Are You My Mother? | A Sermon on Motherhood, Compassion, and Justice
A sermon preached for St. George’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia, on the Second Sunday after Pentecost, Year A, June 14, 2020.
My friend Sarah Condon likes to start her sermons with a prayer for her own sins. I’ve always liked that, but it seems particularly apt today, and so I’ll borrow it. Please pray with me.
Keep, O Lord, your household the Church in your steadfast faith and love, that through your grace we may proclaim your truth with boldness, and minister your justice with compassion (BCP 230); and we pray for the one who preaches for you know her sins are many. Amen.
Today’s appointed Collect, or prayer, speaks of ministering God’s justice with compassion. What does it mean to have compassion? And what does compassion require of us?
I want to explore how today’s Gospel addresses these questions. But, I’m going to start by reminding you of a well-known and beloved children’s book.
“Are you my mother?”, by P.D. Eastman, tells the story of a baby bird who hatches alone in its nest. Its mother has only briefly gone in search of food. Of course, the baby bird doesn’t know that. He also doesn’t know what his mother looks like, and so the reader follows him as he encounters one creature after another – kitten, hen, dog, cow – and asks, “Are you my mother?” Only to be told no, time and again. The reader rejoices with him when he finally discovers mother bird, who asks, “Do you know who I am?” And without hesitation he responds, “Yes, I know who you are. You are a bird and you are my mother.”
Like many of you, I’ve been watching, listening, and reflecting this week on the stories being shared by people of color, of their lived experience of America. Stories of racism, injustice, oppression, and white supremacy (although, to be clear, their stories are so much more than the sum of those parts).
Two images stand out.
The first, a message scrawled on a protest sign: “All mothers were summoned when George Floyd called out for his mother.” Perhaps you’ve seen that sign. It has appeared repeatedly in protests across the country. I’ve seen it in person, held high at the edge of Lafayette Square. Footage of the death of George Floyd reveals that he used his final breaths to call out for his mother.
As it turns out, this sign may have been inspired by another.
This second image is of a 26-year-old-woman wearing a face mask, pregnant belly exposed, standing in front of our nation’s capital. She holds a sign that reads, “We are not carrying for 9 months, then struggling during labor for 9 hours just for you to kneel on their neck for 9 minutes. Black Lives Matter.”[1]
As a mother, I had an immediate and visceral reaction to both. I could carry the first, my own experience of motherhood acting as a powerful lens through which to connect with the pain and horror that is the violence of racism. A powerful lens through which to see.
And yet, as a white mother with two white children, I could never carry the second. It is a reminder of the chasm between my lived reality and the lived reality of people of color. It holds up a mirror. It invites me not just to see but to reflect. On the distance between us and how it came to be so (and remains so).
What does it mean to have compassion? And what does compassion require of us?
In the Gospel of Matthew, the word for compassion appears only five times. And each time, Jesus is the origin of compassion; Jesus is moved to compassion after seeing the state of those around him.
When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matt. 9:36).
The Greek word for compassion used here connotes a twisting pain in the entrails, in the very center of one’s body; a writhing, intense emotion that cannot be ignored. It is, interestingly, a common translation for the Hebrew word for womb and the labor pains accompanying childbirth.
To think that Jesus looked out at a crowd of bedraggled strangers and suddenly saw them, saw through them, knew them so intimately that their problems pained him at his core and birthed in him new understanding and action. That is powerful indeed.
Compassion then begins with an open heart and a willingness to see the gap between how things should be and how they are. And yet, we cannot mistake our limited sight for understanding or claim it as our experience. Instead, we must listen to those who live it.
Lonnae O’Neal, writing for National Geographic,[2] reflects on what it means to be the black mother of a black child in America in recalling Floyd’s last moments.
“Momma!” Floyd, 46, calls out. “Momma! I’m through,” the dying man says, and I recognize his words she writes. A call to your mother is a prayer to be seen.
Dying soldiers called out for their mothers, according to Civil War battlefield reports. And, hospice nurses have reported that it is not out of the ordinary for dying patients to call for their mother with their last breath.
We are the ballast, O’Neal writes. The anchors. A way for those who are close to the edge to find their way back, or their way home. This is true for black mothers, who are especially tested and learned in all the dread fates of black bodies. We are the hedge against the people who don’t see us. We are an assertion of black life.
For black people who feel they are about to be taken from themselves, we are the assurance of memory, of justice, of 10-hour waits to cast our ballots at polling places. We will not be moved.
I’ve read O’Neal’s article over and over this week, always with a Lord have mercy on my lips. When my children were small they’d sit in my lap and I’d read slowly to them, giving them time to identify the words by poking their chubby fingers at the different pictures: bird, kitten, hen, dog, cow. And yes, mother bird. There she is. All I wanted then was to be a good mother and to keep them safe. And the world was with me and for me.
While I can relate to what happened to George Floyd and to so many others through the lens of motherhood and call for justice on behalf of mothers everywhere, I must also acknowledge that I am present on that other sign: “We do not mother just so that you can kneel on their neck.” I am culpable. I’ve been part of the collective you in a world that is not with them or for them.
Before George Floyd, there were countless others. And there will be others after George Floyd. Some fall victim to acts of violence caught on video, while others suffer dehumanization within systems of oppression. When all is said and done I can both care deeply about injustice and racism, individual and systemic, and also have a lot of listening, learning, and repentance yet to do.
Author and civil rights activist James Baldwin once said, “Loving anybody and being loved by anybody is a tremendous danger and a tremendous responsibility.” The same could be said about compassion.
Compassion requires something of us. Jesus never stopped with compassion. Jesus was moved with compassion to action. And that is the work of justice.
It is uncomfortable to be sure. It feels terrible to learn that you are complicit in the dehumanization of other people. It feels less like being Jesus and more like needing Jesus and I don’t know about you, but that’s hard for me. And, it is dangerous. Challenging powers and principalities always is. And once you know, there is a tremendous responsibility to act.
How could we do any less when we follow Jesus?
Amen.
[1] https://www.today.com/parents/pregnant-woman-hopes-stand-all-mothers-black-men-powerful-sign-t183565.
[2] Lonnae O’Neal, “George Floyd’s mother was not there, but he used her as a sacred invocation,” National Geographic, May 30, 2020; https://www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/05/george-floyds-mother-not-there-he-used-her-as-sacred-invocation.
