A mother wrote a new version of 1 Corinthians 13…
“ If I live in a house of spotless beauty with everything in its place, but have not love, I am a housekeeper–not a homemaker. If I have time for waxing, polishing, and decorative achievements, but have not love, my children learn cleanliness – not godliness. Love leaves the dust in search of a child’s laugh. Love smiles at the tiny fingerprints on a newly cleaned window. Love wipes away the tears before it wipes up the spilled milk. Love picks up the child before it picks up the toys. Love is present through the trials. Love reprimands, reproves, and is responsive. Love crawls with the baby, walks with the toddler, runs with the child, then stands aside to let the youth walk into adulthood. Love is the key that opens salvation’s message to a child’s heart. Before I became a mother I took glory in my house of perfection. Now I glory in God’s perfection of my child.
As a mother, there is much I must teach my child, but the greatest of all is love.”
St. John gives us a glimpse of Mary standing at the foot of the cross of her son. Who can imagine what she was experiencing? see the loving relationship between Mary and Jesus, and through this relationship the maternal nature of God’s love for us.
Mary says yes after pondering, she raises the Messiah having been told when he is 8 days old by Simeon that her soul will be pierced and in today’s Gospel we meet Mary at the cross. Mary having given birth to God’s son must now watch him die a painful death, her soul is pierced with trauma and pain but this mother who has more than fulfilled her role, goes on in Acts to to be a leader and disciple in the early church.
The Gospel gives us this moving narrative where Jesus from the cross gives his mother to John his beloved disciple, and in turn, John to his mother Mary.
He entrusts his mother, the person who has been with him all his life, has raised him, loved him, nurtured him, to a person who was not related by blood, but a person who trusted and who loved him. Jesus had brothers and sisters, where were they? Here, we see a new way of being family, and the start of what we now know as the church. In this new family that Jesus creates, mothering and loving provides care and love and security.
Throughout the Gospels we are taught, through the words and actions of Jesus that God is as much mother as father. With Christ as our pattern and our guide we are to inform our own caring and loving, as he does for each of us.
We are all called to mothering of one kind or another, because we are created in the image of God who looks after us as his children. Jesus invites us into this new family of everlasting love and mutual belonging, to belong to him and to each other.
The 4th Sunday in Lent being Mothering Sunday it had in the old Prayer Book the Epistle mentioned “Jerusalem our mother”,Galatians 4, ‘the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is the mother of us all’.
This was taken to be a symbol of the church being the mother of us all, the church looking after us and nourishing us. But this day was also called Midlenting Sunday and Refreshment Sunday. The Gospel of the day was the Feeding of the Five Thousand, and at the time when Lent was being kept very rigorously, this was seen as a hint that it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have a break, a bit of a feast, mid-Lent. And that fitted in with the custom of people, particularly those in service, being given the day off to go home and visit their mothers, and maybe indulging in some simnel cake too.
Another tradition was that on Mothering Sunday people went to the mother church of the diocese, the cathedral, or if that was too far away, the nearest minster church.
Today then is a day not just to remember mothers but divine mothering. God is love. And I don’t think he’s just a loving Father; he’s also a loving Mother. And by that I mean that in God are combined all the loving attributes of both fatherhood and motherhood. Those are different, aren’t they? Though of course in some human families a single parent valiantly fulfils aspects of both. God is our Parent, who creates us and then loves us to all eternity.
There was a lady known as Mother Julian of Norwich who was born in 1342, and she wrote these inspired and inspiring words:
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother, and he revealed this in everything, and especially in these sweet words where he says:
I am he; that is to say: I am he, the power and the goodness of fatherhood.
I am he, the wisdom and the lovingness of motherhood.
I am he, the light and grace which is all blessed love. I am he, the Trinity.
As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.
Julian remains one of the most celebrated figures of the Middle Ages. And maybe, just maybe she reminds us what Mothering Sunday liturgically is for… mid way through Lent, we get a reminder of the nature of God.
Today in the church year is a day for celebration, a momentary lifting from the austere days that lie ahead between now and Holy Week.
It is a day to thank God and to thank our earthly mothers or those who’ve walked with us in life for our nurturing, for our upbringing and the chances in life, which they have given us, often sacrificially.
And it is above all a day to learn from the example of good human love, and the continuing giving of Christ, even whilst he breathed his last breath on the cross.
May we know that God loves us like the perfect mother, cares for us and protects us.
May we know that God in motherly love has died our death and given us life in Jesus Christ.
A happy Mothering Sunday to us.
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