A Nurturing Spirit
Pentecost/Mothers’ Day – May 11, 2008
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, WI
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

Today it is the choir who will do the ‘preaching’ through their song, so I will reflect for just a moment with you. Here we have the church calendar and the civil calendar coming seemingly into conflict as Pentecost and Mothers’ Day have to share the spotlight. But as I thought about it, this is one of those felix culpa – happy fault moments which just might help us to think in a new and fresh way. Let me explain.

Often it is difficult for us to think about the Holy Spirit and the Spirit’s work. We live in a time when spirits are what we see talked about on Medium or in some horror movie. Spirits are either those of the dead (ghosts) or vengeful things (poltergeists/demons). So to celebrate the descent, the coming of the Lord’s Spirit in fullness is hard for us to understand and to mesh with our popular thought. Here’s where Mothers’ Day comes in handy.

When we read Genesis we see the Spirit of God “brooding over the face of the waters,” in other words, it is God’s Spirit that will take the watery chaos and turn it into our world. That gives us the picture of the Spirit of God as mother, as one who brings form to formlessness, order out of chaos, life where there is none, a sense of well-being and belonging when we lack it and assures us of love. What Moms do for us, this is what God sends the Spirit to do.

Now, if we had more time, I could also go into – as I have in the past – how we can also see Jesus as Mother (for example, the church, in the mind of the Church Fathers and many mystics is “born out of the wounded side of Christ.”) We’ll leave that for another time and I’ll just stick with the Holy Spirit for a moment. One of the great spiritual and intellectual forces that formed Christianity in England and America actually came out of Germany – Pietism. It was a stress on “heart religion,” that is on a religion of experience. Pietism and Puritanism do, in many ways, go hand-in-hand. Perhaps the greatest Pietist figure was Nicholas Count von Zinzendorf of Hernnhut. Zinzendorf would have a profound influence on the development of the Moravian Church and, by extension, of Methodism (and let me remind you that at one time there were more Methodist Churches in the US than there were Post Offices!).

Zinzendorf came to the conviction that the best way to talk about the Holy Spirit was as mother. He isn’t trying to get into gender games, though the Hebrew word for Spirit/ruah is feminine. Rather, he’s trying to help us understand the community in the Godhead – the Trinity – that draws us into life and holds us in relationship. Zinzendorf explicated his doctrine of the Holy Spirit, proclaiming that she is a mother in three distinct ways. First, it was the Spirit, not Mary, who was the true mother of Jesus, since she "prepared him in the womb, hovered over him, and finally brought him into the light. She [the Spirit] gave him [Jesus] certainly into the arms of his mother, but with invisible hands carried him more than his mother did." Second, the Spirit is the mother of all living things because she has a special role in the on-going creation of the world. "It is known that the Holy Spirit brings everything to life, and when the man was made from a clump of earth ... the Holy Spirit was very close through the breathing of the breath of God into the man." Thus, the Holy Spirit is the mother of all living souls in a general way.

The Holy Spirit is also the Mother in a third and most important sense. She is the Mother of the church and all those who have been reborn. "The Holy Spirit is the only Mother of those souls who have been once born out of the side hole of Jesus, as the true womb of all blessed souls." Zinzendorf bases this understanding of the Spirit giving birth to converted souls in large part on Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus in John 3. Jesus told Nicodemus that he must be born again, not from his mother’s womb, but from God. Nicodemus knew that we are born from a mother, not a father, but he did not know who this mother was. Zinzendorf has Jesus reply, "There is another Mother, not the one who physically gave you birth, that one doesn’t matter: you must have another Mother who will give you birth." Ultimately, then, the Holy Spirit is the Mother of the Christian in the sense that she is the active agent in conversion. Human actors are only agents of the Holy Spirit, and in some cases are not even necessary for conversion. [from an internet article by Craig Atwood, Salem College] But let me be quick to add the number of mothers who have helped their children come to spiritual life. And I’ll give you a key one, one whose name was Monica, who was the mother of a fellow named Augustine. Who, when he was an absolute rounder, whose prayer was “Lord make me chaste, but not yet,” Monica kept praying. And eventually this man was converted and then became one of the greatest theologians that the Western Church has ever known; all because of a mother’s prayer. So Mom’s realize that you have power, because you’re right there with the Holy Spirit.

So, today celebrate Mom and Grandmother and remember that as they have nurtured, there is a Mother who has come to nurture us and grow us into the “full stature of Christ” to which all of us are called: the Holy Spirit. So, come, Holy Spirit, give new birth to Christ’s Church, kindle in us the fire of your love. Renew us and revive us, nurture us to be the children of God. Amen.