Between Sundays
“My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.”
— Luke 1:46-47
This Sunday is Mother’s Day, and I want to begin by saying what does not get said often enough: this is not a simple holiday for everyone.
For some of you, Sunday will arrive wrapped in joy and gratitude, flowers and phone calls and tables full of family. For others, it carries grief, the weight of a mother no longer here, the ache of a relationship that is complicated, the longing of those who hoped to be mothers and are not, the exhaustion of those doing the hardest work of mothering right now with very little left in the tank. And for some of you it is all of those things at once, joy and loss sitting side by side the way they so often do in this life. Whatever this day holds for you, you are welcome here. All of it is welcome here.
When I think about what scripture has to say about a day like this, I keep coming back to Mary, and not the soft, serene Mary of greeting cards. The real one. The young woman who got the most unexpected news of her life and responded not with quiet resignation but with a song that turned the world upside down. The Magnificat is bold. It is joyful and fierce and full of conviction. It is a woman raising her voice and meaning every word. That feels like exactly the right thing to celebrate today, not a perfect ideal of motherhood, but the real, complicated, courageous thing that women do every single day. Scripture is full of women like that. And so, I would venture to say, are these pews.
I will not be with you in person this Sunday, and I want to tell you why. Rev. Humbert, in his characteristically thoughtful and generous way, made it pretty clear that there was only one place I should be this Mother’s Day, and that was with my mom. So a very special thank you to him for that gift. I am grateful for a colleague who practices what we preach.
And here is something to look forward to on Sunday morning: our Joyful Voices will be singing in their brand new choir robes. Now, our kids have always had robes, but bless their hearts, those robes had seen better days. Thanks to some incredibly generous donors and the remarkable behind the scenes work of Joyce Summer, Laura Mills, and our choir parents, these young people will take their place in worship looking every bit as wonderful as they sound. Please celebrate that with them. They have earned it.
This weekend carries a little more weight than usual for me personally. I will be missing you from my mother’s church, and my grandmother’s church, the place where my grandparents served faithfully for so many years. We will worship together there this Mother’s Day, and it may well be the last time we do. My parents are making their move back to Northern Virginia next week, and so this weekend holds a particular tenderness for our family. We are holding it gently, and holding each other close.
I am grateful beyond words for this time away, and for a congregation that cares not just for the pastor in the pulpit but for the whole person and the whole family she carries with her. You have done that for me, and I do not take it lightly.
Happy Mother’s Day, Calvary. You are so loved.
Until Sunday, and all the days between,
Dr. Hutton