I wonder what the first thing that comes to our minds is,
when we think of the 4th Sunday of Lent?
Amongst this season of Lent – a time of reflection, fasting and prayer – it is also a cause for celebrating –
The 4th Sunday of Lent is also known as ‘Mothering Sunday’ – (a religious festival to honour the Virgin Mary, the mother of Jesus). It has evolved from a 16th Century medieval tradition when domestic servants and apprentices were able to visit their families and ‘ Mother’ or home churches whilst at the same time giving them an opportunity to take a short break from fasting through Lent.
By the early 20th Century this tradition had begun to fall out of fashion – the decline was due to several factors including The Industrial Revolution, Social Changes and – something we are still seeing today – a fall in religious attendance to church.
In 1914 Constance Penswick-Smith founded the ‘Observance of Mothering Sunday’ that promoted the day as a celebration of the ‘Mother Church’ and ‘Mother Nature’, in contrast to the ‘Mother’s Day’ that Ann Jarvis established in America, a much more secular version – with flowers, cards, gifts and family lunches that celebrated and gave thanks to the women that have shaped, nurtured and influenced lives. Whilst the Observance of Mothering Sunday was successful in bringing back ‘Mothering Sunday’, by the late 1920’s it had merged with the American secular version that we are familiar with today.
One ‘original’ feature, that was kept is that it always falls on the 4th Sunday of Lent.
When we think of the 4th Sunday of Lent – being in the context of Mother’s Day – we know that for many it is a joyful day, but it is important for us to also remember and consider – those whose relationship with their mother is complicated –
• Instead of love, joy and nurturing it is full of struggles and longing, of sorrow and grief, of absence or abandonment.
When we look to the Scriptures, we are reminded of the enduring strength and wisdom found in maternal figures: In Isaiah 66:13 God’s own love for His people is compared to that of a mother with her child: “As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; you shall be comforted in Jerusalem.”
This invites us to see God’s care reflected in the gentle guidance, patience, and encouragement we receive from those who mother us. It challenges us to extend the same kindness and understanding to others in our community and beyond, to support those that I mentioned just now – the struggling, the sorrowful, the longing, the grieving and the abandoned.
We also need to recognise, understand and forgive Mothers who just simply get it wrong, whose neglect or abandonment is a learned behaviour or one out of necessity.
Take the mother of the infant Moses, for example. From the book of Exodus, it is clear that she felt she had no choice: believing that the kindest and most compassionate act she could do was let him go in the hope that someone else would give him the safety that she feared she could not. That takes a lot of courage…..
When we think of the 4th Sunday of Lent – being in the context of ‘Mothers’ – who grieve for a child that has been lost to them, in any circumstances – especially during war.
A short while ago I read a harrowing story of a Bosnian Muslim called Hadijah, whose husband and two sons were among 8,000 men that were murdered during so called ethnic cleansing. After such a loss her strength came from a group, she founded called the ‘Mothers of Srebrenitsa ‘who sought to identify and bury bodies whilst seeking justice for those lost. It took her seven years to locate her sons. Just before her death in 2018 she reflected on these events and said:
“I am a woman that once had a husband. I am a woman that gave birth to two sons. But I have no-one anymore. I go to bed alone and I wake up alone. I gave birth to children who played, went to school, who laughed, yet all I had to bury were just two bones.”
Hadijah spoke truth to power and you could argue that Rizpa (who we meet in 2 Samuel 21:10) is the mother in spirit to Hadijah and many more besides. If you recall Rizpa refused to let what David and the Gibeonites had done to her sons and those of other women to go unmarked. Rizpa cared for the dead, ensured they were not forgotten and had little left to bury – just bones. Where was God in all of this – I am sure He was sitting with these brave and traumatised mothers.
When we think of the 4th Sunday of Lent – being in the context of ‘Mothering Sunday’ and the ‘Mother Church’ – We realise there are two things that we all have in common in church here today – we all have a mother that gave us the gift of life and we all share another mother – the ‘Mother Church.’
Just as with our birth mothers, each one of us will have had a very different kind of relationship with her, too. Some of us may have grown up within the Church and never left it; others of us may have discovered the Church relatively recently; some of us may find her a very comfortable and comforting place to be; others may come reluctantly, or even out of a sense of duty; others still may find being here, within the life of the Church, a constant challenge.
And just as there is a difference between an individual human mother and the quality of Mothering; so, too, there is a difference between an individual church (which will have all manner of failings) and the Church of God – which is truly our ‘Mother Church’: and the Church of God has given us another very precious gift.
Because it doesn’t matter who or what we are; it doesn’t matter what it is that has led us to share in this act of worship today; it doesn’t matter what our relationship with the Church has been in the past, or what it is in the present – regardless of all of that, the Church of God is always here for us, just as the love of God is always here for us.
Because any ministry must have at its core that sense of the boundless love and acceptance of God. And even though we will sometimes get things wrong at the level of the individual church, that basic principle should always inform everything that we do.
Alongside this I would like to suggest a third thing I believe we have in common. That is, regardless of our individual circumstances, we have at some time or another, received a form of ‘mothering’ from someone who was not our biological mother. It may have been a stepmother, or a foster mother, an aunt, a grandmother, or a friend. It might have been a male rather than female – which, interestingly enough, has good biblical precedent: after all, it was Jesus himself who, in St Luke’s Gospel, wept over Jerusalem saying: ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’ – a wonderful, and expressly maternal image.
For Christians, the Church should always be a place of safety and nurture; a place where we are enabled to grow and to flourish; a place where we hear the word of God, and are fed, and challenged, and inspired, as members of a community of love and service. But just as importantly, the Church is also a place from which we must then depart to go out into the world, confidently and courageously, equipped to embrace the opportunities that we are offered, and to meet the challenges we face, and we do so bearing the light of Christ and knowing that we can then return and come home again for refreshment and renewal.
In our Gospel reading this morning, the aged Simeon in the Temple, as he recognises the infant Jesus as the long-awaited Messiah, warns Mary his mother that ‘a sword will pierce through your own soul also.’ Because Mothering – whether biological, or any other kind – is a calling that is costly, because love is costly. But it is also more life-giving than any other force in nature. And within the life of our local church, we are called to participate in making it a reality.
Let me close by saying that whatever our relationship is or was with the ‘mother’ figures in our lives we should remember what St. Paul says in his letter to the Colossians –
“Be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teach and admonish one another in all wisdom, and sing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.”
AMEN