ascension and mothers day

“That they might know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent”

Those words from today’s gospel state Jesus’ purpose for all that he did. The miracles of healing, the wonder of Jesus feeding the five thousand from a few loaves of bread, the many parables and sermons he spoke, being crucified upon the cross, rising from the dead, and as we celebrate today his ascending into heaven to sit at the right hand of God. All of this was in hope that we might know the only true God and Jesus Christ.
Today we also celebrate two things with similar goals: Sunday school and Mothers. Sunday School attempts to teach youth about God and Jesus’ life. Mothers attempt to teach children those lessons needed to survive the “real world”, without a mother no child would have the chance to Know God and Jesus Christ.
This is the day of the Ascension, where Christ, his teaching done, leaves the men and women who will come to lead the church. We read about them today in the first lesson huddled in an upper room in prayer. So to today do we mark five of our Sunday School students finished with their first instruction into Christianity. Our five confirmands have finished their time in Sunday school. We have taught them as best we can, to want to know God and Jesus Christ, to pass on what we know of Christianity to them. A few years from now these same five will leave home and finish their time learning directly under their mothers.
At that point for a while they shall be uncertain, like the disciples, Mary, and others, praying in that upper room, unsure, afraid.
Overtime something glorious will happen. For the founders of the church it was the coming of the Holy Spirit. Next week in church you will hear how at Pentecost the same men and women today huddled praying in a small upper room are suddenly preaching to thousands of people. These men and women go on to found the same church of which we are members. They begin to do the work that our Sunday School continues today, to teach to teach in order that we might know God and Jesus Christ.
It is the same with children, who are charged with a new spirit when the mantle of adulthood falls upon them. So that the mother finds the lessons she instills in her children added to the child’s own, then shown in a new light, brought to bear on the world in ways she never expected and might not understand. The mother realizes that the adult the child becomes depended on two things: the knowledge she gave her child and that she stepped back and allowed the child to bear that knowledge as an adult.
When mothers do this, instill the knowledge they can and, when the time comes, step back, they imitate our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ’s actions on the day of Ascension. It is only by a mother stepping back that the child has a chance to become an adult, it was only by Jesus’ ascension into heaven, leaving the men and women who were his closest friends behind alone praying in an upper room, that the Holy Ghost could enter into these men and women’s lives giving them the strength to found the church.
The foundation of an adult’s life are the lessons learned as a child, the foundation of the church are the lessons taught by Christ. Today we celebrate those who taught us what it is to be ourselves, to know God and Jesus Christ.