Mothering Sunday

Exodus 2: 1-10. In this tale, Pharaoh’s daughter directly disobeys her father’s decree to kill all Hebrew boys and becomes a story of bold female cooperation and sympathy. The miraculous deliverance of a future ruler are not uncommon in world cultures but the fact that the future saviour of the Hebrew people has an Egyptian name lends some credence to the fact that Moses is not an invented figure. God works through women, as well as men, to achieve his aims.

Colossians 3: 12-17. An uncontroversial list of virtues which invites reflection rather than head scratching. “Sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs” says Paul. What hymns the early church would have sung is anyone’s guess of course. As far as I am aware, western hymnody started with Gregorian chant and I’m not sure how far back Orthodox chant goes but music has obviously had a close connection with Christian worship from the very beginning

Luke 2: 33-35. Marian devotion, more catholic than protestant has its roots in Luke’s gospel and in this small extract we have the origins of Mary as the suffering mother forever by his side and one of the inspirations behind Michelangelo’s awe inspiring “Pieta”, a non-Biblical yet stunning and moving high point of Christian art. In a spiritual sense one intuits the pain that all mothers (and Fathers) may have to bear. The pain one feels when your child is derided, misunderstood, hurt or in extreme cases tortured or killed.

Mothering Sunday was originally an observance from the 16^th Century when people on the 4^th Sunday of Lent would return to worship at their “Mother church”, defined variously as either the church they were baptized in, the cathedral, or even their parish church.

Mother’s day started in 1908 in the USA, when a lady called Anna Jarvis succeeded in persuading the US Government to have a special day for Mothers, which was the culmination of three years lobbying since she held the memorial service for her own mother in 1905.

These two related but different occasions have essentially merged in the popular imagination, so the original reason for Mothering Sunday has all but been forgotten, even in the Christian churches.

This is no bad thing in my opinion because it is surely the lauding of the nurturing, mothering instinct that lies at the heart of both occasions, especially as the church was known as “Mother church” for that reason.

God, which we routinely call Father, of course, because that is what Jesus did, is complete and perfect so must include both masculine and feminine attributes.

As Genesis (1:27) says, “So God created man in his own image, male and female He created them.”

The fulness of God is found in the complimentary attributes of both men and women. There are gender differences between men and women, and while these can be greater or lesser, in certain individuals, in God the totality is a combination of them both.

We attribute certain traits and characteristics to each gender, and while these are not exclusive to either sex, for the majority of people they tend to hold water.

St. Paul speaks of the God of all consolation, which is a trait found, in our experience, exhibited more by Mothers than in Fathers. Not exclusively obviously but more generally. In our Colossians reading, compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, are commended by Paul for all people, but these are characteristics associated more, in our real lived experience with women more than men.       

It is ironic that while the Roman catholic church is so often heavily criticised for its exclusion of women from power and influence, the elevation of Mary in its theology, introduces a more balanced understanding of Divinity than is sometimes encountered in mainstream Protestantism.

But today, notwithstanding all of that, we celebrate Motherhood. Not all women are or can be mothers, but all of us, both men and women have Mothers.

Human beings are not perfect of course and sometimes our relationship with our mothers may have been strained or difficult. But we are called to be merciful and forgiving towards all human frailty, just as Jesus was. Whatever your relationship was, or is, like with your own mothers, their role is the most important primal role in society – to nurture life within themselves, to bear life, and then nurture that life to adulthood and independence. It is no wonder that we expect so much – nothing much short of perfection in fact. The weight of expectation and the responsibility is immense, so let us spare a few moments to thank our own mothers for everything they did for us and are for us, to forgive any shortcomings, either real or perceived, and to pray for all our mothers, alive or dead, and all future mothers, who need every bit of help they can get.