Hi everyone,

Welcome to worship for this 6th Sunday of Easter, which will land on May 10, 2026!

The bulletin can be found here. You can use it to follow along with the service, or just follow along with the words that will appear on your screen. The sermon is included in the bulletin as well as on this page below the video.

If you’d like to enhance your online worship experience, you are invited to have a lit candle in your space that can be extinguished near the end of the service after the sending hymn when the altar candles are extinguished. You are also welcome to participate in communion if you are comfortable by having something small to eat and drink ready for the appropriate time. Further instruction will be given then.

May God’s unending presence reveal to you the welcome into God’s arms of love!

Through your Spirit, O God, may we be advocated for, as our hearts and minds be opened to see, hear, and feel you present among us through the love of Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Parenting is hard.

While I can say this first hand as a parent, I can also very confidently say this as someone who was parented.  Full disclosure, I wasn’t exactly an easy child.  Not really a total trouble maker, per se, but also not really… not one.  Like I wouldn’t always be the one instigating mischief or anything, but you can bet your socks that I’d most likely go along with it… because honestly most of the time that mischief would be hilarious. 

But I can admit that I actually still cringe to this day at the thought of what I put my parents through as I was growing up.  I regret some of the choices I made like in some of the things that I shouldn’t have said or done but I did, or some that I should have but didn’t.  I still think about the levels of stress, frustration, and even torment my parents went through just from me being me.  So while I said that parenting is hard, I guess I really should say that parenting me was hard.

And I guess I should say on this Mother’s Day that, as it was in many families at least in what I’ve observed over my life, the brunt of that parenting landed on my mom.  It’s not that my dad didn’t do his fair share, it’s just that my mom did a little more than hers.  And hers was a lot more nurturing, caring, and empathic than my dad and his “just yell louder” mentality.  Perhaps this sounds familiar to you, not necessarily with your own mom, but that it was the maternal type care and nurture that felt more present and perhaps even preferred in your growing up, or was more formational in who you are now, or maybe just more helpful in shaping you up away from that “trouble maker” attitude.  I mean, look at me now.  I turned out great.  So, thanks mom.

But don’t get wrong, I’m not saying that we are 100% the product of how only our moms or those who played that maternal role in our lives raised us.  I’m not saying that we only need the kind of care that moms seem to be better at providing and not anything of what fathers give… like the dad jokes and gag gifts and eating all the leftovers.  Nor am I at all saying that one type of parent is more important or essential or even better than the other. 

Rather, what I am saying is that this near-consistent role that we see mostly mothers fulfilling in our lives and in the lives of others, speaks to something that is very much a part of who we are as humans.  And that is that we all… need love.  We all need to feel loved.  We all need to know that we are loved.

Perhaps not all in the same exact way as we all speak and hear different love languages, but I don’t think there is any denying that love is just a basic need that we all share.

And this is why I appreciate so much this part of Jesus’ Farewell Discourse that we started talking about last week, where Jesus is at his pastoral best.  As Jesus continues to prepare his disciples for his departure, he speaks to this human need for love.  I mean, maybe not in so many words, but love is definitely the theme that we get in this passage.  And not just love, but nurture, care, and those other maternal attributes that we are blessed with from others in our lives.

See Jesus uses very specific language here when he talks about the likely inevitable feelings of being abandoned and alone once what he knows will happen happens.  He says that he will not leave them “as orphans” according to the tense of the original Greek word here.  To me, “as orphans” means having lost their parents by uncontrollable circumstance, left in a worldly system of isolation and neglect. 

That doesn’t sound pleasant at all.  I doubt anyone would want that.  We know Jesus wouldn’t want that for us.

So instead, Jesus promises to his disciples and to us, “another” Advocate.  Not a Advocate, or a brand new concept Advocate, or a first time ever having something like this Advocate, but another one, one that follows this one, one that compliments and supplements the one we already have.  This tells us that Jesus isn’t leaving them, but he’s just bringing some back up.  A different perspective maybe.  A different way of guiding and teaching.  A different way for us to see love, feel love, and be loved.

Because… it’s hard to parent us.

Not that we’re trouble makers or anything, but we’re human.  We’re complex.  And we have varying needs that can only be met in varying ways.

Jesus knows this and provides for it.  The Holy Spirit, the promised other Advocate, is aware of this and enters our lives because of it.  Our mothers and those who gave us that maternal care were intuitive enough to be there for us, to nurture and support us, and to show us that love that we so very need.  Whether we recognise or accept it or not.

One thing about my growing up is that I very much fell into that typical teen mentality trap that my parents knew nothing while I knew everything.  They didn’t know how I felt or thought, how I understood myself and the world, or even what was cool or not.  But as I grew older, I saw that while they still didn’t know these things, they continued to care for me.  While I may not have been able to believe it, they would have sacrificed everything they had for me.  While I didn’t even acknowledge or maybe even reciprocate, they truly did love me.  Me.  Not really a trouble maker but also not really not one either.  Me. 

So maybe… those who give us that motherly care also fall into the promised “another advocate” category, not because they’re divine or something, but because they are gifts to us that love us and genuinely want to see us thrive and grow and be able to live life to the fullest.  Just as the Holy Spirit is more than this entity that does all things for all people, but gives us a sense of what is right and wrong, what is nurturing and caring, what is loving and what isn’t.  Just as we are taught and are brought to believe that Jesus is with us and invites us into community, welcomes us into an abundant life, and dearly loves us even when we might not see or recognise it.

And I guess maybe that is what Mother’s Day is about.  Not exactly to be honored as a mother, which I’m not one of course, but for all of us to remember our own mothers and those who gave us that motherly care, to appreciate the love and support that helped to shape us to be who we are, and to be empowered and strengthened to reflect it out onto others.  For us to see and recognise the God of love in our lives, lifting us up as we are, and showing us that we matter.  For us to acknowledge how, in spite of what life throws at us at times, that we are not left alone or abandoned, but we have been, are, and always will be identified as someone’s child, dearly valued, and declared as beloved.

So parenting is hard, yes, but we have been blessed with the faith and hope to believe that our divine and everlasting parent has determined us as worthy of love, worthy of forgiveness, and worthy of the salvation that has been so graciously given.  For we are not left as orphans, not even adopted into a foster home, but we are recreated, reformed, and redeemed to be God’s very own children in the world.

As we near the end of this Easter season, may we always see how the resurrected Christ is with us by the power of the Spirit, caring and supporting and providing for us as advocates who will stand up for us, nurture us, and remind us that we are, always and forever, dearly loved children of God, our eternal mother and father and parent.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.