Rejoicing and Weeping on Mothers Day? An Opportunity for Authentic Biblical Community

I love my mom and adore the mother of my children.  There’s no question about that. They know it, and I don’t need a special hallmark-sanctioned holiday to show them my appreciation and admiration of the amazing rock-star things they do for their kids.  However, I will go out of my way to make them both feel loved and honored this Sunday.  Okay, now that that’s all cleared up, we can get to the topic at hand.

Mother’s Day is one of those holidays that is really hard to ignore, especially for those of us in church-land who are likely to see moms honored this Sunday in a myriad of ways.  For most people this seems like an entirely appropriate thing do and other than thinking through what card or flowers to get, don’t give it too much thought.  However,  there are many people for whom Mother’s Day evokes painful memories and a sense of loss or longing that many of us simply forget to acknowledge.  Some women have no desire to have children yet on this day feel as though there is something wrong with them for lacking a desire that so many of their peers have. Some women have been longing to have children of their own but for whatever reason haven’t been blessed with kids. Others have dealt with painful losses of children to miscarriage or other circumstances. Still others come from broken homes where memories of mom are either non-existent or painful at best. A few years this was made more real to me as my wife, who had recently lost a baby, was both proud and thankful to be a mom of a beautiful little girl but stricken with grief over the child who we would never come to know in this life.  

As someone who has some say in how our community celebrates these holidays, I feel the tension of wanting to truly celebrate and make much of our awesome moms, but not wanting make a painful day for some women even more painful. If my social media feeds are any indication, I’m not the only one trying to work out this issue .  As I’ve had time to reflect this week and observe various responses, I’ve become convinced that much of the church (myself included) have forgotten how to rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn- that there is a time to weep and time to laugh.

The default position of most churches and church leaders is celebration and rejoicing.  And why not?  It’s much easier to recruit people and keep people around when you keep things light and positive, right? And, we have so much we are called to celebrate!  However, the pages of scripture are filled with lament, longing, repentance, questioning, anguish, yearning and so forth.  As human beings living in a broken world, there isn’t any way to avoid experiencing pain, loss and suffering that cause us to weep and mourn.  

But these are not realities and practices we readily embrace in much of the evangelical world.  I suspect that much of the contempt for celebrating mom’s on Mother’s Day is because those who are longing or hurting have been ignored or forgotten.  Our attitude seems to be, why can’t you just get over it and move on to something more happy? We’ve fallen into the trap of the world that says our primary goal is elimination of any discomfort as soon as possible.  Often times, we want people get over things, not because we care about their healing, but because their pain makes us feel uncomfortable and helpless.    

I’m not exactly sure what the answer is to the problem, but it certainly isn’t canceling Mother’s Day.  To me, that ignores the call to rejoice with those who rejoice.  No, somehow we must move toward authentic community where we are just as likely to enter into a person’s brokenness as we are to celebrate with them: where people are willing to celebrate with us, even if they don’t feel like it, because we’ve stood beside them when they were hurting.  If not, we offering counterfeit biblical community... and the world which needs Jesus desperately can sniff out our shallowness.  

So this Sunday, let’s make much of our moms, and tell the world how awesome they are!  But let’s remember to help heal the wounds of those who won’t be celebrating.  

What do you think?  How can you do justice to both rejoicing and weeping in our community?

From Lent to Sent: The Missional Impulse Behind Lent

From Lent to Sent:  The Missional Impulse Behind Lent

On Ash Wednesday more than one billion people will kick off their Lenten observance by laying aside any number of vices, comforts or distractions for the next six weeks leading up to the celebration of Easter.  This ancient tradition of self-denial is rooted in the account of Jesus’s 40 days of testing in the wilderness as recorded in three of the gospels.

The particular tradition in which I was raised did not observe Lent; it was something “Catholics did as an empty form of religion.”  Ok, no one actually said that out loud, but it was most assuredly understood. As I have crossed the paths of followers of Jesus from other traditions, I found Lent to be a helpful spiritual discipline.  In fact, my entire church community observes Lent in different ways each year, and it’s one of those times of the year when we feel particularly connected to one another in our pursuit of God.

However, I must admit that many times my Lenten observances have been full of either failed commitments or over zealous asceticism instead of the sort of testing Jesus experienced in his 40 days in the desert.  The post-Lenten me doesn’t emerge anything like the Jesus, who returns “in the power of the Spirit” (Luke 4:14) and drops his  good-news mission like a bombshell in saying:   18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20..........“Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”

Why is that?  Why does my “time of testing” looks so different and produce such different fruit in my life?  I suspect I’m not the only one that feels this way; finding Lent to be a helpful discipline but not altogether transformative.  

I think the problem for many of us is twofold: 1) we enter into Lent attempting to deal with areas of our lives that are too close to the surface instead of the sort of deep testing Jesus was lead to experience; and 2)  we miss the point that whatever purification or testing we endure is meant to transform us for mission.

On this first issue, most of us give some prayer and thought to what thing(s) we might give up during Lent, recognizing these things might be standing in the way of something God wants to do in us. This is certainly a noble thing to do!  However, Jesus’s time of testing was aimed at the core of who he was and the deepest of temptations:  the temptation to satisfy our appetites by other means than God’s provision, the temptation to earn approval from men rather than accept our identity from our Father, and the temptation to satisfy our ambition by gaining influence through means other than the Father’s authority.  In his book, Multiplying Missional Leaders, Mike Breen lays out these temptations- appetite, approval, and ambition-  as the primary temptations all of us will face in this life.  In each case, we are tempted to substitute or short circuit God’s rightful place and process in our lives.  Jesus, being fully human as much as he was fully God, faced those same temptations.  The Holy Spirit, Luke 4:1 tells us, lead Jesus into the wilderness for this time of testing- this was no time of simple reflection and correction of bad habits.  It was a time of evaluation and deep character formation, of overcoming these core temptations.  When Jesus emerges, it’s clear that he’s fully submitted to the Father’s will and his mission on this earth.  Neither his own ambitions, nor the approval of men, nor the comfort of created things will stand in his way.  

This deep character formation should be our aim in Lent. It is good to give up things that are unnecessary, but it’s better to submit  to the Holy Spirit’s leading and face these core temptations head on.  In fact, Jesus makes these clear conditions for discipleship- We must die to ourselves and our personal ambition and safety (Matt 16:24), we must be free from others (Luke 14:26), and we must be willing to give up everything to follow him (Luke 14:33). The point is this:  don’t let Lent be about anything less than being formed into an authentic follower of Jesus.

This brings me to the second point. Sometimes we mistakenly see the spiritual formation that happens in Lent an as end in itself.  The goal that we seek to attain is simply some higher level of spirituality by denying ourselves for a few weeks.  What I said above should make it clear that character formation is of utmost importance; however, if that character formation stops short of participating in mission- “announcing and demonstrating the Kingdom of God” or “participating with God in the renewal of all things” -then we have stopped short of being formed into the image of Christ.  Jesus, emerged from his time of testing with power and authority to engage the world.  The purifying work that God does in us as individuals is a part of something much bigger - the renewal of all things! We are made to be like Jesus to do what Jesus did and participate in his work in the world.  Being formed in the image of Christ implies that we also participate in mission.  Therefore, the result of Lent should be more than making us better, more spiritual people.        

The result of Lent should be that we are Sent just like Jesus was.

I won’t be satisfied with Lent as a simple spiritual exercise or part of my early springtime ritual.  To paraphrase Dallas Willard, I want to learn from Jesus how to be like Jesus.  I want my deepest desires to be uprooted and submitted to him so I can embrace my calling as salt and light in the world. 

 Will you join me? Will you allow the Holy Spirit to work in you over the next few weeks to produce deep character transformation and prepare you for Mission? If so, what is your plan? How will it be different than the past?
Feel free to post questions of comments!