Sermon on the Fourth Sunday of Lent - Fr Sam Rossiter-Peters

May be given to me to speak in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Please do be seated.

There are a few days in the year which are a joy to very many people but a challenge to some. Christmas especially can be difficult after the loss of a loved one and it can feel very lonely. Valentine's Day for those who yearn for a relationship but haven't found their right person can be likewise.

Mothering Sunday also very much falls within this category. For many, Mother's Day, as it's called outside this building, is a lovely day. It's a day of flowers and cards and cake and a very early morning if you're in the rectory.

But it's a day to rightly celebrate the figures who've shown us motherly love even if we've been up very early. It can be a celebration of our familial mothers, of aunts, of grandmothers, of spiritual mothers. But of course for some, Mother's Day can be a day of hard reminders.

Reminders of those that we've loved and lost. Reminders of those who should have loved us better and didn't. Reminders of hopes that haven't come to pass.

And so I wanted to begin this Mothering Sunday by acknowledging that. That this will be a day of great joy for some and not for others. And whatever you bring to this day, know that you are loved and that you are welcome and that you are valued just as you are.

For those of you who do really enjoy this day and look forward to it, I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit of a party pooper. Because the reality is there is no such thing as Mother's Day. At least not in the church where the idea started.

Today isn't Mother's Day at St John the Baptist. It's Mothering Sunday, as Laurie told me when he looked at the cards I produced for the children and got very grumpy at me about the fact that they said Mother's Day. The words Mother's Day and Mothering Sunday might sound familiar but the meanings definitely aren't.

Mothering Sunday is really about celebrating motherhood rather than mothers. Mothering Sunday is about the truth that motherhood, mothering, isn't biological, it's relational. And as disciples of Jesus Christ, we are provided with three modes of spiritual mothering.

God as mother, the church as mother, and the Blessed Virgin Mary as mother. And that all of these teach us, regardless of our gender identity, to be mother. We'll begin with the motherhood of God.

We're all used to thinking about God as father and using predominantly male imagery to describe them. Notice that I said them because God isn't male, nor indeed is God female. The predominant use of male and fatherhood imagery in the scriptures is a reflection of the patriarchal societies which wrote the scriptural texts that we use.

God is described as father because in those societies, father meant a certain kind of relationship. And to make it clear that God is not a father in any biological sense, we recall that scripture doesn't shy away from using maternal imagery when speaking of the divine. For example, in Isaiah chapter 66, God says, as a describes their labor for Israel.

Isaiah 66 · chapter mention

Now I will cry out like a woman in labor. I will gasp and pant. In Deuteronomy, God uses the analogy again, saying, you were unmindful of the rock that bore you.

You forgot the God who gave you birth. Jesus, the second person of the Trinity, described again for societal reasons as the Son who took on human flesh as a man, again for societal reasons, used maternal terms for himself when weeping over Jerusalem's failure to grasp who he was. So he said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings? That's Luke 1334.

God has never been afraid of describing themselves as female using maternal imagery, because all language about God is analogy. God is bigger than the human mind can comprehend, and so whenever we speak of the divine, we use frail human language to get close to a little part of the truth. In the scriptures, language largely focused on images of God that made sense to the societies that wrote them.

God as provider, as ruler, as judge, as warrior. All of these were male images and male roles in the societies that wrote those texts. But sometimes we also hear that God is carer, provider, the one who carries, labors with, and births their people.

These more maternal images are equally true of God, but remember they aren't just maternal. They're tender and fierce and self-giving, especially Jesus's image. A hen that shields her chicks under her wings does so to protect them from danger with her own body at the cost of her own safety.

Jesus wept because he knew that he was about to go to the cross to do exactly that, to protect all people with his body, and yet the majority of the people of Jerusalem and of Israel would fail to recognize him. If God is indeed then beyond gender and without biology, as the church has always affirmed, and can speak of themselves as mother, then we're being told something crucial. That motherhood is not limited to one set of people.

It's not confined to biology. It's a way of loving, of self-giving, of relational existence entirely for the other person. All existence comes from God.

All relationship comes from God because God is relationship. If motherhood is most truly a relationship then motherhood is most truly without biology. And that brings us to the church.

The church from her earliest days has been called mother. In the third century the bishop and martyr Cyprian wrote, you cannot have God as your father unless you have the church as your mother. The Reformers didn't shy away from these images either.

John Calvin insisted that the church is our spiritual mother. He wrote in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, let us learn from her single title of mother how useful, no, how necessary the knowledge of her is, since there is no other means of entering into life unless she conceives us in the womb and gives us birth, unless she nourishes us at her breasts, and in short keeps us under her charge and government until divested of mortal flesh and we become like the angels. To call the church our mother is to remember that we are not meant to grow in faith alone.

The church teaches us, nourishes us in the sacraments, corrects us, forgives us and consoles us. She gives us brothers and sisters in the faith. She shelters us when the world is cruel and like every good mother she sometimes has to say no.

She reminds us that we are not the center of the story. All is for one purpose. She exists and we exist to be raised into maturity in Christ.

The church is able to be mother because she is a network of relationships and motherhood is relationship. In her, a holy Catholic unity, a great mystery spreading across time and space as the kingdom of God, she is a body of holy people encouraging one another to holiness. Motherhood as relationship.

And this brings us to our third spiritual mother, the Blessed Virgin Mary. In today's Gospel, John chapter 19, Jesus with his dying breaths looked at his mother and at the beloved disciple and said, woman here is your son and to the disciple here is your mother. And the text tells us that from that hour the disciple took Mary into his own home.

John 19 · chapter mention

On the surface this was an act of care. Jesus was his mother's eldest son. After the death of Joseph, which we presume because he doesn't appear in the Scriptures after the account of Jesus as a young boy in Jerusalem, Jesus was responsible for Mary's well-being and care.

He didn't have an extended family on whom he could presume for her care so he needed to entrust that his mother would not be alone. But on the truer spiritual level he was doing so much more. Christian tradition has held that the beloved disciple in John's Gospel stands for all disciples.

And so Jesus wasn't entrusting his mother to a man but to the church. He was giving her responsibility not for one disciple but for all disciples across time and space. Tradition holds that Mary in that moment became mother of the church.

By tradition we're told that she was there in the upper room with the disciples of Pentecost as they waited in fear and hope for the Holy Spirit. Tradition holds that she nurtured the early community with her love of Jesus, her knowledge of his heart. She had known Jesus before and better than anyone else.

She had held him in her arms before Simeon held him at the temple. She had followed him to Cana, to Calvary. She had stayed when others had run away.

Mary was and is mother of the church because she mothered Jesus and then she continued to mother the disciples and she does so to this day. She allowed the disciples to be who they were and are, upholding their work in prayer and in love and wisdom. Steady and loving and present.

Hers was motherly relationship, unshakeable encouragement and support. And so because this day is about relationship, the motherhood of God, of the church, of Mary, it's more than just a celebration of those who've mothered us, although we should celebrate them and we do. It's a calling to be spiritual mothers ourselves, regardless of our biology.

Because regardless of our biology or our gender identity, whatever our age or background, we are called to be mothers in the faith, to comfort, to encourage, to protect. So Jesus, our mother hen, taught his disciples, just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. How did Jesus love? As a mother, by standing with his disciples when they failed, by teaching them patiently when they wouldn't get it, by forgiving them completely though they made mistakes time and again, by washing their feet and serving them, by laying down his life for them, by giving his body to them.

This is the shape of godly maternal love. A love which gives of itself, not for recognition, but for the flourishing of others. A love that bears with weakness, a love that nourishes and consoles and strengthens and sends out.

It is the love of God who made and birthed the universe, the love of Christ who gave his body for us, the love of the Spirit who encourages and empowers. And so today, whether Mother's Day, as it is outside this building, is a happy day or a hard one, know this, maternal love is not something that you have to earn. It is your inheritance in God and in the church and in Mary.

Every person in this room is called to be a spiritual mother, to love as Christ the mother hen has loved us, just as I have loved you, so you also must love one another.