None of us remembers nursing at our mother's breast, and not a very high percentage of us has had the firsthand experience of suckling a baby, but each of us, at one time or another, has watched a baby—whether human or otherwise mammalian—nuzzling around its mother's breast or teat, trying to find, and attain, its source of food and nurture. Newborn babies are not at all halfhearted. "[They] famishingly crave and ardently seek the[ir] mother's breast for nourishment. They are uninhibited in their eagerness to find the source of their ... growth into physical maturity.... They cry out for [the] milk that not only satisfies the[ir] hunger, but really nourishes the[ir] growing bodies. [Elmer G. Homrighausen, in The Interpreter's Bible, XII (Nashville: Abingdon, 1957) p. 106]
Well, today's First Lesson, from the First Letter of Peter, offers us this vivid image. We Christians are to be like nursing infants. We are to long for the milk that comes from the breast of our mother God, the "pure, spiritual milk" that enables us to grow into salvation. We are to seek the spiritual milk that mother God has to share, the spiritual milk that is the person of Jesus and his teachings. And we are to crave this milk of the Word of God every bit as famishingly, as insistently, as uninhibitedly as a newborn baby. Oh, if only our Christian community, and every other one as well, would seek God's breast so ardently as that!
Now, Christianity's primary image of breast feeding comes to us not from First Peter but from the gospels. It comes to us each December when we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the birth of the one whom we know as "the Word of God." Indeed, there are very few images that have captured the Christian imagination more tenaciously than that of "the Madonna and child." And so it is that each and every year the U.S. Post Office offers us as its "religious" Christmas stamp yet another in its long series of reproduced paintings of Mary the mother and Jesus the child. And this morning I'm giving you a kind of mid-year supplement to that series by offering you on the bulletin cover, as a Mother's Day present, a beautiful but little known portrayal of "the Madonna and child," one that I suspect most of you have not seen before. It's the painting called "Madonna with the Green Cushion," by an early 16th-century Venetian artist named Andrea Solario. It's his rendering of the Madonna of Christmas.
And today's Second Lesson, from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, written by the same person who penned the Gospel of Luke—this lesson is careful to remind us that Mary figures not only in the birth of Jesus but also in the birth of the church. "As Mary has [had] the Spirit overshadow her to give birth to [Jesus] (Luke 1:35), so is she present at the gift of the Spirit that gives birth to the Church...." [Luke Timothy Johnson, The Acts of the Apostles, Sacra Pagina Series 5, ed. Daniel J. Harrington, S.J. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1992), p. 34]
So in this Second Lesson the author of Luke and Acts is offering us his image of the Madonna of Pentecost. After the risen Jesus's final earthly appearance, Mary his mother is found in an upper room in Jerusalem, where she, alongside a number of Jesus's other followers, awaits prayerfully the promised coming of the Holy Spirit. All of them are awaiting the birth of the church, the birth we will be celebrating so festively next Sunday, the Day of Pentecost. You see, Luke, both in his gospel and here in the book of Acts, has been carrying us along on a journey from Christmas to Pentecost, on a journey from the sharing of a mother's milk to the forming of a community of affection and love, to the forming of the community of Christ. Yes, Luke has been carrying us on a journey from a mother's milk to a community of love.
Now, the connection that Luke perceives between this mother's nurturing and this community's formation—a connection that he clearly signals by assigning Mary a role not only in the birth of Jesus but also in the birth of the church—this connection that Luke perceives between a mother's nurturing and a community's formation has occurred to him through some combination of intuition and inspiration. And here's something intriguing—what Luke intuits modern science appears to confirm.
Over the past decade, two women scientists—an American and a Swede—have published fascinating papers on maternity, lactation, and the formation of human community. They are C. Sue Carter, now of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois in Chicago, and Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm. [See Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Vol. 807 (January, 1997): C.S. Carter and M. Altemus, "Integrative Functions of Lactational Hormones in Social Behavior and Stress Management," pp. 164-174; and K. Uvnäs-Moberg, "Physiological and Endocrine Effects of Social Contact," pp. 146-163. A salient summary of the findings in these papers as presented at the conference "The Integrative Neurobiology of Affiliation," Washington, DC, March 14-17, 1996, is published in Natalie Angier, "The Biology of Benevolence," The New York Times, April 30, 1996, pp. C1, C11 (for a reprint, go to Google and type in "NYT Evolution Frame"; the article printed out for me as pp. 124-129 of that 153-page file). See also the papers published by these same scientists in Psychoneuroendocrinology, Vol. 23, No. 8 (November, 1998): C. Sue Carter, "Neuroendocrine Perspectives on Social Attachment and Love," pp. 779-818; and Kerstin Uvnäs-Moberg, "Oxytocin May Mediate the Benefits of Positive Social Interaction and Emotions," pp. 819-835.]
These two scientists point to a physiological factor in the human brain—which they have actually called "a Madonna factor"—a physiological factor that may significantly foster within us the love and affection, the peace and calm, that lead from a strident individuality to a loving community.
Indeed, in Professor Uvnäs-Moberg's lectures she has juxtaposed two contrasting slide images: "one of a fierce, snarling battle-ready man, fists cocked, and the other of a nursing Virgin Mary, she of the exposed breast and benign... mien." (Angier, citation above) And then Uvnäs-Moberg has gone on to offer physiological commentary on these figures. The warrior's fight-or-flight hormones are surging, his blood pressure and blood sugar are soaring. He is breaking down his body's energy stores for the business of attacking an enemy—whereas the body of the lactating Madonna is busy building up, not tearing down. Her insulin levels are mounting, the better to pull sugar from the blood and store it in cells. And within minutes after beginning her nursing, her blood pressure drops, fostering a relaxation that keeps her willingly quiet as long as it takes to satisfy her child. At the same time, the blood vessels of her chest dilate, which turns her into a living space heater to warm the suckling infant. In the warrior's fight-or-flight response the distinction between the self and the other is sharpened, whereas in the lactating Madonna the self is opened up and expanded toward the other.
Both Uvnäs-Moberg and Carter have hypothesized that the biological process of lactation has affected the hard wiring of the mammalian brain in such a way as to make possible our social development—our development away from such individualistic behaviors as self-defensiveness and self-preservation, and our development toward such social and affiliative behaviors as benevolence, affection, and love. You see, Professors Uvnäs-Moberg and Carter argue that being gentle and loving is not just "learned" behavior. It arises as well from deep within our physiology.
To be sure, a madonna with an infant at her breast symbolizes the human emotion of affection and connectedness. Yet a madonna with an infant at her breast probably also portrays the human biology of affection and connectedness.
A nursing mother's low blood pressure, her deep relaxation, and her hormonal and neural circuitry are opening her to the child. She is experiencing an expansion of her self toward the other and whatever anxiety she feels is being replaced by a quiet joy.
Now, the hormone that orchestrates this broad set of responses by a nursing mother to her infant is called "oxytocin." Oxytocin originates deep within the brain, in the part we call the hypothalamus. It is Dr. Carter who advanced the hypothesis that in addition to oxytocin's first and strongest role—to help forge the mother-infant bond—oxytocin also influences the brain circuitry to serve other affiliative purposes, that oxytocin also fosters our openness to developing alliances and partnerships with other persons as well. According to Dr. Carter, the hormonal and neural biology that fostered the primal human bond—the one between mother and nursing infant—that biology evolved to foster other patterns of human bonding as well, thereby facilitating the formation of extended human communities—communities founded on benevolence, affection, and love.
Do you share my excitement at the possible discovery of the hormone that underlies affection and benevolence? Do you share my wonder at the intricate biological path that seems to lead from mother's milk to a loving human community? I hope you do.
And I hope you also affirm that it is God who has planned the path of evolution that is guiding us into loving community. Yes, I believe that the more we know, the more we will come to stand in awe of our Creator's ways.
So from now on, whenever you or I see the Madonna of Christmas portrayed in art or the Madonna of Pentecost portrayed in literature, I hope we will remember the hypothesis of Drs. Carter and Uvnäs-Moberg—the hypothesis that it is, among other factors, the biology of a nursing mother that directs all of our living toward the goal of becoming a loving community.
And I also hope that whenever you and I see a baby ardently seeking its mother's breast, we will recall the ever so powerful message given to us by the image in today's lesson from First Peter—the message that for a human community to mature beyond simple affiliation and benevolence into becoming a true community of Christ, we must go on to seek more than just the milk a human mother has to offer. We must go on to seek the pure and spiritual milk that we can drink only from the breast of our mother God. We must crave and drink the spiritual milk that is the Word of God made known to us in the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus—we must crave and drink this milk as eagerly, as insistently, as uninhibitedly as a newborn infant. Thus will God's will come to be done by us on earth.
Let us pray:
O God, by what wondrous and intricate processes You have created us! You have used even hormones and metabolism to fashion our nature. By the physical milk of mothers like Mary and our own, we have grown into human community. Now, by the spiritual milk of Your Word, may we be developed beyond even that into the maturity of becoming a community of Christ, in whose name we pray. Amen.