Mothering Sunday

Colossians .12-17; Luke 2.33-35


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So we come to be half way through Lent today and arrive at Refreshment Sunday. Refreshment Sunday if indeed we do need to be refreshed in our Lenten fast. Lent is a personal journey as much as anything, with God. And each of us will do with it as we decide. Today gives us the opportunity to look back on the last three weeks and a bit, and then to rededicate ourselves in the season, especially if we haven't really got into it as we'd liked to have done.

So we can take those three disciplines we've been looking at over the past three Sundays, prayer, fasting and almsgiving, and recommit ourselves to those principles in whatever way we would like to with renewed determination; remembering of course that the whole exercise is to bring us closer to God and to prepare for the celebration of Easter.

On this day also we are overtaken a bit by Mothering Sunday. Or should I say we are more overtaken by Mother's Day. We all know what Mother's Day is and no doubt we'll be remembering our mothers one way or another today.

But as last year I'd like to make a plea for bringing back into its rightful place in the Church calendar, Mothering Sunday. Because I think it helps us think about things in a more rounded way. For decades we've been reminded that there's an imbalance in our Church, that it's a patriarchal society where men hold all the authority and women are a sort of second class. Whilst it's true that men in the Church have had authority and power within the structure of the Church, I've never underestimated the presence that women have or have had in the Church down the centuries and especially over the last 50 years or so. You don't have to be in a position of authority to have an influence. And it's a fair bet that behind most influential men there have been women who have been even more influential.

Jesus himself was surrounded by women; and although he chose men for his immediate disciples, it's significant that he appeared first to a woman after his resurrection. Indeed, Mary Magdalene is often regarded as the first apostle, as she took news of the risen Jesus to the disciples themselves. And since then, despite this feeling that men have shaped and led the Church down the centuries, there are many women saints who provide an example of Godly life to both women and men, right up to this present day and age. And we remember many of them in our weekday services here at St. Andrew's. So women do figure very prominently in the history of the Church.

But I think this subject goes deeper than that and it's enshrined in what we are celebrating today. Jesus told us to call God, our Father. But the Church is referred to as the Bride of Christ. So the Church is very much our spiritual mother. God is our creator and the Church is the one who nurtures us in Him. In fact the imagery is taken further. The baptismal font is seen as the womb of the Church through the waters of which we are born again to life in Christ.

I think we tend to lose touch with this imagery, this great archetype. And because we've lost touch with it our picture of our spiritual origin and development is skewed towards seeing the whole process in terms of the male - God the Father and God the Son, with very little reference to the female. I was taught that in the Old Testament, in Hebrew, the Holy Spirit is female. If that is true then that adds more balance too to the whole creation process. Through God the Holy Trinity and mother Church we are born and re-born into relationship with God.

Had we kept these reference points down through the centuries I'm not sure that we would be so hung up by the notion of equality in the Church as we are today. I think that successive generations have painted and repainted the picture of the Church so much in their own colours that we've lost touch with the fundamental imagery constructed so well by the apostles and the early Church. Reading of those early days of the Church in the bible, we hear of men and women living together, seemingly happily with the roles ascribed to them and not wishing they were doing somebody else's job. Maybe it was because it was early days, long before the rot set in. And maybe we shouldn't be so eager to take a rosy view of those times.

But history is as it is, and whatever the influences of men and women down the centuries, we have inherited the Church as she is today. And we should celebrate all she does for us in bringing us to and holding us in the Faith. It's in the Church that we find our spiritual nourishment, here above all. It's here that we meet with God, as it were, face to face. And we meet him in the face of one another, in Him in whose image and likeness we are made, male and female, both.

So today, on this Mothering Sunday, as we remember and give thanks for our own mothers, let's also remember and give thanks for our Mother Church who has nurtured us in Spirit and Truth so faithfully, for however long that may have been.