting for a staff person to bundle it all up in a bun with pins and clips.  As I sat in her room in the care facility, I could not help but be warmed and encouraged about all she has set into motion - with birthing four children, loving and celebrating numerous grandchildren and great children.  I felt strangely compelled to be near her, to touch her, to be more closely connected to this source of so many.  After a bit of chit-chat, I began to focus on her hair.  She has had long hair as long as I can remember.  Gray and white, flowing beautifully down her back. 

I asked my Grandmother if I could comb her hair...and of course, I really didn't wait for a reply...but took up her comb and brought it gently through her hair.  I was both pleased and humbled - for I was touching this hair so gentle and fragile...and many hairs stayed in the comb's teeth.  I almost picked the hairs out in order to keep and preserve them.  With tears behind my eyes and then down my cheeks, we made our way out.  Why am I bringing this encounter up?  To signal and invite our intimate connection with our family members, with our mothers and grandmothers - cellular, meta-physical connections - connections through blood and bone and gene! To remind us how warm human touch and encounter can be; to point to the family connections Jesus likely had as a boy and perhaps even as a teenager and young man finding his way; I describe this encounter to emphasize that peacemaking and the very enjoyment of our humanity comes, in part, with our intimate connections to our family members and with all we encounter.  Peace comes from within and then extends out to those within our families.

This reminds me of many times I have had with people or with notes I have written to those at the time of the death of a Mother.  I have often written how profound this time is and that it is the second cutting of the umbilical cord when a mother dies.  Separated physically from your mother at birth and now, at death, an earthly departure signaling a new physical distance.  Our Mothers and Mother figures are important.  Celebrating the place of Mothers and mothering is central to our being and feeling grounded and connected in life - to feeling and being linked to something other and outside ourselves.  Connecting to our origins. 

Jesus was part of a family system. There were likely many sibling squabbles and rivalries.  Likely tension between kids and parents; likely power, authority and independence issues evidenced in the family Jesus was part.  Be assured that Jesus grew up as a child, had a mother and father and had siblings.

We read in the gospel accounts that Jesus' siblings likely disregarded any notions Jesus had about being a social reformer.  They did not seem to validate his ideas or actions.  His Mother may also have not only disagreed with him but disapproved of his behavior or alternative track through life as an activist, reformer, radical or revolutionary.  We pick up this story in Matthew which describes the encounter of Jesus talking to the crowds and his mother and brothers looking to talk with him.  They may have been attempting to straiten him out - probably wanting to get him home because he was the laughing stock of many.  Jesus responds by declaring that anyone who lives the way of love, whoever lives out the heart of God, the heart of life, the heart of religion - these are my brothers and my mother.  We can take this not as an excommunicating of his own flesh and blood family members, but as a broader look and commitment to what is important.  Family ties were not ultimately most important to Jesus. Being connected to and faithful to a vision was; working toward essential social and cultural and religious revision, reformation and revolution was.  As people progressing, moving and growing, changing, we take the risks of people not approving and understanding. 

Ideals and ideas can bond people together even more strongly at times than flesh and blood; Commitments to the essential things in life often separate flesh and blood family members.  Jesus knew there were more important things than being liked and accepted and popular with his own family.

Some of you present this morning have shared over the years your difficult and emotional conflicts and disagreements with family members who think you should not be part of this community.  Those are tough and often heart-wrenching affairs.  And many of you, in the face and aftermath of these conversations and encounters, have had to affirm another set of essentials or fundamentals in your life as you discern what is truly important  - what your priorities and beliefs actually are.  We have an example from our own tradition that guides us with these kinds of situations - with Jesus and his own family members.  Flesh and blood family ties are extremely important, but not important enough or ultimate enough to limit our humanness, or to weaken our commitments to ideals, realities and visions - and to living out the heart of religion, the heart of Christianity - the qualities of love, inclusion, equality, kindness, hospitality. 

We skip toward the end of John's gospel where some of Jesus' brief words are recorded.  We ultimately will not know if Jesus really spoke these words, but we can affirm rather strongly that Jesus cared about and loved his own mother, Mary.  Can you picture the scene of women around a cross and a man, a son, being put to death?  Can you imagine that scene?  A mother...her presence there would have been the most natural thing in the world.  Certainly mothers are those with unique loving heartfulness. Jesus, I would like to firmly believe, cared about his Mom and wanted her in the company of those who would love and care for her.  Might Jesus have made provisions for her while on the cross?  Or perhaps this had all been prearranged.  Doesn't matter. 

This is a picture of and an invitation to honor, celebrate and tend to our mothers and mother figures.  As Mary's eldest son, and even in the agonizing moments of his death, he did not forget the simple things that lay near home, honoring his own mother.  And we do this, not just because we affirm that Jesus did this, but because it is the right, human and humane thing to do.  All the great traditions affirm this.  We ourselves, living out the best of our humanity, affirm this intimate, decent, satisfying orientation to those who birthed, raised and nurtured us.  We do it because it honors the heart of religion, the heart of life. Being connected to our sources.

Wayne Dyer, in his book, The Power of Intention (We've highlighted this book before and have explored some of its themes here in the morning and in the evening at the Unleashed gatherings) talks about being connected to the source of all things.  Peoples from across the globe, across the centuries have spoken about a sacred, fundamental union with all creation and with the source of all things and people.  Dyer actually uses the word sorcerer...and calls us to be sorcerers.  All a sorcerer is - is one who accesses the source - the source of all things - one who is in complete harmony and rapport with it.  One who lives in and dwells so intimately with creation and the creator...with God, within God. 

I think Jesus affirmed this larger picture and this larger access to God. He committed to the ideas, ideals that ultimately prevailed over his own familial loyalties; A connection to the source.  We might call Jesus a sorcerer - to go along with all the other designations we have given him. Jesus was so intimate and in tune with the pervasive presence of God within and beyond.

We have used the word atonement in a different way here.  At-One-ment.  Years ago we described Jesus at-one with God...or God at one with Jesus.  It's another and perhaps more accurate way to view atonement...rather than a scapegoat in the desert model and Jesus dying for our sins to appease the justice of God - with a son or anyone having to die in order for God to be reconciled with creation.  Because  Jesus was at one in this holy presence, the Source, he was able to let go of himself and all the ego drives to be at one with those around him and to be at one and live out the conditions he wished to see realized in the world.  He was connected to the source and heartbeat of life. 

What are we at-one with?  With our family members?  What about to broader ideals and visions and realities?  What are we at-one with here at CCC?  What are you at-one with in your day to day lives?  Honoring and celebrating our mothers.  So important to be about this today and everyday.  Honoring and connecting to our larger source, the pervasive life force embedded in and surrounding all things is critical, too, if we wish to flourish in our humanity, commit to peace-making and to move beyond the barriers of thought and action so plaguing our human conditions. 

As a community on the way we take seriously the things Jesus took seriously.  We also collaborate with and learn from all the peoples, disciplines and religions of this world to advance the realities of a unified, peace-filled global village. We understand the joys and challenges of loving our earthly source as well as celebrating and placing ourselves in the broader landscape and timeline of this expansive, seemingly limitless universe.  All this is more than enough to enliven, to encourage, to light a fire within our tired bodies and minds; there is more than enough to humble us, to ground us and to compel us into a deepening love affair with life and all that gives new life and birth.

Perhaps this day we might linger a bit longer in embrace; perhaps today we might soften a bit and let go of nagging anxieties and grudges in order to be tenderized in human encounter.  Perhaps today we might imagine ourselves as extensions of God, our source, and that we embody the beauty and nature and wonder of the universe.  Perhaps you might run your hands or a comb through the hair of one you love....

Considering ourselves wondrously and humbly as stardust, born in beautiful and good beginnings from the stuff of the universe and expanding cosmos, we are able to get our heads, hands and hearts around the people closest to us.  Mothers, Grandmothers, mother figures, step moms, single moms, those who raised us. Those who adopted us.....all the people in life connected to us in blood and gene - as well as with those whose kinship runs deep because of a shared connection and commitment to the most important things in life.  Amen.