Mother’s Day 2023

This sermon was given at our Sunday morning service on Sunday 19th March, when we celebrated Mothering Sunday. The Old Testament reading was Exodus 2:1-10 and the Gospel was John 19:25-27.

Did you know that today is not, in fact, Mother’s Day?

That sounds like the start of a sermon from someone who forgot to buy a card for their mum today, doesn’t it? Thankfully, I remembered, and my kids remembered, so I don’t need to try to cover up anyone’s forgetfulness with a technicality – I’m really not sure it would go down well at all, and I would not recommend trying it!

But, it is true though. Today is Mothering Sunday – not Mother’s Day – and from the perspective of the Church, there is a difference.

Mother’s Day started in the US in the early 1900s, and it was originally a day for mothers to stand together and ask that their sons and husbands would no longer be killed in war. The day took off in popularity, transforming into a day to celebrate and be thankful for mothers and motherhood in general, and in most countries around the world, it is now celebrated on the second Sunday of May.

It's only really in our small corner of the world; the British Isles and Channel Islands, that we combine Mother’s Day and Mothering Sunday. Oh – and Nigeria too for some reason. Other countries have different dates, some tied in with other more localised festivals, and others linking it with International Women’s Day, which we celebrated only the other week.

Mothering Sunday is different to Mother’s Day. It goes back to the middle ages, and is traditionally a day that marks a half-way point through Lent, a day when you can officially pause your fasting and celebrate. Over the years, it has become associated with a day in which you would return to the church in which you were baptised, and so – if you were baptised here at St Michael’s – we’d like to offer you an especial welcome today; happy Mothering Sunday to you! This is your Mother Church, and we’re very glad to have you here with us on this special day, whether you are a visitor or a regular attendee! 

The name 'Mothering Sunday', by the way, refers to the fact that the readings for this day in the medieval lectionary all mentioned different mothers in the Bible.

I wonder if you noticed the references to mothers in our readings today too? I think it’s astounding to realise that every year for hundreds and hundreds of years on this day during Lent people have heard these, or similar readings reflecting on the importance of motherhood. It’s like a thread, running through our collective history. Today is a day for Christians to reflect on motherhood, and what it means for us.

And, given we’ve been reflecting on that for hundreds of years, you might think there’s not a lot more we can say, but I’d like to focus on a couple of elements from our readings today that I think are relevant to what’s going on in our nation at the moment.

Let’s start with our Gospel; a story about Jesus and his own mother. Mary is the archetypal Christian mother throughout the ages, obedient, devoted, and always there, providing support in the background; the very model of womanly passivity. I’d like to think, however, that now we’re in 2023, we can start to admire her instead for some of her active traits, motherly traits we have traditionally ignored; her extreme courage in following God’s plan for her life despite the shame a child conceived outside of marriage would have brought upon her and her family; her radical theology as shown in her speech when she finds out about her pregnancy of God pulling down the mighty from their thrones and exalting the poor, and her very real strength as she raises a son in such a way that he can then change the world, all the while knowing she has been prophesied to outlive him.

Either way, here we are in our Gospel with an exemplary image of a mother and a son, Mary and Jesus. But it’s not a saccharine Mother’s Day card moment. We’re looking towards Easter – as I mentioned earlier, we’re at the half-way point in Lent – so it’s appropriate this morning that we see a glimpse of where our journey is leading us; Christ on the cross. And in our reading, Christ - on the cross - is having a conversation with his mother.

Commentators have called out Jesus’ devotion to his mother in our Gospel reading here, that, even in the hour of his death, Christ looks to provide for her. This, they say, is the image of a dutiful son. But – and this might seem an odd thing for me to say from the pulpit – my focus is not on Jesus in this story. This is a Mother’s Day story, so I’m going to look towards Mary today.

As Mary, already widowed, watches her son die, she is dealt a double-blow. Not only does she lose her son, but with his death, she also loses her livelihood. She has no-one to provide for her now. She no longer has a home; she would not have owned property or money, but would have relied upon her son to provide for her. When Christ dies, Mary becomes a refugee.

In our Gospel reading, then, we see a mother without a son. Perhaps it is now time to skip back to our Old Testament reading to see what we can find there? In the book of Exodus, we hear that Pharoah’s daughter is bathing at the river, and sees a makeshift boat hidden in the reeds. It contains, as we know, a baby boy; a son without a mother to contrast with our Gospel. This is Moses – and, like Mary, he too has become a refugee, sent across the water to avoid persecution. As we also know, Pharoah’s daughter adopts this refugee child, and takes him into her own home. In doing so, she changes the fate of the entire Jewish people.

Let’s flip back to our Gospel, and look again at Mary, as she stands by the cross as the fate of the people of God changes again. Mary is not focusing on that though, for her, this moment is about losing her son, losing everything.

“Here is your son,” says Jesus to her, indicating his friend John standing with her. And to John, he says “here is your mother.” And like Pharoah’s daughter taking Moses into her home, from that moment, John take Mary into his.

And in this moment at the cross, motherhood is multiplied. In this moment, there are mothers and mothers and mothers.

Christ makes his mother a mother again; he makes her the mother of a desolate grieving friend.

Christ, the mother hen, longing to gather us all under his wing, mothers us all; in his death on the cross, we are all brought to life.

And there, in the moments before Christ’s death, we witness the birth of another mother; our Mother Church as a new family is created, a mother and a son, united by the death of Christ, rather than by heritage.

And from those small beginnings, here we all are. The Church family. This is a very, very real family. A family of mothers and sons and fathers and daughters and brothers and sisters. A family where blood really is thicker than water; the blood of Christ that unites us all, that is thicker than any genealogical ties we might have. A family where the motherless become mothers. The childless gain children. A family where the hungry are fed, the humble exalted, and the homeless are housed. A family where refugees find refuge.

Here is your son. Here is your mother. Here is your family.

The family of God is bigger than a traditional nuclear family. We are all adopted and chosen by our heavenly Father (or, our heavenly Mother, if you like – God is, of course, above and beyond gender; men and women are made in God’s image, not the other way around), and whether we were birthed into this family via an operating room in Trafford General, or via a makeshift boat adrift on a river, we are family.

On this Mothering Sunday I’d like to encourage you to remember this as you go through the week and see governmental slogans about stopping boats in the news. I’d like you to remember that God has a different slogan for us all instead. Two in fact.

These slogans are four words, rather than three, but I think they pack more of a punch anyway. They’re definitely a counter to the ‘stop the boats’ diatribe. When you see or hear that, remember these instead, the words of Christ on the cross that started the Church:

Here is your son.

Here is your mother.

Amen.