Martha and Mary

Christ in the home of Martha and Mary, Johannes Vermeer, 1654-5

Address given at Templederry Church on 19/7/25 and St Mary's Nenagh on 20/7/25, the 5th Sunday after Trinity

What a contrast there is between today’s readings (Amos 8:1-12, and Luke 10:38-42)

In the 1^st reading, Amos pronounces doom on the people of Israel, because they have done evil in God’s sight. But notice that Psalm 52 reassures those who are righteous that they will be spared that doom.

But today I shall leave all that doom on one side. Instead I’m going to focus on the 2^nd reading from Luke, in which Jesus responds with sensitivity and compassion to Martha’s tiff with her sister Mary.

When Jesus visited his friends Martha & Mary, he walked into the middle of a family row.

I’m sure we’ve all had that kind of experience some time or another, to be a guest in front of whom the hosts quarrel. How embarrassing!

As Jesus was talking, Mary sat at his feet as the custom was then, listening to Jesus. Martha, meanwhile, was making herself busy, tidying and preparing refreshments – a banquet perhaps, for their special guest. I imagine that Martha must have been fuming inside for quite a while - perhaps long before Jesus’s arrival - feeling that Mary was not pulling her weight about the house. Now here was Martha, dashing around like a mad thing, while her sister Mary just sat and listened with rapt attention to Jesus’s every word.

Finally Martha’s self-control snapped. She rushed in to Jesus and burst out, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ She deliberately involved Jesus, their guest, in their family row. She didn’t have to. She could have come in and had a quiet, private word with Mary to ask for help, but in her anger she tried to show her sister up in front of Jesus. How embarrassing it must have been for Jesus.

Jesus answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

It was a very mild rebuke. Jesus recognised that it was Martha’s worry and distraction that was the cause of her rudeness. But it was not for him to take Martha’s side in her row with Mary. He surely realised that what Mary needed at that moment was to listen to his words - her ‘better part, which will not be taken away from her’. And perhaps that is what Martha needed too.

‘There is need of only one thing’, Jesus tells Martha. I wonder what Jesus meant by this.

Was it that he didn’t want a big fuss made of him? No big dinner - just a single, simple dish would be quite enough. Well, possibly – but there’s more to it than that, I feel sure.

Many Christians, particularly from contemplative or monastic traditions, have interpreted the one thing needed as to listen to Jesus’s words, as Mary chose to do. Does this suggest that those who work hard at practical tasks of service like Martha have chosen a lesser part? I don’t think this is what Jesus meant at all. Service to others was very important to Jesus - we need only remember the example of service Jesus gave to his disciples by washing their feet in John’s version of the Last Supper.

The truth is, surely, that God has not made everyone alike. We are all individuals. Some are dynamos of activity who can spend their lives in service to God and other people, while others are naturally quiet and more suited to a contemplative life. God needs his Marys, and his Marthas too. And most of us alternate between these two poles at different times – when service becomes too stressful, we need to take time out, for recreation, to re-create ourselves, to listen to Jesus, so that we may return again refreshed to serve.

I think the one thing needed must be something else. I wonder if it could be this - that Martha and Mary should love one another, whatever their petty differences, just as Jesus loved them both – as in the ‘new commandment’ which Jesus gave to his disciples, again in John’s version of the Last Supper.

I am blessed to have a Martha at home – that is the name my wife Marty was given at her baptism.

I think she must be close to sainthood to put up with me. She spends so much more time than me looking after the house, while I lock myself away in my office struggling to understand Jesus’s words in order to preach about them. I don’t think I am very good at noticing when this starts to irritate her, and I fear I often fail to recognise her needs for time out.

Martha’s problem, I believe, was not too much service, but that she became ‘worried and distracted by many things’, to use Jesus’s words. I think this is often a problem for people who give their lives in service. They may feel unable to admit to themselves when they need to take a break, and those around them may fail to notice their rising stress-levels. When the stress becomes too much, something snaps and they can break down in anger, or depression, or even physical illness.

We should pray for those who minister and care for others, whether in their homes, or in hospitals and nursing homes, or social services and other caring professions, that the Holy Spirit may give them the strength, not only to serve, but to know when to take a break, or to ask for help when they need it. We should cut them some slack, and cultivate in ourselves the sensitivity Jesus showed to Martha and Mary. And we should show them our love, as Jesus loves us and shows us his love.

I shall finish with a prayer, a Kitchen Prayer, in recognition of all the Marthas in our lives. It was written by a retired schoolteacher, Klara Carlotta Munkres from Missouri, USA, and it goes like this.

Lord of all pots and pans and things, since I've no time to be
A saint by doing lovely things or watching late with thee,
Or dreaming in the twilight or storming heaven's gates.
Make me a saint by getting meals or washing up the plates.

Although I must have Martha's hands, I too have Mary's mind.
And when I black the boots and shoes, thy sandals, Lord, I find.
I think of how they trod the earth when e’er I scrub the floor.
Accept this meditation, Lord, I haven't time for more.

Warm all the kitchen with thy love, and light it with thy peace,
Forgive me all my worrying and make all grumbling cease.
Thou who didst love to give us food in room or by the sea,
Accept this service that I do - I do it unto thee.

Amen.

Martha, Mary & Jesus

 

Mary, Martha & Jesus, Jan Vermeer 1632 – 1675

A reflection for Morning Worship with the Community of Brendan the Navigator onTuesday 10th October 2023

Almost everyone remembers how Martha is always busy with the chores, while her sister Mary sits and listens to Jesus. I’m sure of this, because I sometimes say in joke ‘Every home should have a Martha’, and most people laugh at the reference. Particularly if they know my wife Marty was christened Martha…

I know I am a very lucky man, because my Martha does so much to make our home run smoothly, while I plan services and pen sermons in my office. She tells me she doesn’t resent me, as the other Martha resented her sister Mary. But I know I don’t tell her often enough how much I value all she does for me.

I like this story told by Luke (10:38-42) because it reminds us of the human side of Jesus. We often neglect Jesus’s humanity in favour of his divinity, I fear. Yet as Trinitarian Christians, we believe him to be both fully human and fully divine.

After a long journey, Jesus stops to rest and relax awhile with Martha and Mary, sisters who are close friends of his. What can be more human than to take a break from travelling and teaching to enjoy the company of friends? We can see just how close Martha and Mary are to Jesus, because John’s Gospel (John 11:1-44) tells us they send word for Jesus to come when their brother Lazarus is ill and dying. When Jesus arrives to find Lazarus has died, he weeps, he consoles them, and he calls Lazarus out from the tomb.

In this story, Martha seems flustered by the visit, making herself busy about the house, making it presentable for visitors, I suppose – we are told she is ‘distracted by her many tasks’. But Mary sits at Jesus’s feet and listens to what he has to say. Martha resents her sister leaving her to do all the work, and eventually she snaps. She asks Jesus to intervene, ‘(Jesus), do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me’.

Jesus’s response is interesting. ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her’. What Jesus needs of Martha just now is her company, not her busy service.

Martha and Mary in this story display two opposite poles of personality, I suggest: inclined to be active, or inclined to be contemplative – a bit like being extrovert or introvert. Martha’s instinctive response to Jesus is to make herself busy. Mary’s is to be still and listen. Jesus urges Martha to let go of all her busyness and be more like Mary, just to be present with him as his friend.

But on another occasion Mary is the doer. ‘Mary was the one who anointed Jesus with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair’, John tells us. When Jesus’s disciples object that the expensive perfume should have been sold and the money given to the poor (Matthew 26:1-13), Jesus rebukes them, saying, ‘She (Mary) has performed a good service for me. For you always have the poor with you, but you will not always have me. By pouring this ointment on my body she has prepared me for burial.’

All of us, I believe, are mixtures of Martha and Mary. Sometimes we need to act, and at other times to contemplate. Wisdom is to know when each behaviour is appropriate.

John the Baptist

 An address given at Templederry and St Mary's Nenagh on Sunday 5th December 2021, the 2nd Sunday of Advent

As I dodge the potholes on North Tipperary boreens, I often pray that the County Council would take to heart the words of Isaiah we’ve just heard Luke quote in his Gospel (Luke 3:1-6):

"Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth;”

Joking aside, today I want to focus on John the son of Zechariah, the subject of today’s gospel reading. There are 3 questions I shall try to answer:

                 i.    Who was he?

               ii.    What was his teaching? and

             iii.    How is it relevant for us today?

So, firstly, what do we know about John the son of Zechariah?

Quite a bit, in fact - and not just from the Gospels. Josephus the 1^st Cent Jewish historian is an independent source, who says more about John than he does about Jesus. John was a real person, not just a character in the gospel story. Notice how firmly Luke places John in his historical context.

He is the person we familiarly call John the Baptist. But Orthodox Christians call him John the Forerunner. This is quite as it should be, because the gospel writers and the early church saw him as the forerunner of the Messiah, foretold by Old Testament prophets including Isaiah.

Within the gospels, Luke tells us the most. He weaves the story of John’s birth in with that of Jesus. At the very beginning of his gospel, he tells us about John’s parents, a priest called Zechariah and Elizabeth his wife: both good, pious people, but getting on in years and childless. The angel Gabriel appears to Zechariah to tell him that Elizabeth will bear a son to be named John, who will be a great spiritual leader. Zechariah doesn’t believe Gabriel and is struck dumb, but Elizabeth does indeed conceive.

Elizabeth is a relative of Mary the mother of Jesus. Six months later, after Gabriel appears to Mary to tell her she will give birth to Jesus, Mary rushes off to visit Elizabeth. When Elizabeth hears Mary’s voice, the baby John leaps for joy in her womb, and Mary responds in the words of the canticle we know as the Magnificat.

In due course, Elizabeth bears her son, whom Elizabeth and Zechariah duly name John. Zechariah’s speech returns, and he gives thanks in the beautiful canticle we know as the Benedictus, which we used as our psalm today. It echoes the OT prophesies:

And thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest,
for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways,
to give knowledge of salvation unto his people,
for the remission of their sins.

All 4 of the gospel writers tell us how John, now grown up, goes out into the barren desert country by the Jordan, calling on the crowds who followed him to repent, and baptising them as a sign of their repentance. The background to all this was a great popular religious revival: many people were convinced that the Messiah of prophesy was about to appear, and they were urgently looking for signs that this was so. As we all know, Jesus went to John to be baptised, and John recognised him - not surprisingly since they were cousins.

John was just as blunt and bold a preacher as any of the Old Testament prophets before him. He was bound to run into trouble with the authorities. And he did. He upset Herod Antipas, the Tetrarch or King of Galilee, who ordered him to be arrested, and later beheaded. Josephus says he had John killed ‘to prevent any mischief he might cause’.

Let’s now turn to examine John the Baptist’s teaching.

In today’s gospel passage, Luke says that John ‘proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins’. In the following passage, which we will hear next Sunday, he goes on to outline John’s teaching. Three points stand out for me:

 i.    All the gospel writers are clear that John never claims to be the Messiah, but believes that he is the forerunner. Luke puts these words in his mouth: ‘I baptise you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming: I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit and fire’.

ii.    John is what we might call a hellfire preacher. Luke quotes him saying: ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruits worthy of repentance. () Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire’. John seeks to shock the crowds into repentance by terrifying them with the consequences if they don’t. Then he seals their repentance by immersing them in water to symbolise that they are washed clean of sin. His preaching must have been very effective, judging by the crowds he gathered.

iii.    But John’s message is about much more than just hell fire. He calls for social justice. Quoting Luke again, he says: ‘Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise’. And he calls for people, even tax collectors and soldiers, to do whatever work they do fairly and not extort more than their due. No price gouging!

So what relevance does John the Baptist and his teaching have for us today?

Luke saw John the Baptist as the hinge on which salvation history turns, the forerunner promised by the prophets, making straight the way for Jesus the Messiah. It is difficult for us to see the world as Luke and his contemporaries did, through the prism of scriptural prophecy. And we deeply distrust fundamentalists who see it that way today.

But that world view empowered the early church to respond to Jesus’s message, no matter what the cost. Without it, the church would never have survived, and we would not be Christians today. The mysterious working of the Holy Spirit through prophecy is something we should celebrate.

Few Christian preachers nowadays stir up hellfire in their sermons, as they once did - and not so very long ago. We have become uncomfortable with the idea of the wrath of God. Instead it is ecologists and scientists who have been leading denunciations of our foolish and wicked trashing of this beautiful, God-given planet from secular pulpits, as David Attenborough did only a month ago at the COP26 Climate Conference in Glasgow – you probably saw him on the TV.

Now more and more people are hearing the call to protect our planet, and are starting to act upon it. Christians are to the forefront. Our Anglican Communion has adopted as the 5^th mark of mission, ‘to strive to safeguard the integrity of creation, and sustain and renew the life of the earth’. Pope Francis has given us a clarion call in his encyclical Laudato ‘Si. In the run up to COP26, Pope Francis, Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew and Archbishop Justin Welby, in an unprecedented joint statement, have warned of the urgency of environmental sustainability. And here in Ireland, Eco Congregation Ireland is spearheading the movement.

I hazard a prophecy, that we will hear more and more John-like hellfire from our Christian pulpits, as the ecological catastrophe of climate change intensifies. Why? Because we should be terrified of the wrath to come predicted by the scientists. That should bring us to repentance. And we should seal that repentance by mending our ways!

And as we mend our ways, we must also try to live out John’s social gospel, to share the good things we have received with our neighbours of every faith and race, at home and abroad. Mé féin is a road to perdition in our shrinking, globalised world. We must do so because this is not only the gospel of John, but the Gospel of Jesus, who empowers us by baptism not with water, but with the Holy Spirit and with fire!

Let me finish in prayer with a Collect of the Word

God of our salvation,
you straighten the winding ways of our hearts
and smooth the paths made rough by sin:
keep our hearts watchful in holiness,
and bring to perfection the good you have begun in us.
We ask this through him whose coming is certain,
whose Day draws near,
your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,
who lives and reigns with you
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, for ever and ever. Amen

Martha & Mary

Jesus walked into the middle of a family row when he visited his friends Martha & Mary (Luke 10:38-42).

I’m sure we’ve all had that kind of experience some time or another, to be a guest in front of whom the hosts quarrel. How embarrassing!

As Jesus was talking – we’re not told to whom, but perhaps including Lazarus their brother, whom Jesus raised from the dead – Mary sat at his feet as was the custom then, listening to Jesus speak. Martha, meanwhile, was making herself busy, tidying and preparing refreshments – a banquet perhaps, for their special guest. I imagine that Martha must have been fuming inside for quite a while - perhaps long before Jesus’s arrival - feeling that Mary was not pulling her weight about the house. Now here was Martha, dashing around like a mad thing, while her sister Mary just sat and listened with rapt attention to Jesus’s every word.

Finally Martha’s self-control snapped. She rushed in to Jesus and asked him, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’ She deliberately involved Jesus, their guest, in their family row. She didn’t have to. She could have come in and had a quiet, private word with Mary to ask for help, but in her anger she tried to show her sister up in front of Jesus. How embarrassing it must have been for Jesus.

Jesus answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’

It was a very mild rebuke. Jesus recognised that it was Martha’s worry and distraction that was the cause of her rudeness. But it was not for him to take Martha’s side in her row with Mary. He surely realised that what Mary needed at that moment was to listen to his words - her ‘better part, which will not be taken away from her’. And perhaps that is what Martha needed too.

‘There is need of only one thing’, Jesus tells Martha. I wonder what Jesus meant by this.

Was it that he didn’t want a big fuss made of him? No big dinner, but just a single, simple dish would be quite enough. Well, possibly – but surely there’s more to it than that.

Many Christians, particularly from contemplative or monastic traditions, have interpreted the one thing needed as to listen to Jesus’s words, as Mary chose to do. Does this suggest that those who work hard at practical tasks of service like Martha have chosen a lesser part? I don’t think this is what Jesus meant at all. Service to others was very important to Jesus - we need only remember the example of service Jesus gave to his disciples by washing their feet in John’s version of the Last Supper.

The truth is, surely, that God has not made everyone alike – some are dynamos of activity who can spend their lives in service to God and other people, while others are naturally quiet and more suited to a contemplative life. God needs his Marys and his Marthas too. And most of us alternate between these two poles at different times – when service becomes too stressful we need to take time out, to re-create ourselves, to listen to Jesus, so that we may return refreshed to serve.

I think the one thing needed must be something else. I wonder if it could be this - that Martha and Mary should love one another, whatever their petty differences, just as Jesus loved them both – as in the ‘new commandment’ which Jesus gave to his disciples, again in John’s version of the Last Supper.

I have a Martha at home – that is my wife Marty’s given name!

I think she must be close to sainthood to put up with me. She spends so much more time than me cooking and washing up, while I lock myself away in my office struggling to understand Jesus’s words in order to preach about them. I don’t think I am very good at noticing when this starts to irritate her, and I fear I often fail to recognise her needs for time out.

Martha’s problem, I believe, was not too much service, but that she became ‘worried and distracted by many things’, to use Jesus’s words. I think this is often a problem for people who give their lives in service. They may feel unable to admit to themselves when they need to take a break, and those around them may fail to notice their rising stress-levels. When the stress becomes too much, something snaps and they can break down in anger, or depression, or physical illness.

Clergy are not immune from this – you only have to look around our united dioceses to see it. At their ordination clergy vow to live a life of service ministering to God’s people. As parishes have got bigger and numbers fewer their job has become ever more challenging and demanding. And all too many suffer the consequences of stress.

We should pray for our clergy, that the Holy Spirit may give them the strength, not only to minister, but to know when to take a break or ask for help when they need it. We should cut them some slack when they do take a break. We should cultivate in ourselves the sensitivity Jesus showed to Martha and Mary. And we should love those called to minister to us – and show them our love - as Jesus loves us and shows us his love.

Let me finish with a prayer/poem for all of us who are Marthas

Lord of all pots and pans and things, since I've no time to be

A saint by doing lovely things or watching late with thee,

Or dreaming in the twilight or storming heaven's gates.

Make me a saint by getting meals or washing up the plates.

Although I must have Martha's hands, I too have Mary's mind.

And when I black the boots and shoes, thy sandals, Lord, I find.

I think of how they trod the earth when e’er I scrub the floor.

Accept this meditation, Lord, I haven't time for more.

Warm all the kitchen with thy love, and light it with thy peace,

Forgive me all my worrying and make all grumbling cease.

Thou who didst love to give us food in room or by the sea

Accept this service that I do - I do it unto thee.

Visitation

Address given in St Mary's Nenagh on Sunday 29th May 2016, celebrating the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary (transferred).

Luke’s story of Mary visiting Elizabeth (Luke1:39-56) is so charming, so human, isn’t it!

Mary was probably quite a young girl - a teenager even – when the angel came to tell her that she is to be the mother of God incarnate. When Mary says, ‘How can this be, since I am a virgin?’, the angel offers her a sign: her relative Elizabeth is already 6 months pregnant, though she is old and supposedly barren. Is Elizabeth a cousin or an aunt? We’re not told.

So Mary hot-foots it from Nazareth to the Judean hill-country to visit Elizabeth and see for herself. It must have been a tough journey, over 100 km on foot or perhaps on a donkey, over bad roads and steep rocky hills. But Mary gets there safely and knocks on Elizabeth’s door.

When Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting her unborn child – who we know as John the Baptist - does an in utero backflip in recognition of the presence of the Son of God, freshly conceived in Mary’s womb. Elizabeth exclaims, in the words we know from the “Hail Mary”, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!’

And then Mary breaks into song, the song of joy that we call the Magnificat, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour, for he has looked with favour on the lowliness of his servant.’

I know I’m treading on somewhat dangerous ground here!

I’m part of that 50% of the human race which is less qualified to say anything about pregnancy and childbirth than the other 50%. But because I’ve been closely associated with two pregnancies and three births I know that pregnancy is a time of great expectation. So much so that in our culture to say a woman is ‘expecting’ is a euphemism for pregnancy – ‘a baby’ is simply understood.

Elizabeth and Mary are both ‘expecting’ in this euphemistic sense. But they both also bring another dimension of expectation to their meeting on Elizabeth’s doorstep. Elizabeth has conceived late in life. She is carrying a miracle baby, and she has been told that he will be a great prophet who will prepare the way of the Lord. Mary is carrying even more of a miracle baby, conceived through the Holy Spirit, and she has been told that he will be called the Son of the Most High, and will reign over Israel as the heir of the great King David. Both of them have great expectations for the children they are carrying.

Mary said to the angel who announced her pregnancy, ‘Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word’. In doing so she accepted the unimaginable privilege of forming her son Jesus in her body - as all women who are glad to be pregnant do. The Son of the Most High, the eternal Word of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, took human flesh in and from Mary. Jesus the Christ was, quite literally, formed in her while she was ‘expecting’.

Our vocation as Christian disciples is to be ‘expecting’ just as Elizabeth and Mary were.

As Christian disciples, we are called to be pregnant! Whether we are young or old, male or female, single or married, we are called to let Christ be formed in us, just as he was formed in the womb of Mary.

What is it like to be a pregnant disciple, one in whom Christ is being formed? We will be ‘expectant’, always expecting something new, something growing and stirring in us, looking to the future not some unchanging past. As Christ grows in us we will form a deepening relationship with him. We will notice changes for the good in ourselves. We will cultivate habits of worship, prayer and study through which we will discern the different gifts he gives each of us. And he will enable us to use these gifts in his service, whether in ministry within the church or in mission outside it.

All pregnancies end in the fullness of time - in due course Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist, and Mary to Jesus the Christ. Their pregnancies lasted around 9 months, but ours as disciples in whom Christ is being formed will last a lifetime. Stretching the analogy to the limit, it is on our deathbed that we as disciples are finally delivered of the Christ we have nurtured. We may pray that the life we deliver will be an example to others of a Christian life, well lived, in the hope of resurrection to eternal life.

And what of the Church? The church too is called to be pregnant!

It is in the nature of the Church to grow disciples. A healthy, fertile church is a pregnant church which nurtures disciples in whom Christ is constantly growing. Remember, Jesus commanded the apostles, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations’. And that can only start with ourselves.

As we mature as disciples – as Christ grows in us – we should expect to see changes in our church communities, changes for the good. We do not know what they will be, but new things will sprout inexorably, organically, in the belly of the church, just as Christ grows in his disciples. Perhaps new forms of vibrant worship will spring up alongside the older traditions so many of us still value. Perhaps groups of disciples will come together, to explore and share different kinds of prayer, or to study how God reveals himself both in scripture and in creation, and report their discoveries back to the rest of us. Perhaps we will together find new ways to nurture one another in faith, to care for one another in love, to welcome the stranger, and to reach out in service to people in need, whoever and wherever they may be.

Those outside the church - family, friends, neighbours and strangers - will see the changes in us, in the way we live our lives, in how we treat others. Some may be annoyed - because our way challenges the way they live their lives. But others will feel compelled to take a closer look, to investigate further, because they see in us something that they hunger and thirst for.

This is how a church community grows, first spiritually as its members grow as disciples, and then numerically as others are attracted to it, become disciples themselves, and in turn grow as disciples as Christ grows in them.

So to finish,

This Feast Day of the Visitation of the Blessed Virgin Mary is a time for us all to be ‘expecting’ - to be pregnant disciples as Christ takes form within us.

Let us pray that the Christ-seed the Holy Spirit has planted within us will grow to full term and be delivered, perfectly formed in every way.

And as disciples in this Union of Parishes, let us pray that our church community will grow spiritually and numerically, attracting new disciples who themselves will grow as Christ grows in them.

Presenting Jesus in the Temple - Mary's story

An address given at Templederry & Nenagh on Sunday 2nd February 2014, the Presentation of Christ in the Temple, commonly called Candlemas

So often at Candlemas the whole focus is on Jesus, ‘the light to lighten the gentiles’.

After all the proper title of the festival in the church calendar is ‘The Presentation of Christ in the Temple’. We heard about it in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 2:22-40).

I think Luke has woven into his account of the Presentation an authentic story from Mary’s own lips, based on her own memories of that day.

·          Luke was not an eyewitness of Jesus’s life, and he probably wrote his Gospel at least 30 years after the resurrection, but he tells us himself that he carefully gathered his material from eyewitnesses.

·          Of the principal characters, Simeon and Anna would have been long dead by the time of Jesus’s death, and Joseph too. The story also contains words probably spoken privately to Mary, so bystanders are unlikely to be Luke’s source.

·          That leaves Mary as Luke’s likely source, whether in person or at one remove through an eyewitness, who heard her tell the story sometime after Jesus’s death and resurrection.

So today I’m going to focus on Mary for a change, not Jesus. I invite you to enter into the story of the Presentation in your imagination, to put yourself in the shoes that day of Mary, the young wife of Joseph, and the new mother of the baby Jesus.

Why did Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple?

Luke gives us two Jewish religious reasons: 1^st for ‘their purification’, and 2^nd to fulfil the Jewish law that ‘Every firstborn male shall be designated as holy to the Lord’.

Hebrew law was obsessed with purity. It defined in excruciating detail what makes a person clean or unclean. God’s favour depends on your being clean, it was believed, and any contact with someone who was unclean made you unclean, as if un-cleanliness was a contagious disease. Leviticus laid down the law that a woman was unclean for 40 days after the birth of a male child. If the child was a girl, the mother was unclean for twice as long - 80 days! The only way for a mother to become clean again was to make a prescribed sacrifice at a sanctuary – in Mary’s time this was in the Temple.

We have, thank God, long abandoned this and other ancient Hebrew purity taboos. Nowadays we find the idea that birth makes a woman unclean quite repulsive. But did Mary really feel she needed to be purified, or was she simply following ancient tradition? She certainly had important practical reasons to fulfil the requirements of the law - pious Jews would shun Mary and her husband unless she had been purified in this way. And it saved a journey to bring Jesus to the Temple at the same time to present him to God as the law also required.

But perhaps Mary and Joseph also had another reason to bring Jesus to the Temple - to give joyful thanks to God for her safe delivery and for the great gift of her healthy son Jesus. This was an opportunity for Mary to show off her new baby, as women still do when they first come to church after giving birth - such a lovely opportunity for a bit of baby-worship! And perhaps they combined it with a family celebration.

In the Church of Ireland BCP we still have special prayers of thanksgiving for childbirth, which once served this purpose. Originally they were used 40 days or so after birth, in church after MP, in what was commonly called ‘Churching a Woman’. In the new BCP the word ‘Churching’ has been dropped, and the prayers are recommended for use in hospital or at home. I don’t think they are used very much now, perhaps because of some association with the repulsive idea that women need purification. But I think it is a shame not to use the prayers - they carry no implication of impurity, and would fit beautifully at the end of a service before the Blessing.

Simeon was one of the priests on duty in the Temple that day.

He was ‘righteous and devout’, we are told, ‘looking forward to the consolation of Israel, and the Holy Spirit rested on him’. He must have been a well known and popular priest, I think, or his name would not have come down to us – did Mary choose him specially, I wonder?

He certainly had a wonderful gift with words in his priestly role, as he pronounced over Jesus that great prayer of joy we still use as the canticle ‘Nunc Dimittis’ – ‘Lord now letest thou thy servant depart in peace…’ It’s odd, isn’t it, that this cry of joy is now mostly heard amidst the sadness of funerals. Mary and Joseph were amazed by his words, we’re told. But I wonder if it was Simeon’s pastorally sensitive custom to greet every new child in this joyful way.

Notice that the sacrifice Mary and Joseph gave was two pigeons. The standard sacrifice was a lamb and a pigeon, but Leviticus allowed those who could not afford a lamb to offer two pigeons. Mary and Joseph were not wealthy, just ordinary people who had to live on a budget like the rest of us.

At the end of the ceremony, after blessing them, Simeon spoke to Mary, quietly and privately I think, since Joseph’s name is not mentioned. ‘This child is destined’, he said, ‘for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’  What was Mary to make of his cryptic words? We’ll come back to that.

Then the old widow Anna came up to them. Like Simeon she would have been well known to everyone who came to the Temple, because she was always there, and had been for many years. And as she praises God she just gushes over Jesus to everyone in the Temple. Could Mary possibly have felt a bit embarrassed by her gushing, proud as she was of her baby?

Looking back on it later, surely Mary felt the trip to the Temple had gone swimmingly.

The ceremony had gone well; Simeon had conducted it beautifully; even Anna had said nice things about Jesus. She could go out again in public now everyone recognised she was pure again. And she could resume normal relations with her husband without transmitting impurity to him.

No doubt Mary pondered Simeon’s obscure words in her heart for a while, as Luke tells us she did the Shepherds’ words a few weeks before. I imagine her saying to herself, ‘What did that nice Simeon mean? I understand that every child causes pain to a mother, once in a while. Which of us hasn’t? But what about the rest of what he said?’ But quite soon these questions would have been pressed to the back of her mind by her busy duties as wife and mother.

Meanwhile Jesus, oh so quickly, ‘grew, became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favour of God was upon him’.

Perhaps it was only after Jesus’s death and resurrection that Simeon’s words came back to Mary.

Only then could she properly understand them. Jesus’s ministry in life confirmed his destiny. His crucifixion pierced her soul like a sword, so much worse than she could possibly have imagined. His resurrection revealed him to be the Messiah, the Saviour over whom Simeon had prayed so joyfully as a baby.

The Spirit moved her to tell her story to Jesus’s disciples. Maybe Luke heard her do so, or perhaps one of the disciples passed it on to him. In any case, Luke collected the story and passed it on in turn to us.

Let us give thanks for Luke’s telling of Mary’s story and particularly for Simeon’s joyful prayer, which I shall finish by praying:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace: according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, which thou hast prepared before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

Mothering Sunday - Hannah & Samuel, Simeon & Mary

Address given on 14th March 2010, the 4th Sunday of Lent, Mothering Sunday, at Templederry & Puckane

Mothering Sunday is not just a secular celebration of motherhood but one of the best loved festivals of the Church year, though not a particularly ancient one.
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?
• If you are particularly pious, it 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. The good compilers of the lectionary have an unfortunate habit of setting small parts of stories to be read - when you get back home you might like to take down your bible and look at the very start of the 1st book of Samuel to read the whole story. Here is asummary of it.

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. She bargains with God! 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, 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, like mine, 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. But we should not 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.

The fact is, 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.

A mother’s heartbreak is at the centre of Simeon’s words to Mary too (Luke 2:33-35).

‘A sword will pierce your own soul too’, says Simeon to Mary, when she and Joseph brought their baby Jesus to the Temple for the purification required by Jewish law, after he had taken Jesus in his arms and praised God in the words we now call the Nunc Dimittis – ‘Lord now letest thou thy servant depart in peace...’

And we know, as Mary could not when she heard Simeon’s words, that Mary was to endure at the foot of a cross the horror of watching brutal men torture her lovely boy to death. Just as so many parents, men as well as women, have had to endure the loss of a beloved child.

Motherhood – parenthood – brings heartbreak for some. May God forbid I should ever have to endure it.

So today as we celebrate Mothering Sunday, and let us celebrate it with joy:

• 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.

Mothering Sunday

An address given on Sunday 22 March 2009, Lent 4, at Shinrone and Aghancon.

A Simnel cake - a traditional Mothering Sunday gift

Mothering Sunday is such a lovely opportunity for us to make a fuss of our Mothers, isn’t it?

And if they are no longer with us, to remember them, and to recall how much we owe them. We’ll all be doing so today, I’m sure, and it’s right that we should.

I want to start by reflecting a little on how much I owe my own mother:

• I owe her my very life, of course, as we all do our mothers. She carried me safe in her body for 9 months, and nurtured me, from the time when I was just a bundle of cells until I arrived squalling into the world.


• Then throughout my childhood she was there, to love me as only a mother can, to comfort me when I was hurt or frightened, to encourage me to be brave and to be ‘a useful engine’. And still she nurtured me – even when I was away at boarding school, every fortnight I received a fruit cake in a parcel through the post from her.


• As I grew to adulthood she let me go, to make my own way in the world. But she was still always there to love, to comfort, to encourage, and, yes, to nurture me, whenever I needed it.


• And it was she who taught me the first elements of her Christian faith. One of my earliest memories is of learning my first prayer at her knee: ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on’.


• I am very blessed to have had such a mother, and I give thanks to God for her. I expect you are too. But we need to remember that not all children are so blessed. And also that there are women who yearn for children who cannot have them.

In the rest of this address, I’m going to reflect a little on the origins of the Mothering Sunday tradition, and then focus on the mother themes in today’s OT and Gospel readings – the good compilers of the lectionary have of course carefully chosen ‘mother’ readings for the day that’s in it!

The Mothering Sunday Tradition

The 4th Sunday of Lent was not originally a celebration of motherhood. From at least the C16th in England, it was the day when people returned to make offerings in their “mother church”, the main church or cathedral of the area. Hence it came to be known as ‘Mothering Sunday’.

If children had moved to neighbouring towns and villages, this would be one of the few occasions when whole families could get together. Remember, not much more than 100 years ago, very many children would be sent away from home to work at no more than 10 or 12 years old.

According to historians, this was the origin of the English tradition that children and young people working away from home should be given the day off on Mothering Sunday, to visit their mothers. I’m not sure if this was an Irish tradition too - we may just have borrowed it from the Church of England!

I imagine that as the children walked along the country roads, the boys would stop and pick a bunch of violets or other flowers as a present for their mother. And equally the girls might bring their mother a present of a cake they had made. Hence the old traditions of bunches of flowers, and the delicious Simnel cake.

That was the ancient tradition, at least in England. Like so many other old traditions, it was just about extinct after WW1: killed off by social changes and industrialisation. But it got a new lease of life, under the impact of the American invention of ‘Mother’s Day’, which was designated by US President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 to be held on the 2nd Sunday of May. Mother's Day has now become something of a commercial opportunity, to sell cards and flowers and boxes of chocolates, but I think it’s rather nice that we have managed to retain the ancient traditional Church day for it, on this side of the Atlantic, and I cherish the old name Mothering Sunday.

The Mothering Sunday traditions, and the emotions they evoke, are warm and tender and comforting.

But in case we are in any danger of getting carried away by sentimentality, today’s readings from Exodus and John’s Gospel provide the antidote. They serve to remind us that being a mother is not just about flowers and cakes and loving hugs. It is also about heartbreak, and separation, and even death. Thank God that giving birth in Ireland today is not so dangerous for a woman as it once was, though a very few still do die in childbirth here. But in the 3rd World it remains frighteningly common for mothers to die in childbirth.

In the OT reading from Exodus, we heard the strange little tale of Moses in the Bulrushes.

The background to the story is that Pharaoh decreed that Hebrew boys should be drowned at birth in the Nile, because he feared the Hebrew minority becoming too strong in his kingdom. The girls were allowed to live: no doubt they would have been married off to Egyptian men, and their children would be Egyptian. A rather nasty ancient case of ethnic cleansing.

Moses’ mother saved him from this fate by hiding him, until he was too big to hide anymore, and then she made a little boat for him from a basket, and left him to be found in the rushes by the river-bank. He was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who took pity on him, and decided to adopt him. Moses’ own mother was employed to nurse him, but when he was weaned, she had to give him up to Pharaoh’s daughter.

Two things strike me about this story:

• 1st, how completely torn the emotions of Moses’ natural mother must have been, to be compelled to give away to another woman the child to whom she had given life, and whom she had saved and nurtured. But she knew that was the only way to show her love for him.


• But 2nd, the strength of the love of Pharaoh’s daughter for this little Hebrew boy. She no doubt risked the wrath of the state to save his little life, even though he belonged to a hated minority. The love of a foster mother, or of an adoptive mother, is just as valuable in God’s eyes as the love of a natural mother.

In the Gospel reading we heard John’s poignant story about how Jesus, even in agony on the Cross, expressed his love for his mother, and the disciple he loved.

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 this disciple was John, one of the sons of Zebedee and Mary’s sister Salome, and 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 his mother 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, to conclude, it is surely very right for us, on this Mothering Sunday, to thank God for our mothers and for their love for us, whether they are our natural mothers or our foster or adoptive mothers.

But let us also remember those mothers whose hearts are broken by death or separation from a child.

And let us not forget all those women who long to have a child but cannot, and all those children who for whatever reason cannot give thanks for a mother’s love.

Shepherds glorifying God

An address given on Sunday 28th December 2008 at Shinrone

“Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing which has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us”.

So say the shepherds who were keeping watch over the flock in fields close to the town, as St Luke tells us in the Gospel reading (Luke 2:15-21).

Luke’s is the only Gospel to tell us about the shepherds who visited Mary and Joseph and their new-born son Jesus. His beautiful story, so familiar to us, still resonates today. So let’s try to imagine ourselves in the shoes of the shepherds that night 2000 years ago.

Some of you I’m sure know much more than I do about sheep. Perhaps you’ve kept and tended them. But I doubt if any of you would call yourselves shepherds. Shepherds are few and far between in Ireland these days, but they would have been very familiar to Luke’s readers. The rugged Judean uplands were a pastoral country. Flocks of sheep represented wealth. A shepherd was paid to stay out night and day in all weathers to guard the sheep against wild animals and robbers. It was a hard, dangerous job, but very responsible. Jesus likens himself to the Good Shepherd, who would lay down his life for the sheep.

Luke’s shepherds are ordinary people, much like you and me. They are not self-important rulers or highly educated opinion formers, as Herod and the Wise Men were, in Matthew’s alternative Christmas story. Luke chooses to tell us about how ordinary people responded to the miracle of Christmas, not the great and mighty. And I believe we have much to learn from them.

The shepherds had just experienced a miraculous vision, a vision of angels.

‘The glory of the Lord shone around them’ – I imagine shimmering light, like the Aurora, the Northern lights. An angel announces ‘to you is born this day in the city of David’ – that is Bethlehem – ‘a Saviour, who is the Messiah, the Lord.’ They are given a sign; they ‘will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger’. Then the angel is joined by ‘a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among those whom he favours”’

Wow! What an experience! What an exhilarating joy the shepherds must have felt!

Have you ever heard the heavenly host? I have, I think, and you may have too. I can remember my joy and exhilaration after the births of my children. I can remember literally dancing down the wet deserted streets of Guildford at 4am in mid December, on the way back home from the hospital. It was as if the whole universe was laughing and crying and singing with me. And I shared my joy with everyone I met over the following days. Angel voices – a memory to treasure!

Surely it is an experience of this same kind that Isaiah speaks of in today’s OT reading (Isaiah 61:10-62:3), when he says:

I will greatly rejoice in the Lord,
my whole being shall exult in my God;
for he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
he has covered me with the robe of righteousness,
as a bridegroom decks himself with a garland,
and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

Most if not all of us, ordinary people, experience once in a while that sudden sense of exhilarating joy, as both Isaiah and the shepherds did. It is not just poets and the mad who experience visions of angels. We should not be afraid of them, I think. Rather we should see it as God granting us a glimpse, just a fleeting glimpse, of his loving power and majesty. We should treasure such experiences when we return to the world of normality, and ponder them in our hearts, as Mary did.

The shepherds ‘went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in a manger’.

These shepherds are straight-forward, practical people. They don’t stand around debating and philosophising about what their extraordinary experience means. They go with haste to look with their own eyes. And what they find confirms their experience – it is just as the angel had told them. This little child is special, very special - a Saviour, a Messiah, the Lord. And they can’t stop talking about it! Just as I couldn’t stop telling everyone about the birth of my children.

The real miracle of Christmas is that through his grace our loving-Father God makes the first move towards us, to you and to me, to all human beings. He reveals himself to us as Mary and Joseph’s beautiful, helpless baby, their first-born son. This baby grows up to be our Lord Jesus Christ – in John’s mystic vision, the Word of God, the true light that enlightens everyone – through whose life and teaching, and death and resurrection, we are shown the way to God. This is what St Paul is telling us in today’s Epistle reading (Galatians 4:4-7).

But God’s grace is of no use to us unless we respond to it. We should learn from the shepherds how to respond to the miracle of Christmas. They went with haste to find Jesus, and we must too. Like them, we will not be disappointed.

‘The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen.’

They don’t hang about. Once they have seen the child Jesus lying in the manger – the Saviour, the Messiah, the Lord – and once they have told their story - they just go back to work, to tend their flocks.

But something has changed - they are changed. They go back ‘glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen.’

And this surely is what we must do too. We are not meant to remain for ever in our visions, no matter how exhilarating they may be. We must come back to earth. Our job is to bring our experience of the love of God back into the everyday world. Let us pray that we too may go about the world as changed people, glorifying and praising God for all we have heard and seen.

So to summarise, we have indeed a great deal to learn from Luke’s shepherds:

• We should treasure the glimpses we are granted of the love and majesty of our loving Father God.
• We should go with haste to find God’s grace in the Christmas miracle of the birth of Jesus.
• And we should return glorifying and praising God as changed people, to bring God’s loving Spirit back with us into the world.
  

Year C, Lent 4, Mothering Sunday, 18 March 2007

1. Introduction

Mothering Sunday is such a lovely opportunity for us to make a fuss of our Mothers, isn’t it? And if they are no longer with us, to remember them, and to recall how much we owe them. We’ll all be doing so today, I’m sure, and it’s right that we should.

I want to start by reflecting a little on how much I owe my own mother:

• I owe her my very life, of course, as we all do our mothers. She carried me safe in her body for 9 months, and nurtured me, from the time when I was just a bundle of cells until I arrived squalling into the world.
• Then throughout my childhood she was there, to love me as only a mother can, to comfort me when I was hurt or frightened, to encourage me to be brave and to be ‘a useful engine’. And still she nurtured me – even when I was away at boarding school, every fortnight I received a fruit cake in a parcel through the post from her.
• As I grew to adulthood she let me go, to make my own way in the world. But she was still always there to love, to comfort, to encourage, and, yes, to nurture me, whenever I needed it.
• And it was she who taught me the first elements of her Christian faith. One of my earliest memories is of learning my first prayer at her knee: ‘Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, bless the bed that I lie on’.
• I am very blessed to have had such a mother, and I give thanks to God for her. Most of us are similarly blessed. But we need to remember that not all children are so blessed. And also that there are women who yearn for children who cannot have them.

In the rest of this address, I’m going to reflect a little on the origins of the Mothering Sunday tradition, and then focus on the mother themes in today’s OT and Gospel readings – the good compilers of the lectionary have of course carefully chosen ‘mother’ readings for the day that’s in it!

2. Mothering Sunday

The 4th Sunday of Lent was not originally a celebration of motherhood. At least from the C16th in England, it was the day when people returned to make offerings in their “mother church”, the main church or cathedral of the area. Hence it came to be known as ‘Mothering Sunday’.

If children had moved to neighbouring towns and villages, this would be one of the few occasions when whole families could get together. Remember, not much more than 100 years ago, very many children would be sent away from home to work at no more than 10 or 12 years old, as an apprentice if they were a boy, or as a domestic servant if they were a girl.

According to historians, this was the origin of the English tradition that children and young people working away from home should be given the day off on Mothering Sunday, to visit their mothers. I’m not sure if this was an Irish tradition too, but I’d love to know whether or not it was. We may just have borrowed it from the Church of England.

I imagine that as they walked along the country roads, the boys would stop and pick a bunch of violets or other flowers as a present for their mother. And equally the girls might bring their mother a present of a cake. Hence the old traditions of bunches of flowers, and the delicious Simnel cake.

That was the ancient tradition, at least in England. Like so many other old traditions, it was just about extinct after WW1: killed off by social changes and industrialisation. But it got a new lease of life, under the impact of the American invention of ‘Mother’s Day’, which was designated by US President Woodrow Wilson in 1914 to be held on the 2nd Sunday of May. It has now become something of a commercial opportunity, to sell cards and flowers and boxes of chocolates, but I think it’s rather nice that we have managed to retain the ancient traditional Church day for it, on this side of the Atlantic.

In East Anglia, where I spent my childhood, the resurrection of Mothering Sunday is said to be due to the impact of all the American airmen on the bases established there during WW2. I certainly remember it as a living Church festival in the 1950s – my parents would take me and my brother into the woods to pick nosegays of primroses and wood anemones, which would be blessed and given to children at a children’s service to take back to their mothers.

3. The Mothering Sunday traditions, and the emotions they evoke, are warm and tender and comforting. But in case we are in any danger of getting carried away by sentimentality, today’s scripture readings provide the antidote. They serve to remind us that being a mother is not just about flowers and cakes and loving hugs. It is also about heartbreak, and separation, and even death. Even today, being a mother can be a dangerous thing: you may, like me, have seen or heard the news about 10 days ago of Tania Corcoran, a Garda Sergeant, who died giving birth to twins in Drogheda. One of her babies died in the womb, and the other is desperately ill. She was a relative of my sister-in-law and I ask for your prayers for Tania and her family.

a. In the OT reading from Exodus 2:1-10, we heard the strange little tale of Moses in the Bulrushes.

• The background to the story is that Pharaoh decreed that Hebrew boys should be drowned at birth in the Nile, because he feared the Hebrew minority becoming too strong in his kingdom. The girls were allowed to live: no doubt they would have been married off to Egyptian men, and their children would be Egyptian. A rather nasty ancient case of ethnic cleansing.
• Moses’ mother saved him from this fate by hiding him, until he was too big to hide anymore, and then she made a little boat for him from a basket, and left him to be found in the rushes by the river-bank. He was found by Pharaoh’s daughter, who took pity on him, and decided to adopt him. Moses’ own mother was employed to nurse him, but when he was weaned, she had to give him up to Pharaoh’s daughter.
• Two things strike me about this story:

1. how completely torn the emotions of Moses’ natural mother must have been, to be compelled to give away to another woman the child to whom she had given life, and whom she had saved and nurtured. But she knew that was the only way to show her love for him.
2. the strength of the love of Pharaoh’s daughter for this little Hebrew boy. She no doubt risked the wrath of the state to save his little life, even though he belonged to a hated minority. The love of a foster mother, or of an adoptive mother, is just as valuable in God’s eyes as the love of a natural mother.

b. In the Gospel reading (John 19:25-27) we heard John’s poignant story about how Jesus, even in agony on the Cross, expressed his love for his mother, and the disciple he loved.

• 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. In Mary at the Cross we see an image of the eternal love at the heart of motherhood.
• 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 not named, but described as the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’. Scholars have identified Mary’s sister as Salome, the mother of James and John, the sons of Zebedee, two of the twelve called by Jesus. She, you may remember, was rebuked by Jesus for asking him to give her sons the chief place in his Kingdom. The ancient tradition of the Church is that the disciple Jesus loved was Salome’s son John, the author of John’s Gospel. If scholars and tradition are right, 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 his mother to the care of John his cousin, and John to the care of Mary, to look after each other, and to comfort each other’s loneliness when he was gone. A truly practical example of the love of God at work in evil times.
  

4. So, to conclude, it is surely very right for us, on this Mothering Sunday, to thank God for our mothers and for their love for us, whether they are our natural mothers or our foster or adoptive mothers. But let us also remember those mothers whose hearts are broken by death or separation from a child. And let us not forget all those women who long to have a child but cannot, nor all those children who for whatever reason cannot give thanks for a mother’s love.