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Hipswell Parish

Sermon for Sunday 3rd April 2011

Reader - Anne Cowan

Sunday Sermon 3rd April 2011:  Given by Reader  -Anne Cowan

'Mothering Sunday'

Preparing today’s sermon has been a little bit like unravelling a ball of string full of knots and having to be patient in the process. I have never quite understood before why Mothering Sunday is celebrated in Lent, although, as children, having an eye to the main chance, my sisters, brother and I always looked forward to this highlight as it heralded only 2 more weeks before Easter Eggs!

What I have discovered is that as Christians we should try not to confuse Mothering Sunday with Mother’s Day. Established in America as a national holiday to make a day of special celebration for all mothers, this Day became, within 9 years, so commercialised that its founder, Anna Jarvis spent the rest of her life trying to close it down because she felt it trivialised motherhood.

‘Mothering Sunday’ in western Christendom was for many centuries, called ‘Refreshment Sunday’, when people returned to their ‘Mother’ Church, the one where they had been baptized. It was a day on which to renew and refresh baptismal vows to live the Christian life of obedience to God. The Church knew her people. Coinciding with the warming of the earth and the upsurge of new life in field and barn and hedgerow, it was a good day in the midst of Lenten fasting and discipline, to celebrate the promise of a plentiful supply and variety of fresh food after the limited diet of the harsh winter months.

Then, in the nineteenth century, the custom in this country, changed again. In rural areas, especially, youngsters working as servants in the houses of the wealthy were allowed leave to visit their families and on the way, would gather wild flowers to present to their Mothers.

So Mothering Sunday is linked to Church and is about giving time to say a big ‘thank you’ to God, to the Church and to all Mothers - and others - who ‘mother’ us. It is about community with God at its centre.

What is it about Mothering that is so special?  I think patience and the wisdom of waiting are involved and perhaps these qualities come with pregnancy. Underlying this is that awareness of the vulnerability of all living creatures. The miracle of a new-born child never fails to render me speechless before such beauty, such fragility and such an amazing ability to yell and make everyone run to feed the need!

Then there is that unconditional love which never gives up however contrary a child is being. There is the emotional stability that mothering gives to the whole family, not just to the children but to husbands and partners and to the extended family - and neighbours-  and friends near and far.

The Madonna and Child

All of us have it in us to behave in a motherly way. It is not a quality which is gender specific. It is a quality God revealed in his son in his earthly ministry. Jesus learnt from his human parents, Mary and Joseph. He also learnt from God, His Father, with whom Jesus was so wonderfully at home. 

 As the psalmist reminds us, Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labour in vain

Life without God becomes senseless. All of life’s work – building a home, establishing a career, raising a family – must have God as the foundation with those twin gifts of

caring and nurturing if the inevitable ups and downs are to be weathered and a sense of proportion and perspective maintained. The motherliness of God knows no boundaries. It is all about the patient nurturing of creation to bring about the Kingdom of God on earth. Jesus, grieving for his people, Israel who will not listen, cries, “how often have I longed to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings…”

Mothering Sunday: Springtime and new beginnings. The Book of I Samuel is also about new beginnings. By the time the book opens, Israel has been ruled by Judges for over 200  years. Eli and Samuel are to be the last of those Judges. The Book begins as many a good story does, with a family, The  head of the family is Elkanah, husband of two wives, Hannah and Peninnah. Peninnah had born several children by the time the story begins, but Hannah none and her life was made very hard by Peninnah’s constant jeering, especially when the family went on annual pilgrimage to the sanctuary at Shiloh. In ‘bitterness of soul’ Hannah had often wept her heart out. Eventually, instead of giving up hope, she had brought her problem honestly before God and prayed for a child whom she would dedicate to his service.

Each of us may face times of ‘barren-ness’ when nothing comes ‘to birth’ in our work or service or relationships. It is difficult to pray when we feel so ineffective, but as Hannah was to discover, prayer opens the way for God to work.

And so, at last, Hannah conceived and Samuel was born. For 3 years, Hannah brought up her son and then, when he was weaned and in fulfilment of the promise she had made to God, she brought Samuel to the sanctuary at Shiloh, to the priest, Eli, to serve in the house of the Lord. In dedicating her only son to God, Hannah was also dedicating her entire life and future to God. Because Samuel’s life was from God, Hannah was not giving him up. Rather she was returning him to God who had given Samuel to Hannah in the first place.

This is the challenge of this story for us. Our gifts to God should never be tokens. What God desires and longs for from each one of us is to be presented with our entire life of faith and trust. Part of ‘mothering’ is about letting our children grow into independent adults, and letting them go to find God in their own way.  

Hannah did not forget her son.  In Chapter 2 we read, “Each year, she visited him and brought the new linen robe she had made.”

Patience and waiting, wisdom, unconditional love, devotion to God, family and the wider community: these are all the qualities we love to give thanks for on Mothering Sunday, for they come from our living, loving God, who chose to love the world by giving his Son and in doing so gave us also the love of his ‘motherliness’ for all eternity.

Amen.

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