Mothering Sunday is not just a secular celebration of motherhood but one of the best loved festivals of the Church year.
But what does it mean
for you and me?
- Is it a time to show our mothers how
grateful we are for all they have done for us?
- Is it a time to remember them with love,
if they are no longer with us?
- Is it a time for soppy cards and flowers
and gifts?
- For the cynical, is it just another excuse
to make money by selling us over-priced, themed merchandise?
- Or is it a lovely excuse for families to
get together and celebrate their shared stories?
- Or, if you are particularly pious, might it be a time to give thanks for ‘mother church’ which nurtures us in our Christian faith?
It is, I suppose, all
these things … and a lot more too. It is a day when as Christians we are
invited to reflect on many different aspects of motherhood. Today’s readings
focus our minds on one, darker aspect: children can bring heartbreak as well as joy
to mothers.
Let’s look at the story of Hannah and her baby
boy Samuel (1 Samuel 1:20-28).
If you feel the
reading was a bit odd, it may be because it is only the middle part of a longer
story.
In
the first part, which we didn’t hear, we learn that Hannah is the wife of Elkanah,
a man with two wives. Every year Elkanah takes his whole household to the
shrine at Shiloh to sacrifice to the Lord. His second wife, Peninnah, provokes
and mocks Hannah because Peninnah has children, but Hannah doesn’t. Elkanah
loves Hannah, we are told, but perhaps he had taken a second wife because
Hannah could not give him children. How hard it is for people who long for
children but can’t have them! Hannah is desperate. She longs for a
child - she prays for a child in the shrine at Shiloh - and she offers God a
deal in exchange for a child. The bargain is along these lines: “God, if you give me a son, then I will give him back to serve
you for the rest of his life.” Eli the priest notices her unhappiness as she prays
silently. She is so distressed that he thinks she is drunk and chides her, but
Hannah with great dignity explains she isn’t drunk, but has a lot of troubles
to pray about.
In the passage we heard today, God has
answered Hannah's prayer. She conceives, gives birth to a son and calls him
Samuel. When Samuel is old enough, perhaps barely more than a toddler, she
takes him with her on the annual trip to Shiloh, and leaves him there with Eli.
‘For this
child I prayed,’ she tells Eli; ‘and the Lord has granted me the petition that I made
him. Therefore I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives, he is given to
the Lord.’
In the last part of
the story, after the passage we heard read, we are told that every year Hannah
makes a little robe for Samuel and brings it to him in Shiloh, when she goes
there with her husband Elkanah for the sacrifice. Every year Eli blesses them
for her gift to the Lord. And over the years the Lord blesses Hannah with three
more sons and two daughters.
What sort of a mother is Hannah?
Your initial reaction
might be to think she isn’t a very good one. How could a good mother abandon
her baby at the gates of a religious institution, as Hannah did Samuel at the
House of the Lord at Shiloh?
It would surely be a
mistake to judge Hannah by the standards of our own time - we must apply the
standards of her own society, not ours. Nor should we forget that until quite recently
many women in Ireland chose, or felt obliged, to give their children over to
the care of religious institutions. Many privileged women still send their
children away to Prep schools as boarders, when not much older than Samuel was
when Hannah left him with Eli. And we all expect the State to take children
into care when their mothers cannot care for them as they need and deserve.
Hannah must have felt
her heart breaking as she left Samuel behind to be fostered by Eli. But by
doing so she ensured that he had a fine education and a good home. She was able
to visit him, to give him presents, and Eli looked after him well. Fostering
has been an honourable tradition in many societies – it was in Gaelic Ireland –
and it still is for people in Nigeria for instance, which regularly causes
misunderstandings with our immigration authorities.
Living
in the shrine at Shiloh, Samuel learned to know and serve God. He grew up to be
a great prophet - and eventually the leader of his people. It was Samuel who
anointed Saul to be the first King of Israel, and David to be their greatest
King ... and when Samuel died as an old man, the whole nation of Israel
gathered to mourn him.
By leaving Samuel with Eli, Hannah allowed him to grow up to be what God called
him to be - a prophet, and a leader. Her sacrifice was good for Samuel, and
turned out well for all. Perhaps she wasn’t such a bad mother after all!
There
is a lesson here, not just for mothers, I think, but for all parents: to know
when to let our children go. Our real job as parents, surely, is to do all that
we can to enable our children to become all that they can be - what God intends
them to be. That means we must be prepared to let them go. Even though that breaks
our hearts.
What heartbreak it must have been
for Jesus’s mother Mary at the foot of his cross, as John 19:25-27 tells us in his
Gospel.
Public
execution is an ugly thing, but the prolonged torture of crucifixion must have
been particularly gut-wrenching to watch. Yet Mary his mother found the
strength to stay close by Jesus in his agony. How torn she must have been, too:
repelled by his ghastly death, yet drawn to be near her beloved son in his last
hours. We see an image of the eternal love at the heart of motherhood in Mary
at the Cross.
Mary
the mother of Jesus was supported in her vigil by four others: her sister, Mary
the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, as well as someone described as the
‘disciple whom Jesus loved’. It is an ancient tradition of the Church that the
‘disciple whom Jesus loved’ was John, one of the sons of Zebedee and Mary’s
sister Salome, the author of St John’s Gospel. If so, this John too, like John
the Baptist, would be Jesus’s cousin.
I
find it very moving that on the brink of his death, Jesus should think to
commit Mary to the care of his cousin John, and John to the care of Mary, to
look after each other, and to comfort each other in their loss. A truly
practical example of the love of God at work in evil times.
So today as we celebrate Mothering
Sunday:
As
children - let us show our love and gratitude to our mothers. As mothers - let
us allow our families to make a fuss of us. And as families - let us enjoy all
the memories.
But
let us not forget those heartbroken over children. Those who long for children
but cannot have them. Parents that are separated from their children. And
parents who have lost their children through death or in other ways.
And
let us give thanks for those foster parents, adoptive parents and carers who by
their love show God’s love to children that are not their own.
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