Lent 4 - Mothering Sunday

1 Samuel 1.20-28; Colossians 3.12-17; John 19.25b-27

This fourth Sunday in Lent is traditionally known as Refreshment Sunday or Mothering Sunday. It's a day on which we can rest and relax from our Lenten discipline. During a long journey, which Lent is, we need times of rest to gather energy to complete the course and so the Church gives us this day to do just that.

Historically, on this day, people would go from their parish churches to worship at the Mother Church of the diocese or at least of the locality. Most of the parishes around this town sprung up from All Saints in the town centre. And we have the hang over of that in the way in which most church people around the town tend to refer to All Saints as 'the' Parish Church. So I guess on this day if we were keeping to the tradition we would all go to All Saints for our worship. Anyway, I'll leave that thought with you. The way things are going with the forced reduction in stipendiary clergy numbers hereabouts, that might become a regular feature and not too far off! But in the meantime we are glad to be able to come here to celebrate Mothering Sunday and relax a bit from the rigours of Lent.

As this is Mothering Sunday, I'd like us to reflect for a few minutes on the place of the Church in our lives. And there's one thing we need to get out of the way before we go any further. The Church's celebration of Mothering Sunday is about the Church and has nothing whatever to do with our own mothers or the secular celebration of Mother's Day. But inevitably that celebration has crept in and overtaken the Church's celebration. Mother's Day, whilst a lovely time for some, for other women and for some children, is a very difficult and painful time, and we don't need to go into that. It's for the Church always and on such a day as this in particular to show it's love for all and not just to single out particular individuals.

When I was growing up I was taught, rightly or wrongly that as God is our Heavenly Father, so the Church is our spiritual mother. God is the one who creates us, if you like, and the Church is the one who nurtures us. You can't press those images too far theologically but I, personally, think that they are very useful images. St. Augustine referred to the Church as 'Mother Church'. The Church is referred to by St. Paul as the Bride of Christ, as well as being Christ's Body. And so it's right that we should think of the Church first and foremost not as an organisation or an institution, as we do secular bodies. But we should think of the Church as something living, something organic, a 'divine-human organism' as Metropoloitan Hierotheos refers to it. (The Mind of the Orthodox Church) Only if we think of the Church in this way, as a living body of which we are a part and that nurtures us, nutures our own body, mind, soul and spirit are we saved from thinking of it in worldly ways, ways in which we think of all, simply human organisations and institutions. Because the Church is fundamentally different to any other organisation.

If we see the Church in this way, as a place where we are nurtured in our life as disciples of Christ, as members of His Body; as people who, as St. Paul says, have their lives 'hid with Christ in God', then we come to it first and foremost to let it change us, to let it form us in the way of Christ. Being part of the Church, and having the Church as the Body of Christ, our spiritual mother, we see it as a place where we first of all put aside everything that wells up out of our own ego. We put aside our own selfish and self-possessed opinions, points of view, agendas, beliefs, versions of truth and we let the Church nourish and sustain, inform and fashion our opinions, points of view, agendas and beliefs. And we let ourselves be open to THE Truth - Jesus Christ, THE Way, THE Truth, THE Life. So that in the end we can pray along with Christ Himself - 'not my will, but thy will be done'.

Far, far too much do we come to the Church with our own beliefs and opinions and expect the Church to change for us, in little ways and in big ways. We expect the Church to accept unreservedly all of our own idiosyncracies, particularities and peculiarities and accomodate them equally alongside everybody else's. This is not how it's meant to be. There's a very real sense in which when we come to this place we should leave our 'self' outside the door so that we can discover God. Because the one thing, the ONE thing that stops any of us discovering God is our overbearing 'self'; that in us that clamours and screams to make the world and everybody in the world the way that IT wants them to be. And you only need to read the gospels and listen to Jesus and time and time again you will hear Him say, 'that's not the way it is, neither in the Church nor indeed in the world. That's not God's way, that's not My way.'

You hear people say that they believe in God but they don't like 'organised' religion; they don't like the Church. What I believe they mean by that is that they don't like being told what they are supposed to believe. Spirituality for them is some airy-fairy, nice feeling of otherworldliness that can be good or indeed pure evil. The trouble is, if it's of your own discovery how do you discern whether or not it is good, true and genuine, or evil. How do you know it's something objective or just your imagination? Again, it's their self that won't let them listen and understand and take on Truth which is objective Truth, they'd rather listen to their own subjective truth.

When we are baptised we are baptised into the Body of Christ, baptised into the Church and from that day on we are meant to become disciples of Christ as His Spirit works in us. We give up everything, in a sense to follow Him and be nurtured by Him through the Church. Jesus reinforces this when He says that we have to take up our cross and follow Him, when we have to put God before anyone or anything else. So as a member of the Church, being a disciple of Christ is meant to be the number one priority in our life. Everything else comes behind Him or lower down the list.

That on the face of it, is hard to take and hard to understand. However can we put Jesus first in this day of so much competition from so much outside us including our families and friends? And it's hard to take BECAUSE we don't understand. We don't understand because we don't know God. If we knew God, then we would understand. Well we get to know God as we become disciples of His Son, our Saviour. When we live our lives in accordance with Jesus' commandments and His teaching. That's what the first disciples did. And they handed on the teaching to others and it's been handed down to us.

And you know they gave their life for this teaching, they gave their lives for Christ. That's what He means when He says that we must put Him first. All of these paintings of saints we see around us today aren't just there for decoration. They are there to remind us that we are called to be disciples of Christ as they were. For them, God was more important than their heartbeat; the Church was more important than their own breath. It was God that gave both to them anyway.

When we look at ourselves today, we should be asking ourselves is God more important than our heartbeat? Is the Church more important than our own breath? If not, then we have work to do. We may never be called on to die for our Faith or for the Church as other saints have done, but we tread the same path in the same direction as they did when we are followers of the same Christ. We tread the path to God. And we tread it together, not on our own. We tread the path to God together as members of the one Body, the Church; the Church of which we are a part and which nurtures us as a spiritual mother. And there is nobody asking us to do that except God Himself. This idea of organised religion is nonesense, it's an excuse made by those who haven't even the courage to open themselves to hear the one true God calling to them, as He does contantly. Only Christ says 'follow me'. Only Christ says 'come and see'. And it's for each one of us to answer that call, the call to go further and further and deeper and deeper into God with every passing day.