Mothering Sunday

14th March 2010: Sung Eucharist 9.00 AM

Preacher: The Revd John Chynchen, Cathedral Chaplain

Readings: Exodus 2.1–10; 2 Corinthians 1.3–7; Luke 2. 33–35

Despite some evidence to the contrary in the history of the first half of the 20th century, the English (as distinct from the Celts of Scotland and Wales) the and the Germans can be viewed as cousins. As I drove a German visitor to the Airport yesterday, we confirmed that this Sunday – the fourth Sunday of Lent – was to do with Mothers and Mothering…but with an important and intriguing difference. Not for us English, the Fatherland of my German friend…no, it is the Mother country; an Earth mother…embracing…feminine. And the Chinese have their Motherland and, hopefully, approve of a special Sunday when we thank God for motherhood…for the nurturing, the caring, the pain endured, the unquenchable love. The indigenous people here are not atoms, held together by the force-field of the state. Chinese people understand the family. More obviously…perhaps more successfully than we of the West…they are primarily children and parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts…and cousins of all descriptions…an observation that can only ring a bell for those of you who hail from the islands of the Philippines.

The earliest Mothers’ Day celebrations can be traced back to the spring celebrations of ancient Greece in honour of Rhea, wife of Cronus and the mother of the gods and goddesses. In Rome, from about 250 BC, the Mothers’ Day-like festival, known as Hilaria, was dedicated to the mother goddess Cybele and celebrated over three days…from 15th to 18th March! The tradition of honouring the mothers of England on Mothering Sunday — or Mid-Lent Sunday (the Fourth Sunday of Lent) appears to date from the 1600s and probably blended into celebrations from a much earlier time that honoured “Mother Church”. On this day, people flocked especially to the mother churches of the dioceses — the cathedrals. Some historians believe that the early church in Rome substituted the Mother of Christ, Mary, for Cybele while preserving the ceremonies and the early spring date.

As the English Mothering Sunday tradition evolved, young men and women, working away from home as apprentices and household servants, would be released on this day. They were encouraged to return to their family homes, taking their mothers a special mothering cake, such as furmety—whole wheat grains boiled in sweet milk, sugared and spiced.

In the United States, a spinster from Philadelphia, Anna M Jarvis, who was extremely attached to her mother, began a campaign to establish a national Mothers’ Day. This culminated with President Wilson’s proclamation in 1914 that a national holiday under that name be held each year on the second Sunday of May. Our friends from the far side of the Pacific are used to the word schmaltz – it’s the Yiddish word for dripping or lard...it certainly greases the collective palms of the great industries that trade upon sticky sentiment. By the end of today in the United Kingdom, people will have spent 800 million of our Hong Kong dollars on flowers and plants, and over HK$500 million on some 40 million greeting cards for Mother’s Day. Among the several countries following the American example is Australia. When my late mother was well into her 80s and living in Melbourne, she would receive a card from me for Mothering Sunday, on or about the third week of March, and would ring to thank me, ecstatically happy that, yet again, she was the first mum in her circle of mums to get a card. But later, in the middle of May, she’d be on the phone again complaining that she was the only mum without one!

But, in the here and now, what can I be expected to say to you on Mothering Sunday? As a priest, perhaps I should be relating the great blessings of motherhood, extolling the example of those mothers who have brought their babies to baptism, and reminding you that this is what God and the Church want women to do. I could say these things without ever having experienced the practical difficulties of being a Christian and a mother at the same time. Can I ask you to join...to belong to this church community as you struggle to bring up little people who seem wholly unsuited for Sunday existence? How can you mothers set aside time for prayer and contemplation within a routine dedicated to the inescapable demands of children? Because Jesus had a mother, much is said and written that simply equates motherhood with a state of grace; but, in the gospels Jesus doesn’t commend the women that stay at home and look after their husbands and children. Rather, he holds up for our admiration those who, like the disciples, free themselves from family entanglements and follow him.

The belief that motherhood is innately Christian has persisted...despite all those millions of babies produced ‘under licence’ In Iran, India and China...it’s persisted whether couched in terms of traditional Mariology or the more acceptable ‘feminist’ notion of the motherly God. I could tell you that motherhood is a paradigm of our response to God – self-giving, assenting to the will of God – or that it’s a paradigm of God’s response to us – nurturing, freely creative, gentle. I’m afraid that neither of these touches on the sleepless nights, the fact that you have no time to pray, or the fact that you, as an individual person, rather than as ‘a mother’, are often isolated from the worshipping community...however many times we may mention your family.

Motherhood, like almost any other human activity, is capable of teaching us about God, but again, like with everything else we do, it is equally possible to do it while completely missing its implications. In essence, surely motherhood is actually one of those human activities, like marriage, that is an extraordinary insight into God, once you start looking...but not always for the reasons we have been taught. If it is to be really paradigmatic, then we need to look at the real circumstances of life as it is lived by those...be they women or men...bringing up children. The results of psychological research conclude that most infants develop satisfactorily when cared for by a few concerned adults who need not be female but must be sensitive to, and responsive to, the infant’s needs. We need to recognise what models of spirituality are possible in such a life, what those models need from the rest of the Church, and what they can teach the rest of the Church.

Today then, quite simply, is a day for holding my gratitude in the palm of my hand. This is gratitude from the heart for the one who birthed me forth into the world; for the one who committed herself to an expansion of her understanding of love and her ability to love, even though she knew it would be physically and emotionally painful. And in your case, ’though not mine, perhaps you can talk to her about how you feel...if only I could have managed to do that. You can speak rather than spend and save all the schmaltz for Christmas...and the ‘winter wonderland’. Amen.