310 The Common Relationship

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “The Common Relationship” originally shared on May 8, 2024. It was the 310^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   What relationships do you value most? There is one relationship that defines every other relationship, and we in the Body of Christ all have it in common. Today, we’re going to find out what it is.

   The LA County Fair is going on now, not far away from here, in Pomona.

   It has petting zoos that make you think that farm life is all about cute and cuddly farm animals, concerts for commercial music fans, and exhibition halls, some with contests and judged skills in the arts. And a carnival.

   Circus side shows used to be the things that got people talking to their friends. But today it’s things like 70 carnival rides to challenge the iron-clad stomach folks, 29 carnival games for those who think they can beat the odds, and 20 food concessions, many with bizarre carnival foods like, I don’t know, a stick of butter, fried in butter. Things like that These are things that are designed to get people talking in a way that will make others want to also go to the fair.

   Word-of-mouth is how churches grow too. But we actually offer something important, something real, something that endures forever. Something that transforms us into the dwelling place of God.

   Do you remember when you were born? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are alive and healthy? Do you remember when you were baptized and born again? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are a child of God, spiritually alive and healthy?

   This coming Sunday is Mother’s Day. I mention this as a public service. Do not forget. I repeat. Do not forget. She’s your mother. Honor her.

   Don’t be like the family that saw their mother get up from Mother’s Day dinner, pick up some plates, and head right to the kitchen sink.

   “Oh, no, no,” they said. “Don’t do that. This is your day, mom. Relax. Take it easy.” they said. “Just leave them there. You can do the dishes tomorrow.” 😊

   Don’t do that. Honor your mother. It’s a commandment. It’s about a key relationship. And the 10 Commandments are all about relationships.

   Have you ever looked closely at traditional art showing Moses with the 10 commandments? You might have noticed something odd.

   God gave the 10 commandments on two stone tablets, but the commandments are not always represented with five on each tablet.

   Instead, you’ll often see the numbers 1-3 on the tablet to the left, and the numbers 4-10 on the tablet to the right.

   Why? Because the first three commandments have to do with our relationship with God, and the remaining seven have to do with our relationships with one another.

   And The Fourth Commandment, the very first commandment in that second group is:

   “Honor your father and your mother.”

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, describes the meaning of this commandment in this way, “We are to fear (note: respect) and love God, so that we neither despise nor anger our parents and others in authority, but instead honor, serve, obey, love, and respect them.”

   When one of my aunts died (she was my mother’s sister) one of her sons, a cousin, was going through her papers and he found something that he thought I would like. It was a letter from my mom, when she was a young married woman, to her sister, my aunt, that started “Great news!” The great news in that letter was of her happiness that she was expecting her first child. Me. Can you imagine what a great gift that was to me?

   I’ll be thinking about the love of my mother for all her children this Mother’s Day, but I’ll be thinking in particular about my mother’s bedroom set fund.

   My mom had a beautiful coloratura soprano voice. She sang regularly at church.

   She was also one of the go-to soloists in our town for weddings and funerals. Whenever she received an honorarium for singing, the money went into her bedroom set fund.

   She taught voice lessons in our home, too. Everything she received for teaching went into that bedroom set fund. Her goal, her dream, was to buy a new bedroom set for her and our dad.

   But, whenever any of us kids had some need that wasn’t in the budget, from jeans to college tuition, it came out of that fund. No questions asked and without hesitation.

   She finally was able to buy that bedroom set, but it wasn’t until I was in college.

   I learned a lot about love and sacrifice from my mother.

   My wife, Rev. Sally Welch has been a wonderful mother to our son and has made innumerable sacrifices out of love along the way. I have learned a lot about love and sacrifice from her, too.

   In addition, our mothers are often our first teachers and, in many places, are the first evangelists we know in life.

   Paul writes to Timothy, a young pastor, about Timothy’s mother and grandmother in his second letter to him, in 2 Timothy 1:5,

⁵ I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you.

   He spells out how Timothy has experienced the witness of his mother and grandmother a couple of chapters later in 2 Timothy 3:14-15,

¹⁴ But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, ¹⁵ and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. 

   Many of us could tell similar stories about the mothers in our lives, but not everyone. And, for some of us, Mothers Day will be a painful day. Some of us grew-up without a mother, but who had people who served as mothers and sometimes that was their fathers. Some had mothers who were not so loving. Some of us desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t. Some of us no longer have their mothers and miss them.

   All those feelings about Mother’s Day are an expression of a deeply important relationship.

   Jesus had a mother, and he loved her and provided for her. We don’t hear about his “step-father” Joseph after approximately Jesus’13^th birthday. But when Jesus was on the cross, about 20 years later, in unbelievable agony, his thoughts turned to his mother, in John 19:26-27,

²⁶ When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” ²⁷ Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

   In this third of his seven last statements from the cross, Jesus expresses care for his mother, as her first-born son, and he entrusts her to one of his disciples out of concern for her spiritual care, as well as for her material security.

   We love our mothers out of gratitude for all they have done for us, but most especially because of the deeply bonded relationship we share, both physically and spiritually.

   We love Jesus out of gratitude for all that he has done for us, but most especially because of what he has done for us on the cross that restored the living relationship with God for which we were created.

   John 17:6-19 is the reading from the Gospels that will be read in the vast majority of churches in the world this coming Sunday. It’s Jesus praying for his disciples at his last supper; it’s sometimes called his High Priestly prayer. Jesus is praying for us. It begins with verse 6,

⁶ “I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word.

   It’s about relationships: Jesus, God the Son, fully God and fully human being, in his relationship with God the Father, and our relationship with Jesus, and our relationship with God the Father revealed through Jesus.

   Is your head spinning? That’s because, in its purest form, our relationship with God is not an idea but a transformed life. We often live that life before we understand it.

   Jesus prays about what has taken place in his public ministry, and then prays about his death, asking that, after his death, his disciples will be protected for a purpose, in verse 11,

¹¹ And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.

   He prays for our protection in God’s name, that is, in the full living reality of God shared by The Father, The Son, and The Holy Spirit, one God, the Holy Trinity. How many God’s do we believe in? One. In Three Persons. That is a relationship that is tighter than we can even conceive.

   He prays to God the Father that his disciples might be one, “as we are one”. That’s a unity of relationship.

   Jesus prays for Christian unity as the relationship with Jesus that we all have in common.

   We are like the spokes on a wheel, with Jesus as the hub. The closer we get to Jesus, the closer we get to one another. The farther we go from Jesus, the farther we get from one another.

   Christian unity isn’t finding common ground through compromise; that’s politics. Our unity is us living in the gift of a common relationship with the one true living God.

   When we get to the part of the worship service called the “Passing of the Peace”, we’re not just sending a friendly wave or catching up on what’s happened during the week. We are saying to one another that “we’re good”. We aren’t holding any grudges, as in the words of Jesus in Matthew 5:23-24,

23 So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, 24 leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift.

   We are our relationship with God, and our relationships with one another are an expression of that defining relationship. We come to worship God because we live in a common relationship with Him. That’s the Church.

   We are in the world, Jesus says, but we are not of the world. And, as God the Father has sent God the Son into the world, Jesus has sent us into the world, from the outside.

    Jesus concludes, in verses 14-19,

¹⁴ I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁵ I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. ¹⁶ They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. ¹⁷ Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. ¹⁸ As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. ¹⁹ And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.

   We are sanctified, we are made holy, in the truth, and the Truth is a person. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. We are sanctified, we are made holy, in the truth, and God’s word is truth, and Jesus is the Word made flesh.

   Jesus is our Savior! He has restored the relationship with God in which we live that has changed everything. He has given us the relationship that defines everything else about us. He has restored the relationship that binds us together as the whole Church on earth, the Body of Christ.

   What does this mean for us in the work of Jesus on the cross? John describes what this means in the very first chapter of his Gospel, in John 1:12-13,

¹² But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, ¹³ who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.

   It means that we are born separated from God by sin. And then we are born again, reconciled because of the mighty acts of God’s grace through our repentance and in the gift of faith, in a living relationship with the one true living God.

   When a woman is expecting the birth of a child it’s fashionable today for a couple to say, “We’re pregnant”. Well, OK, it encourages the dad to feel involved in the process, but, “Really?”. You know who is going to be going through what here.

   So, I’ve seen it proposed that birthdays should primarily be a celebration for the mother. I mean, she did do the work, or should I say “labor”. There is nothing that we did to get born. 😊 And, there is nothing that we did or can do to be reconciled to God and be born again.

   Our relationship with God has been restored at the cross.

   We thank God each day for our mothers and that we were born. We thank God each day for God’s self, for Jesus Christ our Savior, who sacrificed his life to restore our right relationship with God, who prayed that the Church may be one, as He and The Father are one, in an indestructible relationship that cannot be taken away. We are born again, made a new creation, reconciled to God and to one another, made to be the Church, and defined by a common living relationship with the one true living God! That is the relationship that defines us.

   That is the relationship that we all have in common, the relationship that we all have in Jesus. That’s the common relationship that makes the Church one.