Happy Mothering Sunday, everybody! I took a look at a number of Mothering Sunday and Mother’s Day cards before coming here today. One said: ‘Thank you for your kindness – it means more than words can say. You deserve true happiness and joy on this Mother’s Day.’
Another had, in one sentence: ‘You always know just what to say or just the thing to do to help when there’s a problem with your kindness and love, too, and your warmth and understanding mean more than words can show and are the reason why you’re loved much more than you can know.’
And then there was this one: ‘You are a Mum who’s fabulous. You are a Mum who rocks. That’s why I hope today is filled with cake and booze and chocs!’
Qualities in a mother
If you’ve been lucky enough to get a card already this morning you might well be able to challenge my small selection. But if I was to ask what qualities you look for in a mother, then I wonder what you would come up with. I looked on-line and one website listed the top 100 qualities in a mother, which kind of says it all really.
None of the sites exactly agreed with each other about what makes a good mum. I don’t suppose that you would all agree either. But here’s one, which I picked because it was the shortest: patient, respectful, strong, humble, empathetic, authoritative, supportive and loving. Which isn’t that different from the qualities that Paul mentions in today’s verses from Colossians – though his list is meant to be for all of us, not just for mums.
Never sugary
Unlike some of the cards that we might see, the Bible’s stories of mothering are never sugary or sentimental. If you look at today’s Bible reading sheet there are lots of options for what we could have read. In amongst the 2 OT readings, 2 Psalms, 2 NT readings and 2 Gospel readings we have:
- In Exodus, three women who mothered one baby. There’s Moses’ birth mother and two very different girls who also look after him in their own way. One was his big sister, and the other was someone from a different nationality who adopted him. If you were to describe their qualities you might come up with: determined, protective, nurturing and even cunning.
- In the reading from 1 Samuel, Hannah had waited a very long time to have a baby. I think we see someone who is passionate and generous, patient and sacrificial, brave, joyful and trusting.
- In the verses from Luke, Mary is faithful and responsible. She’s also made aware of the double-edged sword of caring. That pain might be involved too.
- In John, Mary is there in sorrow. No mum should have the utter nightmare of seeing her son like this, the son that she had carried in both her womb & in her heart. There was nothing that she could do. She’s still faithful and still caring, but now she’s also grieving and being cared-for.
Hagar
The people who selected these particular Bible readings for today had plenty of others to choose from. From the OT, we might have had Hagar. Her story was one of suffering abuse and neglect and survival against the odds, of hanging on with her fingertips. From the NT, we might have had the story of Sarah who very late in life became the mother of John. Or maybe the nameless Syrophoenician woman, of her dogged persistence, her fighting to be heard, her refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer on behalf of her sick child.
We might have had Jesus’s own tears over Jerusalem, which are compared with a mother weeping for her children, longing to gather them like a hen gathers her chicks. The list of qualities linked with mothering grows ever longer.
Receiving and giving
Mothering is all those things, and more. Without someone to do those things for us – without someone to look out for our interests and to protect us; without someone to show us trust and joy; without someone to take the risk of loving us, even knowing that that love may bring them pain; without someone to stand with us in our times of greatest suffering – without someone to do those things for us, we miss receiving something crucial. And if we ourselves have nobody for whom we can do these same things for, we miss giving something crucial too.
Sometimes charities that work with vulnerable children, are involved in finding – out of situations of extreme suffering – new and life-giving ways of creating family and community. Just as Moses’ mum and sister did when they risked everything to give their baby a chance at life.
Our experiences
We might think about our own lives – our experiences of mothering or of being mothered, remembering with thanks all the various people who have done those things for us during our lifetimes. That might have been just earlier today getting us up and making us breakfast – or it might have been years ago with people now long gone. And we might also think of times when we have been failed by those who were supposed to care for us, or those times when we ourselves have failed.
If mothering were only done by mothers, it would be very hard indeed to ensure that everyone received the nurturing, the protection, the love, the sacrifice, the guidance that we need to become the people we are meant to be. As a church community, we are all of us called into a role of mothering that sometimes might need us to be just as fierce and trusting, loyal and tearful as the mothers that we’ve heard about in our Bible readings.
A different miracle
Because from the cross, Jesus performed a different kind of miracle. Mary finds that Jesus is with her and then she finds that there are others with her too. A random collection of family and friends. Jesus turns to her and says “Woman here is your son” – not talking about himself but about John, the beloved disciple. And then he turns to the disciple and says: “Behold your mother.”
This is more than a kindness for two grieving people. Jesus here is starting something that reimagines what mothering and what family is all about. We mostly celebrate Pentecost as being the start of the church. But perhaps it started here, with Mary and John being brought together at the cross.
Jesus gives a new way to think of family. It’s not merely about biology. Mary and John are joined in a covenanted, committed relationship through Jesus. Today’s Collect talks of Jesus drawing the whole human family to himself. So, maybe it’s a new way to think about church, too.
Mysterious gift
And sometimes the church actually lives up to this. Each person is a unique and mysterious gift from God. And in Jesus’ family there is, or should be, a place for all. A family that we join not by birth but by baptism.
On a wider scale, if we, as a church, truly love the community in which we are placed, and if we are to be God’s holy people for God’s needy world, then we will feel the pain of the world’s suffering, and we will be willing to sacrifice something of ourselves to bring to birth God’s purposes for the world.
Passionate
Are we that passionate about nurturing the world into becoming the place that God created it to be? A truly parental love is one that would give anything and everything for the child. This is the love of God that we see on the cross, but this is also the love that we are called to have for one another, for our community and for all of God’s creation. When we love like that, we make our Mothering-God visible to the world.
So, Happy Mothering Sunday. Take a look around you. Each of us are gathered here today by Jesus to see and discover others who are, or will be, family with us. Each of us, by the grace of God, to mother and be mothered. Amen
‘Happy Mothering Sunday!’ was delivered by Ian Banks at St Margaret’s, Heywood on 10th March 2024. It was based on Exodus 2:1-10, 1 Samuel 1:20-end; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:33-35; John 19:25b-27
References:
- https://reverendally.org/2015/02/24/mothering-sunday/
- https://sleepingshouldbeeasy.com/qualities-of-a-good-mother/
- https://www.stmartin-in-the-fields.org/mothering-sunday-reimagined/
- Levine, A-J. (2022). The Difficult Words of Jesus. Canterbury Press.