Only a face a mother can love

 

Reflection Sunday 14^th March 2021 Mothering Sunday

 

I always find preparing a service for Mothering Sunday a bit of a challenge. The reason being,  knowing how to pitch it, because it is a complicated subject and can stir up all kinds of emotions for different people.

Some of you reading this will have, or will have had, a loving, caring relationship with your mother. But immediately, I’m conscious that those words “will have had” are significant. Maybe you are mourning the loss of your mother. Maybe Mothering Sunday becomes painful for that reason. Then there will be those who didn’t know their mothers. Or didn’t get on with their mothers. Those who didn’t know their birth mothers and were adopted or fostered in some way. Maybe the foster parent become your “mother” or maybe this was hurtful experience.

I have no idea of knowing what is going through your minds currently. For some people I know well I will have some idea. But for most of you, how you are feeling today is beyond me.

Do you begin to see what I mean when I say I find preparing for Mothering Sunday a challenge?

(And I should say, that although we are thinking of “mothers” today. Much of what follows, if not all of what follows, applied to parents in general, those who act as parents or carers.)

In the back of our Methodist Worship Book you can find a list of suggested Bible readings for each Sunday of the year. And these run over a three-year cycle. (We are currently in Year B.) There is no obligation on a preacher to use the suggested readings, but I mostly do. If you were to look at the readings suggested for today you will see there are eight possibilities. You’ll see in the Order of Service I have mentioned them all. I feel the eight readings are helpful as they give a suggestion of how human relationships are mixed and how child and “mother” relationships can differ.

I think it was the now thankfully defunct “News of the World” that used as a slogan for a while “All human life is here”. I’d suggest that the eight Bible passages give a flavour of all human life, or certainly in respect of parent and child relationships.

Starting with the two Old Testament passages (Exodus 2: 1 – 10 and 1 Samuel 1: 20 – 28)

In Exodus we have the start of the story of Moses. His mother was aware that Pharaoh had decreed that all Jewish boys were to be murdered. So, she arranged for Moses to be hidden and Moses’ mother placed one of Moses sisters to keep an eye on him. Pharaoh’s daughter appears and finds the baby. “She feels sorry for him”. Moses’ sister then arranges for Moses’ own birth mother to look after the baby for a while before Pharaoh’s daughter takes him “when the child grew older”.

Does this mean perhaps that Pharaoh’s daughter cannot have children herself so (forcibly) adopts Moses as her own after Moses own mother has nursed him? And then, what of the role of Moses’ older sister? Maybe, as can happen perhaps in a large family, she was used to acting as a surrogate mother to younger siblings?

Then we have the passage in 1 Samuel. We have Hannah who has been childless for many years and she eventually become pregnant after speaking to the priest Eli who had told her “May the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him” 1 Sam 1:17. But after she had given birth to her longed-for son, she handed the boy over to Eli

²⁷ I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him. ²⁸ So now I give him to the Lord. For his whole life he shall be given over to the Lord.’ 1 Sam 1: 27 – 28

A story of childlessness that turns to joy through a longed for and unexpected pregnancy. But (perhaps to our eyes) the strangeness of the longed-for child being given away, as it were, to train to become a servant of God. And what of those who have prayed fervently for a child, but they don’t have one?

The two suggested Psalms (Ps 34: 11 – 20 and Ps 127: 1 – 4) are at odds with one another. Psalm 127 talks about children being “a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him”. What of those who don’t have / can’t have children? How does this make them feel? But then Psalm 34 tells us:

¹⁸ The Lord is close to the broken-hearted
    and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

¹⁹ The righteous person may have many troubles,
    but the Lord delivers him from them all;

 

The two suggested Gospel readings (Luke 2: 33 – 35 and John 19: 25 – 27) are interesting. The Luke passage foretells the pain Mary will experience in years to come when she sees her son executed on a cross and his side pierced with a spear (see John 19:34). On the face of it the John passage seems an odd inclusion for this day. But for me Peter’s denial of Jesus conjurers up the pain a mother / parent / carer feels when they see their child do something that is hurtful.

The two epistles say something of how mothers provide love and comfort to their children but how mothers draw their own comfort and love from the love Jesus Christ shows them. (2 Cor: 3 – 7, Col 3: 12 – 17) The Colossians passage also serves as a reminder to mothers (and each of us) of the many other qualities mothers show – compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience and forgiveness. “Forgive as the Lord forgave you” Col 3:13

I’ve rattled through 8 passages of scripture and given you some things to reflect upon in relation to each of them. The pairs of passages have connections (albeit some are “compare and contrast”.) But what links them collectively? For that I’d like to go back to the Colossians passage:

¹⁴ And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. Col 3:14

What runs through all the passages is love and love in its various forms.

My dear grandma Phyllis had many wonderful turns of phrase. She had a great love for children (she saw several of her own children die as infants before raising two daughters; she was a Sunday School teacher for over 50 years) and took delight in cooing over babies. But occasionally at home she’d say about a baby she’d seen “God love him, he has a face only a mother could love” (She’d probably say that of me now!)

But in that funny little saying, there is a great truth. For how often can only a mother love a child? How often can only a mother love a child who has done wrong? How often can a mother forgive a child even though others would reject him or her? Mother’s love is like no other.

Let me give you one further Bible passage to think about. Luke 15: 11 – 32 – the Parable of the Prodigal Son. It is of course the father that welcomes the wayward son’s return. But in many ways that is irrelevant. The love demonstrated by the father (God in other words) is the love we are  really thinking of today. The unconditional love, the non-judgmental love, the sacrificial love. The love only a mother can give. The love given by God our heavenly Father and Mother.