Mothering Sunday 2021

Mothering Sunday 2021

Lectionary readings:

‘Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

‘The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’

Exodus 2:1-10

 

‘Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction with the consolation with which we ourselves are consoled by God. For just as the sufferings of Christ are abundant for us, so also our consolation is abundant through Christ. If we are being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation; if we are being consoled, it is for your consolation, which you experience when you patiently endure the same sufferings that we are also suffering. Our hope for you is unshaken; for we know that as you share in our sufferings, so also you share in our consolation.’

2 Corinthians 1:3-7

 

‘And the child’s father and mother were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them and said to his mother Mary, ‘This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed—and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’

Luke 2:33-35

 

This Sunday is both Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday. The day on which we remember, before God, our experience of motherhood and of the Church as our mother in God. And that inevitably requires of us, as a community, to do careful work, honouring one another in our multi-storied personal histories, forgiving one another where necessary. Today is a day for more than a bunch of daffodils, or any other token gestures.

 

Our Gospel reading highlights for us the reality that motherhood is costly, that what sons and daughters experience—even from the very outset—affects and may well wound mothers deeply. It should not surprise us when mothers respond in reaction to their deep wounds; nor should we ever take for granted the miracle of mothers loving from the place of healed and beautified wounds. It is costly, also, for mother church to witness our children leave, too often a sign opposed by us, revealing our inner thoughts to be out of step with the Spirit.

 

Our reading from Paul’s second extant letter to the church in Corinth speaks eloquently of affliction and suffering and consolation. These things, also, are pertinent to Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday. ‘Affliction,’ here, relates to that internal pressure that holds us where we feel trapped, without options or choices. That would relate to so much of our collective experience of motherhood, from standing by a child whose actions we cannot condone; to feeling tied to a mother who for whatever complex reasons was unable to care for us; from overwhelming guilt or shame at believing yourself to have been a bad mother, or perceived as such; to the deeply unsettling and often isolating lived experience of infertility. ‘Suffering’ relates to that which is done to us, for good or for ill, such as the complicated dance by which the child who was dependent on you becomes the adult on whose care you are increasingly dependent in old age. In such real-world afflictions and sufferings, the consolation and salvation of God is worked out, as God in Christ draws close by the Holy Spirit, encouraging us, rescuing us from ourselves. Consolation: God draws close alongside us, and draws us deeper into the transforming presence of love.

 

But I want to return to our reading from the Old Testament, because it tells for us a story, of motherhood. It is, of course, the story of the birth and infancy of Moses, born at a time of genocide. Moses’ people were living in Egypt, shepherds taken from the flock and conscripted into service as builders of an empire—and, inexplicably, the more they are oppressed, the more God blesses them. Still, they are treated increasingly harshly, to the point of a governing edict instructing the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, that they should kill Israelite boys as they were being born, and claim they were stillborn. At great personal risk, the midwives defied Pharaoh. Moses is born to Jochebed, who initially hides her son at home, and when that is no longer possible, waterproofs a basket and entrusts him to the Nile, and the watchful eye of his seven-year-old sister, Miriam. Makes for him a basket of reeds, and hides him among the reeds from which she made the basket: that is a pleasing detail. When he is discovered, by an Egyptian princess and her maid, Miriam offers to find a Hebrew wet nurse, and the Egyptian agrees. It is clear that this is women’s work: that Jochebed and Miriam and the daughter of Pharaoh all know exactly what it is that they are doing, for this boy-child with multiple mothers, one who was delivered of him through broken amniotic waters and another who drew him out of the water of the Nile and of the chaos of genocide that threatened to overwhelm life. There is a clear understanding in which the women are complicit, a pragmatic arrangement on the side of justice. But it is also true that human family arrangements are often complex, as complex a story as this one.

 

Question: what do you need to let go of, today, that you have kept inside for as long as you are able without the sound of crying and the furtive hiding giving you away? What do you need to turn over to God, to hold for you?

 

That longing, that fragile hope, which has grown within us, cannot be ignored, or abandoned, cannot just be pushed out to die. After all, it was given life by God. Even when our circumstances, our history and our present, have been overwhelming, God is at work, to raise up those who have fallen, to bring good out from evil. And yet, key to Moses’ survival was a container woven of papyrus reeds, woven of flexible strands, bound tightly together, in love, to form an ark on the waters.

 

We are yet to know what the long-term impact of the past twelve months will be, on our communities, on the lives of our neighbours, their children, and grandchildren. But we know enough to know that the local church must be an ark, within which we can entrust them, and their hopes and dreams, to God’s care. We must attend to making that ark waterproof, through careful Safeguarding principles and practices. But, fundamentally, we must weave our lives together, as a tight-knit, hopeful, loving, adopted family of God. Where we have failed to do that, we must repent and believe, must learn again to be God’s people. It is interesting to note that this is often done best mediated by a shared activity, that occupies the hands and opens up room to talk. A craft-based approach, the passing on of skills, may be key to rebuilding robust community beyond the pandemic.

 

But there is a stage even before basket-making, and that is cutting and gathering-up reeds. If we are to weave a community together, it starts with prayer, as an act of noticing with God. Each school, each class, a reed bed; each teacher and each child, a reed, at least in our imagination, whether we know them by name or not. Each home, each shop, each public park, each nursing home, each hospital, a reed bed. In this way, we increase our capacity, to receive God’s love and to enfold others into that care; for if we cannot prayerfully imagine any given part of the community gathered in, we will not see them gathered in. In this way, we learn where the reeds grow, that are ready for harvesting, that are good for basket-making. It is an observable brain phenomenon that for many of us, our imagination has shrunk in lockdown, and our prayers with it. Let us encourage one another to flex our prayers again.

 

On Mothers’ Day and Mothering Sunday, we bring out our baskets, perhaps attend to any necessary repairs, give thanks for the good things that they have cradled over the years. And we look to the future, with unshaken hope, to new baskets, to more people discovering what it is to be consoled by the God of all consolation, in which we share, together. May the Spirit of God birth something new in us today. Amen.