412 Who and Whose

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Who and Whose”, originally shared on May 8, 2026. It was the 412^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’s the difference between knowing who we are and knowing whose we are? Today, we’re going to find out.

   What makes you, you?

   There are lots of factors, probably too many to measure, much less to know.

   But, if you are like most human beings, I’m guessing that a big chunk of the person you are comes from your mother.

   For some of us that influence will not bring happy memories this coming Sunday. Mother’s Day will not be a happy day, and we acknowledge that.

   I’ve read, and maybe you’ve seen it too, that the crime rate declines on Mother’s Day. It does make sense but, it turns out, it’s not true. The crime rate doesn’t change, except that there is a slight uptick in domestic violence. Let that one sink in for a minute.

   It’s a nearly global holiday, usually held in the Spring, and generally highly commercialized.

   For most of us, though, it will mean what we consider to be a strong relationship and/or beloved memories and positive influences.

   Do you remember when your mother gave you birth? Does it matter if you remember, given that you are alive, active, and healthy?

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

   Today, we’re going to talk about who we are and Whose we are.

   Our mothers are often our first teachers and, in many places, are the first evangelists that 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. Some of us grew up without a mother but 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 impactful and meaningful 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, near death, and in unbelievable agony, his thoughts turn 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 that third of his seven last statements from the cross, Jesus expresses responsibility and 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 and care for them 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.

   That is the kind of relationship with which we love God. It forms us and it contributes greatly to making us the kind of people we are.

   But our relationship with God goes even deeper than our relationship with our mother or our father. It makes us who we are at the level of our truest selves, deeper than anyone can know but God.

   A parent can do everything right and still be torn apart when their children take the wrong paths.

   All they can do is pray. But that’s not a small thing.

   Augustine of Hippo, a city in North Africa, lived in the early centuries of the Christian Church. He started out as a pagan, a womanizer, and a drunk. His father had a violent temper. He was a hedonist, but his Christian mother, Monica, didn’t give up on him.

   She prayed for his conversion for 17 years and, in 387 A.D., he became a Christian through the influence of his mother and St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.

   Augustine went on to write some of the great works of Western literature, still read today, like City of God and Confessions. He was declared a saint: St. Augustine.

   His mother was also declared a saint: St. Monica, or Santa Monica. You might have heard of the local town named for her. 😊

   A parent can love their child but not be able to make them new. That’s why they pray for their children: because God can. And God does make people new who receive Him.

   And what happens to the prayers of the faithful? They do not go before God alone. They are amplified by the Holy Spirit, as Paul describes what happens to our prayers, in Romans 8:26-27,

²⁶ Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. ²⁷ And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

   We see how that happens in the Gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world today, John 14:15-21.

   It starts like this, in John 14:15-17,

¹⁵ “If you love me, you will keep my commandments. ¹⁶ And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever. ¹⁷ This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you.

   Who we are comes from Whose we are, and our fundamentally re-forming relationship comes not from our family, but from God. It’s a gift.

   Jesus is speaking these words during the last supper, in what Bible scholars call “The Farewell Discourse.” Jesus is saying, “Goodbye.” Literally.

   The word “goodbye” is a contraction of the old English words, “God be with ye”, in modern English “God be with you.” It was said as a prayer for someone’s protection. This is what Jesus speaks about in this week’s Gospel text.

   Jesus is telling his disciples, including us that, if we keep his commandments, God will send us “another Advocate”.

   What is this “advocate” that he tells his disciples that he will send? It’s the name given in some English speaking countries for a lawyer.

   The English word “advocate” comes from the Latin words “ad” (to, toward) and “vocare” (“to speak”). These words combined form the word “advocatus” meaning “a pleader on one’s behalf”, like a lawyer.

   That’s what Jesus promises that God will give us, and it happened with the gift of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, the birthday of the Christian church.
   What is the “Spirit of truth” that Jesus says that God will send? Here’s where we get into another one of those weird Trinity descriptions.

   The Holy Spirit is the third person of the Holy Trinity, one undividable God made known to us in Three Persons. Yet, here’s how Jesus describes himself a few verses earlier, in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   The truth is a person, not a proposition. It is the living reality of God in Jesus Christ, revealed by the Holy Spirit.

   And what does Jesus mean when he talks about obeying “my commandments”?

    Jesus is at the same time fully God and fully human being. So, his commandments include God’s religious moral law, the 613 laws in the Torah, the 10 commandments, all of Jesus’ teachings, and the new commandment that he is giving us in these very moments of his Farewell Discourse, during this Last Supper, the commandment to love one another as he has loved us.

   And this “new commandment’ summarizes every other commandment that Jesus speaks of as Jesus fulfills the religious Law with the Gospel, the good news. He is telling us that what we do isn’t as important as why we do it, that the root comes before the fruit. That being obedient is the natural outcome of a loving, living relationship with God, not something we can do to earn our way into heaven. We can’t. Who we are comes from Whose we are, and we are now God’s people.

   Jesus speaks about how that works in the conclusion to today’s Gospel text, John 14:18-21,

¹⁸ “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. ¹⁹ In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live. ²⁰ On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

   We are not orphaned, God is personally engaged with each person on the planet, as a loving parent cares for their beloved child. God abides in you.

   Sally and I and our son and his girlfriend went to see one of my cousins, Pat Metheny, and his most recent band play at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. this week. Afterward, we went to the hall’s Green Room to meet him and the band members as we do whenever he plays in town.

   Pat is a revered jazz guitarist. He has won 20 grammies, and in more different categories than anyone ever, as well as numerous prestigious recognitions and awards.

   We spoke with a guy and his wife sitting in the audience next to us about Pat’s music, and about how much they were looking forward to the concert. He told me that he himself had played in a band, and he thought I had played in a band from the look of me (Okay… 😊) but the noise as people were taking their seats around us was too loud for me to hear the name of the band. “What was the name of the band?,” I asked. Garbled. “What?”, I asked again. “Three Dog Night,” he said.

    I rocked back in my seat and said, “Jeremiah was a bullfrog!” He said, “Yes he was!” The guy played keyboards in the band at the height of their popularity. And he and his wife were very fine people. And I’m sure there were many other luminaries in that audience.

   L.A. is an industry town for Pat, so our visits afterwards are always brief, but there is some kind of a quality of long connection in them that only comes with family.

   Our mothers were only-sisters. My mother died first, but when my aunt died, and another of her sons, another of my cousins, was going through her papers, he found something that he thought I would like. It was a letter from my mom 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 coming Sunday on 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. Everything she received for teaching went into that bedroom set fund, too. 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 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 had a wonderful mother, and Sally 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.

   These actions, that are not done out of self-interest, but sacrificially for the sake of others, are what define our lives as Christians.

   It’s been said that your character as a person is what you do when there is no reward for doing the right thing and no punishment for doing the wrong thing.

   This is what Jesus says in this description of the Christian life at the end of this week’s Gospel reading, in John 14:21, ²¹ They who have my commandments and keep them are those who love me; and those who love me will be loved by my Father, and I will love them and reveal myself to them.

   Our character is shaped by God. Specifically, by the love of God, at work within us.

   That’s why we celebrate Mother’s Day. It’s part of keeping the Fourth Commandment: Honor your father and your mother.

   Have you ever seen art showing the ten commandments, looking a lot like McDonald’s golden arches logo? 😊

   If you’ve ever looked closely at the traditional art showing Moses holding the 10 commandments, you might have noticed something odd. God gave the commandments on two stone tablets, arched at the top, but the commandments are not represented with five on each tablet.

   Instead, you’ll usually 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.” So, honor your mother today.

   Don’t be like the family that saw their mother get up from 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 them tomorrow.”

   Don’t do that. Honor your mother. It’s a commandment. It’s not a suggestion. And by doing so, you will be honoring God, who is at work within you, teaching you to love sacrificially.

   I’ve heard it proposed that our mothers should not only be celebrated on Mother’s Day, but that they should also be celebrated on their children’s birthdays.

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

   So, it’s been 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. 😊  It’s our mother’s delivery.

   And there is nothing that can do to be delivered and reconciled to God.

   We thank God each day for our mothers and that we were born.

   We thank God each day for himself, for Jesus Christ our Savior, who gave his life to deliver us from sin, death, and the power of all the forces that defy God, to put us right with God in Jesus Christ, who said “The Father and I are one,” so that we, mothers and children together, can be born again, made a new creation, given the power to become children of God, the gift to all who receive Him, who believe in his name!

   We know who we are because we know whose we are at the cross where Jesus Christ gave his life for us and in three days took it back again.

   Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia!