Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

            Today as we gather for worship, many folks will have Mother’s Day on their minds. I typically don’t address Mother’s Day much in worship because it can be complicated. People have all sorts of feelings, experiences, and memories related to mothering and I’m not sure the church has always done a good job in honoring that diversity of experience. You know your congregation and can gauge what they might need to hear and how you can be authentically sensitive to your people. While I don’t tend to focus much on mothering, I was asked to share about these texts in light of my own experience of gestating, birthing, and raising kids.

            In Acts, when Paul speaks to the Athenians, he draws on what he has seen around town to help them gain an openness to his (and our) God. This scene shows us that Paul has been paying attention to these people, learning about their values and customs, figuring out how the things that matter to him overlap with the things that matter to them.

            In parenting, as in all relationships, noticing and honoring the individual before you is vital. Our children need different things. When my eldest was a baby, I did a lot of baby-wearing, and she always needed to be close by. My youngest would push away from me when she was done eating or playing and ready to go to sleep. As they’re much older now, we still need to anticipate and adapt to their needs. When we go for a walk, my eldest wants only to be able to spend time together and have someone listen to her; she enjoys the exercise. My younger needs something extra to hold her interest in an otherwise “boring” walk: she needs to hold the map or wear a special water pack. Figuring out what they need and providing those things makes our parenting life much easier than if we were to treat them exactly the same.

            Paul declares, “The God who made the world and everything in it…gives to all mortals life and breath and all things” (Acts 17: 24a, 25b). God gives us all things, all we need for life. Paul goes on to say, “indeed God is not far from each one of us. For in God we live and move and have our being” (17:27b-28a). We are created and held by God, and this God who knows us so well gives us what we need. As I consider how my spouse and I care for our children out of our knowledge of them, I am awed by a God who does the same for me.

            Paul connects this image of a creator who knows and cares for creation with the Athenians’ own imagery, “For we too are his offspring” (28b). Paul sees his own God embracing the Athenians. He makes the claim that they are connected through their common ancestry as children of the creator God. Even as these people are different from him, even as they may have some customs that he does not fully understand, Paul knows that they are all God’s beloved and known children.

            As we currently are seeing many states in our nation legislating in ways that are especially harmful to God’s beloved and known children who are transgender, we would do well to remember that this text reveals a God who loves, knows, and provides for each individual in God’s creation in ways that are necessary and personalized to them. Following God’s deep love and care for God’s diverse people, we are called to stand with our transgender siblings, and stand with their human parents, as our nation makes it more difficult for them to obtain what they need to live well.

            We are all connected by a common parent. We share a creator not only with our human siblings, but with all that exists. God has brought all things into being. As we live into our vocation as those created in God’s image to tend and care for all creation, even as we are siblings of a sort with every created thing. All of us: humans, animals, rocks, and stars claim our common source in God. How awesome that our parenting God extends care to the cosmos!