God and A Mother’s Love
2023년 5월 14일God and A Mother’s Love
< Sixth Sunday of Easter >
When I was a seminarian back in the 1970s, I had many wonderful professors. Among the most memorable was Jewish Rabbi Asher Finkle, who passed away last year. What made Rabbi Finkle unique was his specialty helping us understand the teachings of another Rabbi, namely, Rabbi Jesus of Nazareth. Rabbi Finkle got his doctorate in the New Testament. Thus, he was able to understand the teachings of Jesus and appreciate and explain them from a Jewish perspective.
For most of us, a mother’s love is stronger and deeper than a fathers love. So, we asked Rabbi Finkle, “Why do we call God ‘Father’ and not ‘Mother’?” He said it had nothing to do with God being masculine. Rather, he said Jews (in fact most people) experience a mother’s love earlier and more deeply than a father’s love because a mother loves the baby in her womb and the baby feels the mother’s love months before it is born. A mothers love is thus instinctive. Fathers, however, must wait till the baby is born to demonstrate his love. A mother’s love is thus instinctive; a fathers love is experiential. And that’s the way it is with God. People don’t instinctively love God, but must wait to experience that love in our lives. And so we call God “Father”. That being said, surely most of us have also experienced the love of God through the sacrifice, faithfulness and compassion of our mothers, whom we honor today, but who in their own way also displayed God’s love to us. We pray God bless our mothers today and every day and thank God for our mothers.