Fourth Sunday in Lent
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Readings: 1 Samuel 1: 20-28; Luke 2: 33-35 and John 19: 25-27
Do you remember the general dismay in 2020 when families couldn’t get together on Mothering Sunday after the first lockdown had been announced? It was one of the first occasions we realised what a great impact COVID restrictions were going to have on us. The best that could be done on Mothering Sunday was to knock on somebody’s window and wave! There were no church services that day, and – worse to come – no services one could attend in person during Holy Week and Easter.
In most of the churches in which I’ve served, Mothering Sunday services have been bright and breezy, with much participation by children who say and do nice things for their mums and grandmas. It can be all a bit cosy and unrealistic. Society has changed beyond recognition since the Second World War, with family life having become more fragmented, and an increase in the number of alternative lifestyles. Any preacher should tread cautiously on this day, as not everybody finds this celebration easy.
Traditionally, Mothering Sunday gives us a three-fold opportunity for thanksgiving. With the rest of society today we remember our own mothers, whether living or departed. With other Christians we give thanks for ‘Mother Church’, which after all, was the original reason for this day; and we especially remember the motherhood of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The readings today emphasize that motherhood is no bed of roses. I decided not to include the reading about Moses today, which we often do. We would have heard how Moses’ mother Jochebed had to choose between having her baby killed or leaving him to ‘fate’ in a wicker basket on the River Nile.
The passage from 1 Samuel today reminds us of the pain of those who aren’t able to have children, although the story comes good in the end. Then the lectionary offers us two short passages about Mary – at either end of Jesus’ life.
First, on the occasion of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, Simeon warns Mary, the excited young mother, that her son will prompt great opposition, and that she will feel the force of it too. ‘A sword will pass through your soul also.’ Mary must have been horrified. But never in her worst nightmares can she have imagined that, some thirty-three years later, she would stand beside a Roman cross and watch the death of her son. No doubt she wanted to protest and challenge this brutal injustice. But maybe Simeon’s words came back to her, and she realised that – in the terms of John’s gospel – this was Jesus’ ’hour’; the moment he was destined for.
It’s said that in war and conflict, dying combatants of whatever nationality often call out for their mothers. But in the scene at the Cross, Jesus makes provision for his mother, and lovingly connects her with the one disciple who will be able to explain a little of what Jesus’ death means, and why it had to be.
In the reading from 1 Samuel, the joy of Elkanah and Hannah, Samuel’s parents, is tempered with sadness, as Hannah knew she had to give her son up to the Lord’s service. This she had promised before the child was conceived.
So on this sheet of our Sunday readings we have three mothers who gave their children away to God – under very different circumstances, but all with pain, and with joy. Hidden in those stories is an abiding truth, so often forgotten today, that human beings belong to God, and are fundamentally his creation. One writer says, “Each has a destiny planned as a gift from God, and therefore is not at the disposal of any other.” Compare that thought with the statistic that there are over 100,000 terminations of pregnancy in Britain every year.
Psalm 128 says, “Children and the fruit of the womb are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord.” The message from the readings today is that children are not owned by their parents; we have them on trust from God, and we are answerable to him for our parenting of them.
I remember visiting a friend in Hampshire some years ago now, whose daughter, unmarried and unattached, had a baby. The mother was off to see a friend – let’s call her Lauren. “I’m going to meet Lauren this morning; she hasn’t got a baby yet.” Lauren, you understand, was similarly unattached. But it was this matter-of-fact way of talking about babies as a commodity – that they are got, like a new suite of furniture – that made me uncomfortable.
In our culture today, the ethics of personal rights dominates many lives. People go to great lengths to have a child, now sometimes born through artificial insemination by donor, or perhaps through surrogacy. Whether you or I have reservations about these processes, or just look on in bewilderment, they are means by which we participate in the process of creation – a desire for which God has planted deep in our instincts. Few people would argue that it is not good that science has progressed so far that children – so often badly wanted – can be born to parents who might not otherwise have had them. And however they are born, their identity as children of God will stand.
I mentioned earlier that as well as thinking about our own mothers and about Mary, Mothering Sunday was as much a day to give thanks for Mother Church as anything else. I like to think that the Church, world-wide and in each distinct community, shows some of those qualities of motherhood: being prepared to bear an element of pain and agony for those under its care; not seeing itself as having a right of ownership of anyone or anything, but participating in bringing about God’s will in the world, and nurturing those under its care to find their destiny as planned by God.
Bishop Emma Ineson, the Area Bishop on Kensington, writing a year or two back, suggested that membership of the body of Christ is central to the gospel. The word translated as ‘church’ in English is ‘ekklesia’ in Greek – literally ‘the called-out ones’. Bishop Ineson adds, “Not called out from the world and all its problems and difficulties, but called out into the world.”
The fact that Mothering Sunday will not be an easy time for many people is a reminder that human families are not universally happy; that envy, division and neglect can mar the abundant life that God wills for all people. But if we cannot change those realities, let us strive to make the Church a place where Christian behaviour shows a different standard from that of the world – a place of compassion, acceptance, patience and forgiveness – qualities of love that are needed if any household is to hold together; where the dead are brought to life and the lost found, and where the peace of Christ rules.