For those who know the church calendar, yesterday was the Fourth Sunday of Easter. In the majority of the church, that is all it is. A day when we reflect on the compassionate shepherding of Jesus.

It is not, for the majority of the church, Mother’s Day. That’s not a church holiday, which is probably good. Because it is such a complicated commercial day.

Not that mothers are not important. But there is a danger in creating pictures of what mothers must look like, pictures created through advertising and fiction, novels and Hallmark. These pictures don’t look much like what mothers actually are.

My mother stopped celebrating Mother’s Day a few years before she died. And she died in December 2019, just before gathering stopped. She was in a care facility, unable to make connections between everything she used to know, and the things she sees and hears and tastes now.

As lost as she was in the world around her, she was not lost. Although she didn’t know those who know her, she was still known. Though she could not express love, could not offer care, not even to herself, she was still loved.

Because love isn’t rooted in what we can do. If we do amazing things for someone else and because of what we do they say they love us, that’s more like payment. It’s more like compensation.

Instead, love is rooted in what is done for us regardless of what we can do.

My sisters loved my mother, just as she loved us decades ago when we were incapable of doing anything meaningful for her. We couldn’t make meals, we couldn’t even walk or talk when she started loving us.

Love is an expression of unearned, undeserved care.

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This is the first part of my chapel message for the fourth Sunday of Easter and Mother’s Day.