It’s Complicated: Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, and the Church

This Sunday Mother’s Day shows up on our calendars. And Father’s Day won’t be far behind next month on June 21st. Over the past 6 years with you all here at St. Paul, I’ve gotten more than a few questions about why I haven’t planned something specifically tailored to both holidays during worship on their respective Sundays–or really even mentioned the holidays at all from the pulpit. 

The truth is, the Church and these holidays have a relationship that really is not as simple as some would have us believe. Or to say it like the relationship status on Facebook status says it: It’s complicated.

But before we start unpacking all of that, let’s first pause for a bit of history. The first Mother’s Day in the United States wasn’t a brunch holiday or a flower giveaway. It was a worship service. It came out of the work of women who were organizing for public health, tending to communities devastated by war, and calling for peace in a world that kept breaking itself apart. It was rooted in grief. In justice. In the stubborn belief that care matters in a world that often forgets that it does. Father’s Day followed later, also beginning in church, often connected to loss and remembrance. It didn’t even become a national holiday until decades after Mother’s Day.

These days started in sacred spaces—but not as sentimental celebrations of perfect families. They started as ways of telling the truth about love and loss and responsibility in a complicated world. And then, over time, they got… cleaned up. As so many things tend to do.

The holidays became simpler. Easier to market. Easier to manage. Easier to fit into a worship service without anyone feeling too uncomfortable. But that simplicity has come at a cost.

Because in any given pew, Mother’s Day and Father’s Day are far more complicated than carnations, barbecue grills, and narrow views of parenthood blessed from the pulpit would lead us to believe. These days hold grief for people whose parents have died. They stir up complicated relationships—estrangement, absence, harm. They ignore that choosing not to become parents is also a sacred choice, and one that has no holiday on our calendars or section in the greeting card aisle. They press on the quiet ache of those who wanted to be parents and aren’t. They overlook the reality that many people are parenting in ways that don’t fit a neat category. They ignore the truth that family, for many of us, has had to be rebuilt, redefined, or chosen.

But there’s another layer to contend with here as well:  Mother’s Day and Father’s Day reinforce a gender binary that does not hold the fullness of who we are as humans. And yes—some will read this and write it off as “woke.” But what we’re really talking about is whether the church is willing to tell the truth about the people with whom we share space and community–both inside these walls and beyond them.

Because we know people who don’t fit the categories of “mother” or “father”. People who have given birth and don’t identify as women. People who are parenting outside of “traditional” roles altogether. We know that life simply isn’t that tidy. So perhaps a church–particularly one that is  Open and Affirming–might think twice about uncritically centering “mothers” and “fathers” as fixed, universal identities. Because doing so doesn’t just miss people—it erases them in some fundamental ways.

Church–at its best–is supposed to be a place where people are seen—not squeezed into categories that don’t fit. And this isn’t just a cultural issue. It’s a theological one.

The gospel itself refuses to reduce family to something simple or biological. Jesus didn’t spend his time reinforcing traditional family structures. He expanded them. Disrupted them. Reimagined them. Jesus built community out of people who were not related by blood. He centered relationships that were chosen, not assumed. He made belonging bigger than what any one definition could hold.

Which, for me, at least, means that the question for us as a community of faith isn’t whether we acknowledge Mother’s Day or Father’s Day. The question is:  What story are we telling when we do? Are we telling a story about perfect families that don’t actually exist? Or are we telling the truth about the ways love shows up—messy, complicated, hard-earned, and real?

At St. Paul, we work hard to hold tensions and lean into both paradox and mystery. We are not generally a people who are interested in pretending that things are simple–even if they seem like it on paper. Perhaps my mistake has been thinking that simply not acknowledging that such complexities are present would make them any less complicated. Perhaps this year we can try something new.

Perhaps this year–this Sunday–this Mother’s Day and later on Father’s Day–we can hold the complexities honestly. We can name the gratitude where it’s real. We can make space for grief where it’s present. We can honor the many ways people nurture, protect, and care for life. We can refuse to pretend that all families look the same—or should. And we–just as Jesus did–can keep widening the circle.

Because if these days began as acts of truth-telling—about love, loss, and responsibility—then maybe our call now is not to make them prettier–or ignore them altogether. Maybe our call is to make them truer. To tell the truth about the families we come from. The families we’ve lost. The families we’ve chosen. And the ways we are still, all of us, learning how to care for one another in a world that desperately needs more care.

That’s the kind of church we’re trying to be here at St. Paul. Not one that avoids the hard edges. But one that trusts that truth—spoken with care—can hold all of us…even if the truth is somewhat complicated.

On the journey with you,
Pr. Melissa

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