Lest anyone has missed it, let’s begin by recognizing that today is Mother’s Day, one of the big events of the secular calendar—a great day for long-distance telephone calls, flower sales, and family brunches. However, if you look at your Church calendar, you will see “Christian Family Sunday” in blue on today’s date. The “blue” days are days in the calendar of the United Church, with whom we have co-produced the calendar for some years. That’s about as far as Mother’s Day has made it into our official church life—in other words, almost not at all!

Observed in the United Church and some other denominations, “Christian Family Sunday” was instituted as a way to observe this day without indulging in excesses of commercialization and sentimentality. It is noteworthy that the woman who led the movement to have Mother’s Day instituted as an official observance in the USA rapidly became disillusioned with it, and actually filed a lawsuit to stop a Mother’s Day festival. (see http://www.rockies.net/~spirit/sermons/abc-mothers-day.php) Anna Jarvis and her mother before her wanted the event to be focused on non-violence and peace between nations, and the role that mothers and children could play in building a better and more peaceful world. While it may be true that Anna Jarvis’ original vision for Mother’s Day has to some extent been lost, it seems to me a happy coincidence that something of what she stood for is reflected in at one of our lectionary readings for this Fifth Sunday of Easter.

As you listened to the lesson from the First Letter of John (1 John 4:7-21), you may have noticed one word being repeated over and over. The word “love” occurs no fewer than 27 times in 15 verses. John seems to be operating on the principle that, if his readers don’t get it the first time, maybe they will by the twentieth or so. As the Sergeant Major described his instructional technique, “First I tells ‘em what I’m going to tell ‘em, then I tells ‘em, then I tells ‘em what I told ‘em.” I guess by that time the recruits should have known that they had been told!

It has been said many times, but it can never be said too much, that love is of the very essence of the Gospel. The peace and non-violence that the founders of Mother’s Day so longed for can never be a reality if people’s lives are not grounded in the same love that we behold in Christ. Family life is where it begins, where people learn at their mother’s knees what love is all about. This love is not a once-a-year “Let’s give Mom some flowers” feel-good thing, but the day-by-day commitment by people to the good of other people. We who are followers of Jesus find in his life and ministry and especially in his passion and death the great model for this love, love which began before him and before all in the Father’s love, as he sent his Son for us.

I believe it is important to remind ourselves that “love” in the sense in which John writes has nothing to do with either sentimentality or eroticism. These two influences tend to dominate people’s views of what love is all about, but the love called “agape” is something quite different. It is neither an emotion nor a physical urge. It is a decision. It is can be defined as “equal regard,” esteeming another as equally to ourselves.

As God has loved us into being, and loved us so much to give us his Son, so we are to love one another—laying down our lives for each other. That is the love upon which all true community in the name of Christ is built, beginning in our home and family life, reaching out to our neighbours and our companions in Christ, and pouring out beyond to the wider world.

The wonder of God’s love, made manifest in Christ, is not that we deserve it, but rather that we already have God’s love. We do not love in order to make God love us, but rather “We love because he first loved us.”

God’s love is his first and greatest gift to his people. We are loved, and therefore we are to love, loving the one who first loved us, and loving our neighbour as ourselves. We learn to love by being loved, first experienced in a mother’s embrace. As we grow and mature, by God’s grace we may come to understand and value the love that has been poured into our lives, to see it as a gift of God, and to respond with our own self-giving love.

Of course, this is idealistic. There are many people in this world whose experiences in childhood and later have stunted their ability to give themselves in love. We do not have to look beyond our own walls to see the effects of the failure to love—the fearful lives led by many people.

John writes:

There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear…

Perfect love? Now that sounds like setting the bar just a bit high! This is another example of how the English word doesn’t quite capture the sense of the original. “Perfect” doesn’t mean flawless, which is how most of us would interpret it. It means something like “doing what it’s supposed to do.” God gave us love, so that we might love in turn. The love that God gave us has a purpose—it’s supposed to do something, to be seen in action, and to be visible in our lives.

“Perfect love” is love that will not stop, but continues day by day to respond to the first great love, the love of our God, who sent us his Son, and the love of his Son, who laid down his life for us.

Brothers and sisters, let us love one another, and may God continue to pour into our lives the desire and the will to love as he first loved us. In our families, in our church, and in our community, let us be the instruments of God’s love in all that we do and may this perfect love cast out fear.

Amen.