Sixth Sunday of Easter

Is the Church Your Mother?

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Is the Church Your Mother?

It’s an interesting question, isn’t it? If it were your mother, would it change how you see the relationship you have with the church? Would this alter why you gather with God’s children around His Word and Sacraments?

Martin Luther wrote about the third article of the Creed on the work of the Holy Spirit, in the Large Catechism:
For in the first place, the Spirit has His own congregation in the world, which is the mother that conceives and bears every Christian through
God’s Word [Galatians 4:26]. Through the Word He reveals and preaches, He illumines and enkindles hearts, so that they understand,
accept, cling to, and persevere in the Word” [1 Corinthians 2:12]. 1

Luther is expanding on St. Paul’s words that describe the Church as our mother, where we are reborn through God’s word and the forgiveness earned for us by Jesus on His cross. 

As Mother’s Day approaches, let us give thanks for the earthly mothers we have received, but let us also remember to gather in God’s church, a mother that sustains us as we journey through life and are led to eternal life.

Your unworthy undershepherd,
Pastor Rogness
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1 Paul Timothy McCain, ed., Concordia: The Lutheran Confessions (St. Louis, MO: Concordia Publishing House, 2005), 403–404.