The Church as Our Mother
May 9, 2024 | by: Dale Thiele | 0 Comments
Posted in: Pastoral Encouragement
This is a revised and expanded article that first appeared in the Touchpoint on May 8, 2014.
While various attempts were made in the 19th century to create a day to honor mothers, Mother’s Day as we know it didn’t begin in earnest until the early 20th century. Anna Jarvis initiated the celebration of mothers in 1908 and promoted it until President Woodrow Wilson made it a national holiday in 1914. Within ten years, however, Jarvis began to campaign against the holiday because she felt it became too commercialized. When she died in 1948, Jarvis regretted what became of Mother’s Day.
The Christian church celebrated a form of mother’s day long before our modern Mother’s Day experience. Mothering Day was the fourth Sunday of Lent (the six week period before Easter), a day when Christians were encouraged to visit their “mother” church, where they first came to faith and grew up. Consequently, many Christians would be reunited with their birth mothers on this day. The focus of the day was not on their physical mothers, however, but on their spiritual mothers, the church.
The 3rd century church father, Cyprian of Carthage, said, “you cannot have God for your Father unless you have the church for your Mother.” Augustine communicated a similar sentiment and the reformer John Calvin expanded on the metaphor of the church as our spiritual mother. Calvin writes in his Institutes:
I shall start, then, with the church, into whose bosom God is pleased to gather his sons, not only that they may be nourished by her help and ministry as long as they are infants and children, but also that they may be guided by her motherly care until they mature and at last reach the goal of faith…so that, for those to whom he is Father the church may also be Mother. (Inst. 4.1.1).
And again:
Let us learn even from the simple title ‘mother’ how useful, indeed how necessary, it is that we should know her (the church). For there is no other way to enter into life unless this mother conceive us in her womb, give us birth, nourish us at her breast, and lastly, unless she keep us under her care and guidance until, putting off mortal flesh, we become like the angels. (Inst. 4.1.4).
If we embrace the metaphor that the church is our mother, the church becomes vitally important to our spiritual life. It is in the context of the church that we come to faith, are fed and nurtured in the faith, and sheltered in the faith until full maturity in heaven. There never is a time in this earthly life that we don’t need the church.
Charles Spurgeon, in a sermon titled, “The Church a Mother,” explains the work of evangelism using the metaphor of the mother.
The Church is a mother because it is her privilege to bring forth into the world the spiritual children of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Church is left in the world still that she may bring out the rest of God’s elect that are still hidden in the caverns and strongholds of sin… He, who hath taken the Church to be his spouse and his bride, has chosen to bring men to himself by means; and thus it is, through God’s using the Church, her ministers, her children, her works, her sufferings, her prayers, — through making these the means of the increase of his spiritual kingdom, she proves her right to take to herself the title of mother.
Spurgeon goes on to highlight the further works of the church as mother: she feeds her children, trains her children, and nurses her children when they are sick. This metaphor is powerful to help us understand our relationship to the church and the role of the church in the world.
In a culture that elevates a hyper-individualism, we are more than likely to think of our faith in terms of an individual. It’s me and Jesus. It’s my personal relationship with Jesus. There may be a certain level of validity to those statements, but Scripture, and our forefathers in the faith, emphasize the vital role of the church for the sake of our faith. The writer to the Hebrews says, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some” (Heb. 10:24-25).
This Mother’s Day, as you celebrate God’s blessing to you through your earthly mother, remember God’s blessing to you through the church. It is “through the church” that “the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known” (Eph. 3:10). It is the church Christ loved and gave himself up for. It is the church that he will present to himself in splendor (Eph. 5:25-27).
