On this Mother’s Day, I give thanks for all mothers and motherly figures who nurture life with patience, sacrifice, tenderness, and courage. Last week, I spoke with my mother in Korea. She is doing well, though busy these days visiting her dentist for a new denture. Even now, at ninety-four years of age, she remains disciplined and faithful to her daily and weekly routines. Hearing her voice brought me comfort, and I am grateful that I will see her again this summer.

When my older daughter was little, I used to carry her piggyback from our home to the daycare each morning. When we arrived at a certain crosswalk, she would ask me the same question: “Mommy, which direction will you take me today?” To one side was the bus stop that led to my parents’ home, a place where she could stay close to me. To the other side was the daycare where she would spend the day while I worked. She often cried when I left her there, seized by a fear too deep for a small child to put into words.

So I would kneel beside her, hold her small face in my hands, kiss her cheek, and say, with as much certainty as love can carry, “Honey, mommy is coming back soon. Don’t worry.” Somehow those words were enough. She could release my hand and let me go, not because her fear had vanished, but because she trusted the promise: I would come back. And I always did. That trust, fragile and yet remarkably strong, is one of the most beautiful things I have ever witnessed.

In today’s gospel reading from John 14:15–21, the disciples are living through that very same ache. They have walked with Jesus for years, eaten together, travelled together, laughed and wept together, and built their entire world around his presence. Now he is speaking of departure, betrayal, and death. They do not yet understand what is unfolding, but they can already feel it in their bones, the dread of being left behind.

And into their fear, Jesus speaks with unfailing tenderness: “I will not leave you orphaned. I am coming to you.”

There is something profoundly motherly in those words. Jesus does not speak as a distant authority giving instructions from above. He speaks as one who cannot bear to leave beloved children alone in the dark. The image of the orphan is not random. It names the deepest human fear, which is to be left without the one who knows you, loves you, and holds your life together. This is the voice of Jesus on the eve of his death, and it sounds remarkably like a mother kneeling at a crosswalk, promising to return.

The Gospel of John was written long after Jesus’ death, likely near the end of the first century. The community that gathered around this gospel knew fear and grief at firsthand. They faced exclusion from the synagogue, which meant being cut off from family, tradition, and the social fabric of daily life, while also living the weight of Roman oppression. Many must have wondered whether Jesus had abandoned them. So the writer gathers these remembered words like precious embers kept alive in the dark and offers them to a frightened people: “I will not leave you orphaned.”

But what does Jesus mean when he says, “I am coming to you”? He does not mean returning as a friend walking back through a familiar door. According to John, Jesus returns through the gift of the Holy Spirit, whom he calls “another Advocate,” the Spirit of truth. The Greek word parakletos means one who stands alongside another as helper, comforter, and companion. The Spirit is the invisible thread of love that continues to hold us together even when physical presence is gone.

Many of us know this truth through the painful experience of losing someone we love. This morning I think of Joellen, who has shared with us about her mother Billie. Losing a mother is one of the deepest sorrows a person can carry. When the one who once held your hand in the dark, who spoke your name with a love no one else quite replicates, is no longer here, the world is forever changed.

And yet love does not simply disappear. There are moments when memory itself becomes a kind of presence: a voice remembered at a quiet hour, a gesture, a song drifting through a window, a phrase once spoken at the kitchen table. Suddenly, the one who is gone feels near again, not physically, and yet truly. That nearness is not wishful thinking. It is the work of the Spirit, keeping love alive across the boundary that death draws.

This is why love and Spirit stand inseparably at the centre of Jesus’ farewell discourse. “If you love me, keep my commandments.” And his commandment is this: love one another as I have loved you. The Holy Spirit is not reserved for private comfort alone. The Spirit connects people across fear, grief, distance, and difference. The Spirit keeps us from becoming orphans to one another in a world that pulls people apart into loneliness so quickly and so easily.

In a time when so many feel abandoned or simply unremembered, the church is called to become a community of the Spirit, a place where people discover they are not alone.

The Spirit does not always move through grand moments of courage. More often, the Spirit moves quietly and close to the ground: in a phone call to an aging parent, in a kiss on a child’s cheek, in food shared after worship, in a hand held in grief, in a word spoken gently at just the right time.

After Jesus’ death, the disciples themselves were fearful and scattered. Yet the Spirit transformed them. Those frightened followers became courageous witnesses, carrying Christ’s love into the cities and households they had never imagined reaching. The church was born from people who discovered that love had not ended but only changed its form.

Perhaps that is what this passage invites us to trust today: that love is stronger than absence. Those words of Jesus reach across centuries to everyone who fears being left behind, to everyone who grieves, to everyone who wonders whether love can survive the separations that life and death bring. The gospel answers with a quiet and steady yes.

Through the Holy Spirit, Christ continues to abide with us, holding us together. Perhaps that is why Mother’s Day touches something so deep in the human heart. At its truest, motherhood reflects this same holy promise: even when you cannot see me, love remains with you. It will find you. It will hold you. It will bring me back.

“I will not leave you orphaned,” says Jesus. “I am coming to you.”

And through the Spirit of love, he still does. Amen.