Today is the sixth Sunday of Easter. It is also Mother’s Day and Rogation Sunday. So we get to celebrate the resurrection. We set aside time to remember our mothers. Rogation Sunday is the Sunday before Ascension Day when priests would go around the bounds of the parish blessing the fields for a fruitful harvest. I wonder how I can tie all of this together into a sermon? As it turns out, every year I buy my mother a plant for Mother’s Day. In my actions I remember new life and growing things while I offer a token of appreciation to my mother! Somehow it all comes together.

         All of these observances are later additions to the words of Jesus. In today’s gospel he is making his farewell address to the disciples on the night he is about to enter his time of trial and passion. We sort of step backwards in time to remember what Jesus said before he left the disciples. They were confused and afraid and Jesus reminds them of those things that are most important.

         The final instructions are, “love one another.” Love is the most important thing. There are plenty of distractions and dangers in life, but in the end the most important thing is that we love each other. This is the foundation on which we build our families. This is how our mothers help us begin a rich and satisfying life. We learn how to connect to others as we learn love from our mothers and parents so we can grow into independent adults. We might learn facts and data in school. We learn how to work in the world in our jobs. We learn how to explore our faith together in this community. We learn how to love by being loved.

         As parents we want to give our children every good thing. We buy them nice clothes and try to provide a safe and comfortable home. We try to live in a good place and offer them opportunities to try new things and discover their talents. The most important thing we give our children is love. We can miss many of the other things we wish we could give our children, and they will still grow and thrive. If we give everything else and fail to love, our children will be lost.

         This is a lesson for us as a community that thinks of itself as an extended family. We have our dreams for this place. We wish we could fix all the broken things in this building. We want to hand down our treasures to the next generation. We worry that we have lost our place of prestige in the wider world. If we could fix all of this and we lack love – what is the point? If we never really solve every problem, but we manage to love one another, we may not preserve the church we know, but we will have given the most important gift.

         Our purpose is to share God’s gift of love and reconciliation. It would be nice if the world suddenly became interested in Anglican chant and prayers written in the days of Shakespeare. We’d love it if people could get a taste of the beauty and majesty of our worship. We are tapping into the deep roots of the past every Sunday we worship. We pray with generations of faithful Christians. We succeed, not in our perfection of some plan of worship, but in how we help people approach God and apprehend God’s deep love for them.

         Our simple goal is to fill the church with more people (who will hopefully help us with all of our expenses.) When we hear stories about people being open to God’s work of reconciling and loving the world, the outcome is often unexpected. Peter was surprised. God showed him a dream of unclean animals and commanded Peter to eat, God then commanded Peter that he must never declare unclean what God has made clean. Immediately, Peter is sent to preach to a devout gentile man and his household. Cornelius and his whole community accept Peter’s words with joy. They receive the Holy Spirit just as the disciples did on Pentecost – so they are all baptized. Peter was assuming that all Christians must first be Jews. God always has bigger plans than we do.

         We have many immediate challenges. Perhaps the most difficult challenge is the ability to keep being faithful while things are not easy. Even as we have to make difficult budget decisions, we also need to widen our vision. We have to ask more than “how will we survive?” We have to ask, “Who else needs to be here?” We have to keep loving even as we are trying to figure out the answers. We have to keep seeking reconciliation even as we don’t quite know what will happen next.

         This seems difficult. We’ve got too much responsibility. We need to remember that love is not the burden. What we need is the courage to love even when we don’t have easy answers and certain paths to follow.

         We have seen this. Consider how a new mother loves her child. Except for extraordinary circumstances, a mother wants to hold and cuddle her child. New parents are obsessed with their new family member. They make every sacrifice (including sleep) to provide and protect. No one makes them they want to do it. Part of the learning for new parents is finding a balance. The first impulse is to love – without knowing the right way – without knowing the outcome.

         I have a priest friend who received a sort of mezuzah on his ordination. Instead of the traditional Hebrew scripture, it contained a portion of the gospel reading today – “You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last …” This is encouraging and humbling. God has chosen us to share in the work of reconciling the world. It’s not about us; it’s about God’s love. God did not call us to feel good about the accolades we obtain. God loves us first so that we can offer God’s love to everyone we meet.

         This is the fruit that God promises. We know love and we share it. Nothing else matters as much as this.