Mark Twain said as he read a mistaken account of his death in
the newspaper that the report was highly exaggerated. This
statement will hold true for much of what is going to be said from
pulpits across the land about motherhood. It will be highly
exaggerated because it will be unrealistic about the fact that mothers
are really not un-fallen angels, but they are sinners like the rest of
us. Fred Smith put it like this: "Many a minister on Mother's Day
allows his emotions to run away with his ethics. Glittering
generalities fall from his tongue which, weighed in the balances, are
found to be wanting in truth. It is not required of any man that he
become a liar for the sake of his mother on Mother's Day."
The facts allow us to choose either alternative of praising
mothers or persecuting them. After all, if its the hand that rocks the
cradle that rules the world, then mothers had better stop rocking the
cradles and take hands off, for their rule is shaking the very
foundations. Of course, it is unjust and highly exaggerated to
suggest that mothers are the cause of the world's mess. This is no
more valid than the reverse exaggeration that deifies motherhood.
Motherhood, like every other human subject, stands under both the
judgment and mercy of God. It is a source of both good and evil.
Mothers are the source of life, but also of death since it was Eve
who sinned and brought death into the world upon all her children.
Mothers are the source of so many of our blessings, yet mothers in
their ignorance can be a cause for their children to be perverted in
many ways. Motherhood did not escape the fall. Listen to the
account of king Ahaziah in II Chron. 22:3, "He also walked in the
ways in the house of Ahab, for his mother was his counselor in doing
wickedly. He did what was evil in the sight of the Lord.
The mother of Salome compelled her to use her body in a dance
to lure Herod into promising her the head of John the Baptist. Here
are just two of the many examples of how mothers guide their sons
and daughters into the pit of damnation. This did not end with
Bible days. You can read daily of mothers neglecting their children,
or abandoning them. The world is filled with evidence to smear the
name of motherhood. Just one more example comes from Edmund
Bergler in his book Money And Emotional Conflicts. He tells about
the numerous problems in the world just because of inheritance in
relation to parents and children. He writes, "Through the course of
the years I have analyzed many neurotics with the 'inheritance
complex.' They had mothers who acted as if their sons, daughters,
sons and daughters-in-law had no life of their own but were born for
the one purpose to please them, to cater to them, and to suit them
exclusive of all others.... Said one such victims of his mother's
emotional dictatorship, "I have either to postpone my life until my
mother dies, or renounce my inheritance."
We could go on and on looking at negative realities, but we are
not interested in a down with motherhood campaign. Our aim is to
make it perfectly clear that all the bad things you can say about
mothers will never alter the fact that we love them, praise them,
honor them, and will continue to do so to the end of time. Is this
sheer, blind, unreasoning fanaticism? Not at all. It is our awareness
that is bad as they can be they are still the best there is. They have
the potential for infinite good and love, and examples are numerous
of their success. There are Hannahs who dedicate their Samuels
even before birth to God's service. There are Eunices who train up
their Timothy's in the knowledge of God's word. God could find no
better comparison than mothers when He sought to express His
tender and compassionate nature. In Isa. 66:13 He says, "As one
whom his mother comforts, so will I comfort you." No one calls
forth more gratitude and poetry than mothers. Edgar Ellen Poe
wrote to his mother:
In the heaven's above,
The angels, whispering to one another,
Can find, amid their burning terms of love,
None so devotional as that of mother.
No amount of negative evidence and change the positive
evidence, and so we have in mothers a great paradox. In them we
have a class of persons who are a part of this evil world, but who are
lifted up and exalted above the world because they are the objects of
great love.
There are thousands of stars that shine at night,
Thousands of flowers that make summer bright,
Thousands of dew-drops the morning greet,
Thousands of birds with voices sweet,
Thousands of bees in purple clover,
But only one mother the whole world over.
Jesus had only one literal mother, but He did not limit the
concept of motherhood to Mary. He said that whoever does the will
of God is His brother, sister and mother. How often do Christian
mothers ever think of themselves as mothers of Christ? It sounds
fantastic doesn't it? Jesus makes the whole of the body of believers,
one big family. Now in our text Paul goes a step further and
introduces and even broader concept of motherhood. Paul says that
the Jerusalem above is the mother of us all. By all, of course, he
means all believers, or all who are of the seed of Abraham. Here is a
mother we are hardly aware of, and yet it is a biblical truth of great
value. The Fatherhood of God is clear and well known, and that we
also have a spiritual mother as the family of God is an obscure idea,
for it is ignored and undeveloped in our thinking.
We need both a mother and father for our physical life, but we
never consider that we need both also for our spiritual life. If God is
our Father, as believers, who then is our mother? Who is this
Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all? It is none other than
Christ's own bride the Church. The New Testament is clear on this
that the Jerusalem above is the symbol of the Church. In Heb. 12:22
we read, "But you have come to Mt. Zion and to the city of the living
God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal
gatherings." The Christian on earth is already a citizen of that
heavenly city. Paul says in Phil. 3:20, "Our common wealth is in
heaven." Much of the church is already in heaven with Christ the
head reigning with Him over the universal kingdom from the throne
in the New Jerusalem. We who are here below are equally apart of
this heavenly Jerusalem.
As Jerusalem was the center of Judaism, so it is the center of the
church, which is the New Israel. That is where our king reigns, and
from which we receive our orders as the militant church. This
Jerusalem above, which is the mother of us all, is the whole body of
Christ on earth and in heaven. This is almost universally
acknowledged. Listen to the two great reformers. Luther said,
"Wherefore, Jerusalem, our free mother, is the church itself, the
spouse of Christ, of whom we all are gendered." Calvin said, "To
the church under God, we owe it that we are 'born again'... and
from her we obtain the milk and the food by which we are afterward
nourished."
This extremely complicated allegorical argument of Paul is filled
with fascinating theological implications, but for us now we are only
going to concentrate on his statement that the church is the mother
of us all. The Bible says that we must be born from above, but we
never stop to consider the mother involved in this birth. We never
consider that the church is the womb in which the seed of the Holy
Spirit becomes fertile and brings forth new life. A child of God can
only be born through the womb of the church. The bride of Christ
is the mother of us all in that no person can enter the kingdom of
God apart from the church. She is the instrument by which the new
birth is made possible.
The Holy Spirit impregnated the church at Pentecost, and
immediately she gave birth to 3000 children of God. This fantastic
fertility and fruitfulness is what Paul is getting at in verse 27. The
church is compared to Sarah who was barren, but who by God's
grace gave birth to a son. So the line of Abraham through Isaac was
to be very fruitful, and even Gentiles by the millions would be born
into that family line by the Spirit. All Christians are fruit of the
womb of Sarah, who is compared with the church. We see the
perfect continuity of the people of God in the Old and New
Testaments. The Jerusalem above is the new and the true Israel.
The Jews who have not accepted Christ have denied their heritage,
for only those in Christ are of the seed of Abraham.
Symbolism is confusing but fascinating, for if the church is
mother of us all and we are the church, we are all a part of the
concept of motherhood. All of us as Christians are potential
mothers, and we can give birth to new life when we are filled with
the Spirit. When the church is out of fellowship with God there is no
fruitfulness, and new birth do not take place. The success of the
church depends upon good motherhood where we give birth and
take good care of new children in the kingdom. Honesty compels us
to be just as clear on this mother as with our physical mother. The
conclusion will also be the same that the church, like mothers, has
both good and bad points. But Jesus has no other plan of salvation
but that which the church offers to the world.
Everything bad the world can say about the church is usually
true, but there is no substitute. As a manuscript from the Middle
Ages put it, "The church is something like Noah's Ark. If it weren't
for the storm outside you couldn't stand the smell inside." The
stench of self-righteousness, pride and hypocrisy, just to name a few
of the odors, are abominable to the nostrils of God. The pettiness
and inconsistency of believers is a burden to the saints themselves,
but the fact remains, there is no alternative. She is the one mother
that God uses to bring new people into the kingdom. To seek
elsewhere for an answer to man's greatest needs is like jumping off
the arch because you don't like the way the animals are behaving.
You stick with the Ark or you drown. There is no other choice.
There is no other hope of salvation.
Emerson said, "If I should go out of church whenever I hear a
false sentiment I could never stay there 5 minutes. But why come
out? The street is as false as the church." The church is under
attack from without and from within. The evidence against the
church is just as valid as that against motherhood, but it is folly to
reject motherhood, for there is no other way. We have only one
choice, and that is to love and honor the church, and to labor to
bring her up to the ideal. Each of us are a part of this mother, and
each of us is responsible to make her what God wants her to be.
Christ died for the church, not because she was worthy, but because
He loved her. We are to live for her and fight for her, not because
she is worthy, but also because we love her and her husband, the
Lord Jesus Christ.
All of its imperfections do not change the fact that it is the only
body on earth, which represents heaven. It is the only group in time
with a message from eternity. The Ark was the only vessel of
salvation in the flood. If you didn't like the wind blowing through
the poorly fitted windows, or the leaks here and there in the side,
you could gripe, but you had to stick with the Ark or perish. We can
complain about the false and follies of the church, but if this is all we
do, and do not also defend, praise and serve her, we will drown in
the sea of sin with no other vessel to rescue us. On this day when we
honor our physical mothers in spite of all their negatives realties, let
us not neglect to love and praise the body and bride of Christ, which
is the church, the heavenly Jerusalem, the mother of us all.
