Psalm 34.11-20, John 19.25-27 – Mothering 2025. Lent 4. 30th March. 8am, 9.30,
Welcome to Mothering Sunday – I suppose a good mothering Sunday sermon should say something along the lines of Be Thankful – Be thankful for those who have mothered you. For your mothers – “Women hold up half the sky” – so said Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong.
I hope that at some point later you might get a card, a phone call, a presi, from one of your off-spring. So you can be Thankful for your mothers. And perhaps today you will receive some gratitude as your children are thankful for all that you have done for them.
That’s what a good mothering Sunday sermon should probably say.
I’m not keen on Mothering Sunday myself. My mum died when I was 17 so I’ve often looked at Mothering Sunday and I find myself being thankful to my Dad – he found himself doing quite a lot of mothering of me as I grew up.
So Mothering Sunday needs to be carefully aware of those for whom today isn’t that great a day.
We mourn our mothers. Other people will mourn not being parents, others will be okay with that. And others will mourn not being close to their children, perhaps your kids are grown up and too busy today to say Hi, or worse perhaps they feel too estranged today and that will be hard in a different way.
And there will be other mothers who feel a failure, their child is behind bars in a prison. And there will be others who were momentarily mothers but a miscarriage, a stillborn – so today is a difficult day.
I hope that most of you have a lovely Mothering Sunday.
But you can see why in my preaching I tend to focus on the Church as our Mother – here in this community we find ourselves valued, cared for, wisdom shared, hope and faith are encouraged – so even as different folk come and go in their pilgrimage through life – the Church, as family, as Mother, remains.
In Isaiah – God offers Himself to His people as a Mother – Perhaps I should say God offers Herself to Her people as a Mother – Isaiah says – ‘As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted’ Isa 66:13.
So for those of you for whom Mothering Sunday does not look like what the adverts tell us it should, then take comfort in God who offers us comfort, and take refuge in the Church who Mothers us.
There’s a anecdote that Nicky Gumbel gives in the Alpha course. He was visiting an old dear in an old dear’s home – that’s how he puts it – who said to him “I can relax – now that my youngest boy is in an old dears home!”
Parenting is tough. If you get as far as teething and nappies and through the sleepless nights then you find School and the struggles with Maths because they no longer teach long division the way you learned it so how are you suppose to help your little darling, but then there’s the friendship groups being in and out of these circles, and with that come more sleepless nights.
You realise that when I talk about sleepless nights I’m talking about you the parent – so we learn early on the importance of prayer – for so much of the lives of our children are beyond our ability to save and intervene.
So they begin to leave home, and try for a job, for housing, for a caring community perhaps a church, and we pray and pray – and now perhaps you understand the book of Job ch 1 where Job offers a sacrifice to God after each party that his children have had in case they did something stupid – oh dear God protect them! so we pray and we pray.
That Psalm – was a Psalm packed full of advice. Advice about how to live – Come my children listen to me – Psalm 34v10 – here is David offering advice to his children – David at this point doesn’t have any children – so he’s really offering advice to his future children.
If you want to live a long and useful life then … How would you answer that?
Would you reply like The Old Gaffer in Tolkien’s Lord the Rings – ‘Don’t go looking for trouble and trouble wont come looking for you’.
If you want to live a long life … what would you say
So this Psalm gives four pieces of advice.
- Praise the Lord. That’s the first piece of advice. You didn’t hear it because its really in the first half of this psalm – I will extol the Lord at all times, I will glory in the Lord, I prayed and God answered me, delivered me, so I praise the Lord. Taste and see that the Lord is good.
So First bit of advice is Praise the Lord. Give thanks to God. Look to your blessings and say Thank you Jesus. There’s a lot of power in a life of gratitude.
Its important because of what comes next
2nd piece of advice is Pursue Peace. David says nice things about generally being nice: Don’t do evil, do good, but he pushes the point to encouraging us to being Peace Makers – seek peace, pursue peace.
Very often it would seem that we can be our own worst enemies, we burn our own bridges and we don’t know how to be reconciled, we don’t know if we have the patience to try, we don’t know if we have the strength to receive an invitation to reconciliation, to peace. Its not easy.
Praise the Lord, Pursue Peace.
3rdly – Cry Out – the Psalm invites us to Cry out to God when we’re in trouble, when we’re broken hearted, when we are feeling crushed in spirit.
A lot of you when you arrive in Church you look happy. I’m glad about that. But I would like to see you leave looking happier than when you came.
I’d like it if in this moment of worship, you felt able to find space to cry out to God in your spirit because life is hard and heavy and you’re bringing it all to God and saying Help me! Those of you who feel broken hearted and crushed and weighed down with troubles – then sing your heart out, come and receive prayer ministry, bring your troubles to God – this is a good place in which to do it..
The Psalm is full of hope that you will be rescued, you will be delivered, that’s nice – but those of you who are living in the midst of your trouble it also sounds a bit flat as advice – so I would emphasise a different part of this Psalm – Cry out – you will be heard – God’s ears are attentive to your cry, God hears you.
That for me contains the comfort that you are not forgotten in your struggles, in your distress, you are heard, you are not alone.
Praise the Lord, Pursue Peace, Cry out, and Take Refuge.
Take Refuge in the Lord. You’ve come to Church today, well done that was the best thing you could have done well done. You’ve tuned in to worship, you’ve taken refuge in God, here you can Mother and be Mothered as we pray and care for each other.
There’s a lovely line in this Psalm – ‘Evil will slay the wicked’. CSLewis said something like Evil has a way of overreaching itself, overstretching, so that it ultimately brings itself to exposure and ruin.
Whatever struggles you’re going through, Jesus is with you, Jesus has faced this, Jesus is looking to enfold you like a Mother Hen gathering her little ones to herself.
Bishop Will told a story when he came to St Luke’s for a Confirmation service a couple of weeks ago – he said his sister keeps chickens, and he saw how a hawk of some sort came down upon a cluster of new born chicks and quick as a can the Mother Hen fanned out her wings, pulled her chicks under her, and then the hen received the ferocious pecking attack from the hawk – the hen would not budge but just took the punishment – the hawk eventually gave up.
Bishop Will’s sister ran out expecting the mother to be dead, there were blood and feathers everywhere, but the hen recovered.
You can see by now where the Bishop was taking this part of his sermon.
This is Jesus, who gathers us, in whom we find refuge, who takes on to himself all the pain that evil would inflict.
So by faith we need to let Jesus do that, to let Jesus take that, and receive from us our hurt,
so that we might receive from Him His healing protection and refuge.
So Happy Mothering Sunday. I hope that some of you will have a normal Mothering Sunday whatever that means.
But all the same hear this advice, which is not always easy to put into practice.
Praise the Lord – do it as best you can as often as you can. Praise the Lord
Pursue Peace – it often eludes us – nonetheless try, Pursue Peace
Cry Out – you are heard, you are not alone – Cry out
Take Refuge – within Mother Church, under the wings of Jesus Christ your mother hen – Take Refuge
And happy Mothering Sunday.
Amen.