Easter 4C-25
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27). Cattle must be driven, but sheep can be led. They hear the shepherd’s voice whom they have learned to trust. They recognize the shepherd and remember his kindness. Loyalty, trust, and faith forge a bond between them. From ancient times, the relationship between sheep and shepherd are a symbol of the reality and power of love to shape our lives.
Most people first experience unconditional love not through the image of a man, but through the image of a woman—in most cases, their mother. Most often, the mother is the one who first parts the veil and allows us to glimpse what love is, through experiences of grounding, intimacy, tenderness, and safety—things that most of us associate with God at God’s best. (Richard Rohr, “Our First Glimpse of Love,” Daily Meditations, 5/11/25)
“If all we have known of the divine is God the Father, we are walking with a spiritual limp, yes, even those of us who were lucky enough to be raised to see “God the Father” as loving and tender rather than aloof or stern…. The masculinity of God is not the culprit here. Imaging God as male is valuable and good for our spiritual selves…. But left unbalanced, a belief in a God who is exclusively male can lead us down a road of legalism, perfectionism, fear, self-criticism, and a plaguing sense of unworthiness. Sadly, many of our religious experiences have been marked by such things.” (Rohr) “On the other hand, when we integrate the divine feminine into our understanding of God, we find we have an easier time internalizing compassion, inclusivity, radical acceptance, justice for the outcast, and unconditional love.” (Shannon K. Evans, Rewilding Motherhood: Your Path to an Empowered Feminine Spirituality, Brazos Press, 2021, p. 165.)
We learn to trust in love, and how to love, like sheep following shepherds, through the people who show us that love. Most often, if we are lucky, through mothers and fathers—but really—by anyone who steps up and shows up. When a young woman, we’ll call her, Nasreen, heard the call of our shepherd, she could not have felt ready or prepared. Life circumstances thrust her into a situation which demanded that she decide. Could she be compassionate? Would she be kind? Could she be shelter? Would she be love?
Nasreen found herself thrust into the role of guardian of her niece and nephew Aisha and Amir. Their birth mother was one of the tens of thousands of Afghan citizens who worked as interpreters, translators, and in other key roles during the U.S. military’s two-decade mission in Afghanistan. In return, the U.S. government issued them Special Immigrant Visas for Afghan allies, including Amir and Aisha’s parents.
A week before the family was set to leave Afghanistan, Amir and Aisha’s parents were murdered by the Taliban. When threats of retaliation put the children’s lives in grave danger, Nasreen stepped forward to protect them, even though she was just a young adult herself.
There are many ways to define what it means to be a mother. For Nasreen, it meant rising to meet the needs of two grieving children in the face of unimaginable loss. She became their protector, advocate, and caregiver—in many ways a mother figure—when they needed it most.
After the fall of the Afghan government, Nasreen courageously fled with the children to Pakistan while their U.S.-based family worked with the Global Refuge Legal Services team (a ministry of the ELCA) to navigate the immigration process. The family’s turbulent journey came to a happy and emotional ending with the safe arrival of Amir, Aisha and Nasreen on United States soil. Today, Nasreen and her family find themselves in immigration limbo after the new administration moved to revoke the legal status of some refugees who were allowed into the U.S. for urgent humanitarian reasons. Nasreen doesn’t have children of her own, but she characterizes the call of our shepherd to love and to love fiercely. She embodies the true spirit of Mother’s Day.
The internet will tell you Mother’s Day began in 1908 when Anna Jarvis decided to honor her mother. But “Mothers’ Day”—with the apostrophe not in the singular spot, but in the plural—began decades earlier in the 1870s, in the aftermath of the Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War that left so many families grieving the dead. Writer and reformer, Julia Ward Howe, composer of The Battle Hymn of the Republic, urged women to take control of politics from the men who had permitted such carnage. Mothers’ Day was not designed to encourage people to be nice to their mothers. It was part of women’s effort to gain power to change society [and to promote world peace].” (Heather Cox Richardson, Letters from an American, May 11, 2024).
The Civil War and Mothers’ Day was the springboard that launched the Woman Suffrage movement. Fifty years of advocacy and struggle ended with the right to vote in 1920. We proudly point to that human dynamo, Emmy Evald, the daughter of the first pastor and the wife of the second pastor of Immanuel, who took part in the movement in Illinois and in Washington D.C., and famously hosted Susan B. Anthony in the church parsonage. And yet, it took another fifty-five years, in 1975, that Mildred Nelson would become the first woman at Immanuel to serve on the church council.
The early church embraced and affirmed the servant leadership of many women. One of them, named Tabitha, is explicitly identified as a disciple in our reading from the Book of Acts. She is the only woman in scripture called a disciple. Elsewhere, another woman, Junia, is called an apostle. Many other women were leaders, financiers, and pillars of their communities. Yet sadly, it wasn’t long before the voice of Jesus our shepherd became muted and covered over by the patriarchy of the dominant culture.
Jesus prayed that we may all be one. According to St. Paul the early church was eclectic and inclusive, “neither Jew or Greek, slaver nor free, male and female, but all are one in Christ” (Galatians 3:28). Even so, the persistent, insistent, and pernicious power of patriarchy remains a core teaching of many, if not most, Christian churches throughout the world today. Many Christians today walk with a spiritual limp.
So yes, on this Mother’s Day, let’s be nice to our mom. The counter-cultural egalitarian and inclusive Christian community of the early church was breathtaking—but that’s what Easter looks like when we respond to the call of Jesus the Good Shepherd. Christ is our shepherd and our sheepfold, a living sanctuary of hope and grace. The only absolute law among the Jesus’ sheep is the law of love—including love of our enemies. “Partners in [Christ’s] new creation, seeking peace in every nation, may we faithful followers be” (“Praise the Lord, Rise up Rejoicing,” ELW # 544).