Mothering Sunday

When I look back to my childhood I now realise just how much I learned from my Mother, even though I didn’t think so at the time. On reflection she taught me so much, these are just some of the things she taught me:

RELIGION – You’d better pray that will come out of the carpet.

REASON – Because I said so, that’s why.

LOGIC – If you fall off that swing and break your leg don’t come running to me.

FORESIGHT – make sure you wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident.

IRONY – If you don’t stop crying I’ll give you something to cry about.

HYPOCRISY – If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a million times – don’t exaggerate.

ANTICIPATION – Just wait till I get you home.

BEHAVIOUR MODIFICATION – Stop acting like your father.

GENETICS – You’re just like your father.

WISDOM OF AGE – When you get to my age you’ll understand what I have told you.

JUSTICE – One day you’ll have children of your own and I hope they turn out like you!!

Seriously though, today is Mothering Sunday, the religious festival, not the commercially driven Mother’s Day which started in America some years ago and now is a huge money earner for card, flower and present retailers.  Mothering Sunday is a medieval tradition connected to Lent, when half way through the Lenten season people could relax from its strict observance.  That’s how the name Refreshment Sunday came about.

The church suggests we should consider Mothering Sunday under several headings. Firstly it’s a day we think about our own Mothers, to think about the love which our mothers gave us, the sacrifices they made for us, and for those of you who are fortunate to still have your mother around you, to say thank you to them and celebrate that maternal love which mothers so freely give.

For men, it’s difficult to talk meaningfully about being a mother, but even to us it’s pretty obvious being a mother comprises far more than giving birth to a baby.  The agonies, expectations and sheer determination of bringing up a child to adulthood, can seem daunting, and it doesn’t stop then, as parents we never stop worrying about our children and grandchildren.  A Mother’s natural nurturing instincts are to protect her children from the excesses and dangers of the world and allow them to grow as active, stable, confident members of society, and to be there when they fall, as we all do on occasions. That’s all part of growing up.

But we also must recognise that not every child’s experience of their mother may be a happy one, for them today there is no thanksgiving, only regret.  I don’t know whether you saw the programmes last week where the television personality Neil Morrissey, from “Men behaving Badly” and the voice of “Bob the Builder”, was trying to find out why he and his elder brother had been taken into care when he was 10, and he lost almost all contact with his parents. They were born in Stafford, both his parents had worked at St Georges Hospital. Clearly the experience had left a profound mark on his life, and then to be told by the Social Worker who worked with his family, that his parents were dysfunctional, his mother had left them alone in the house, sometimes over night, and the house was in an unfit state to bring children up in, was something he really didn’t expect to hear, he thought he had been taken into care because he and his brother were a bit of a handful.  Neil Morrissey’s experience of his Mother’s influence on his and his brother’s lives was not a loving, positive one, quite the opposite.

Then we think of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who to most Christians is the epitome of Motherhood. The Eastern Church knows her as the “God Bearer”, we know her as the Blessed Mary, our Patron Saint, and sadly over the centuries, especially since the Reformation, Mary has been the centre of much discussion, much dispute about who she really was, the Blessed Virgin Mary who ascended bodily into heaven or just the functionary chosen by God to produce the baby Jesus.  Indeed some people would suggest that Mary is the fault line between the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Churches, with arguments ranging over her divinity and virginity. Well I don’t want to get involved in that argument, but what we have to acknowledge is that Mary was chosen for a rather special task by God, to be the Mother of the Son of God, which in my book makes her rather special, and I think the Eastern Church has got it right, she is the “God Bearer”, and deserves to be recognised as such.

When you think about it, over all the length of human history, this one woman, Mary, who was only a child herself, was uniquely chosen by God to be the mother of His Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ, allowing God to take human form and live among us, suffer like us and suffer for us to restore us to God. And because Mary was human she suffered the pain of seeing her beloved Son killed in a most grotesque, inhuman way on that Cross.  That pain foretold by Simeon in the Temple, “and a sword will pierce your own soul too”, the pain experienced by Mary as she stood at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday and watched her Son suffer and die is something only a mother can understand, because she has carried that child in her womb for 9 months and experienced the pain of his birth and the mixture of joy and pain of his growing up.

And then we think of Mother Church. For many Christians Mother Church refers to their diocesan Cathedral, and if you look at the website for Lichfield Cathedral that’s how it is described, “The Mother Church of the Diocese”, but also the church has been described as “The Bride of Christ”,  which encompasses all the church throughout the world, although there is a theological argument as to whether Christ actually intended to create a church, a separate religion to Judaism or to bring non-Jews into the Jewish faith which he tried to restore to God. 

Jesus only used the word church twice, and it is only St Matthew who recorded them.  Jesus said to Peter, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church”. Whether Jesus intended a separate worshipping religion or not certainly Christianity has taken to mean that through Peter, Jesus was creating an ecclesiastical structure, which exists today and embraces at least 2 billion followers, about a third of the world’s population, even if they don’t regularly attend church.

Christianity in the form of Mother Church, the “Bride of Christ” is a revealed religion with the New Testament the custodian of those revelations.  And we see in the New Testament writings the essential nature of the church, the completeness between the Risen Christ who is living within us, and the community of faith, which is the church Militant here on earth and Triumphant in heaven, and through that completeness, the unity, love and grace that should be shared by members of the community with one another.  Christ is the Vine, we are the branches; He is the Good Shepherd and we are his sheep; Christ is the head of the Body, the Church, we are members of that universal church spread throughout the world. 

Sadly all too often we act like naughty children and fall out with our brother’s and sister’s in Christ, it’s what happens in families as we know only too well. When I was growing up, the youngest of 6 children, my mother always told us we must get on together, love each other and forgive each other when we did silly things or said something hurtful, because she told us family is the most important friends you can have.

As part of the Christian family committed to spreading the Kingdom of God here on earth, and in this town, we must embrace the grace and love Mother Church gives us and spread that grace and love to all our fellow Christians and indeed the whole community.  We have to learn that sometimes in a family compromise is necessary for us to get along, surely that is what Christ taught us, to love one another as Christ loved us, and to love our neighbours as ourselves. Mother would expect nothing less of us, mother will accept nothing less of us.

So on this Mothering Sunday we give thanks to Almighty God for the love we have received from our human mother’s, those who are still with us and also those who now share the nearer presence of God, for the life, devotion and witness of the Blessed Mary, and for the grace and love we receive as baptised members of Mother Church, the universal Church of God. Amen.