Mothering Sunday: Being God-bearers
A sermon by Revd Katherine Hedderly
Readings for this service: 1 Samuel 1. 20-end; Colossians 3. 12-17; Luke 2. 33-35
On Thursday this week, which was International Women’s Day, a message tweeted from the women on hunger strike at the Yarls Wood immigration detention centre included the words:
“We feel voiceless, forgotten and ignored. We needed a voice and more importantly we needed someone to listen. We needed to be reminded that we are human beings because trust us when we say most of us are so dehumanised by this process of detention and the way we are treated (…), that you start to forget.”
It was a cri de coeur from women who have been hidden in our immigration system. On Thursday their voice was taken to parliament, through the #AllWomenCount campaign, bringing to light in this most public place, the suffering they are experiencing and demanding change, not least a time limit on what is currently indefinite detention, to 28 days. Many women fasted with them for the day in solidarity.
Jesus comes as a sign that reveals hidden things; hidden treasures and hidden shame and brings them out into the open for all to see. He is ‘a light for revelation’ as Simeon describes, in the words of the Nunc Dimitis, which are sung at Evensong, as he gives thanks for the gift of seeing the Messiah whom he has waited for all of his long life. ‘Now Lord you dismiss your servant in peace, according to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all people, a light for revelation to the gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.’[1] They are words spoken before Jesus’ parents as they bring him to the temple to offer a sacrifice to fulfil the customs of the Jewish law.
The truth that Jesus has come to reveal is both wonderful and uncomfortable. For Mary there is both amazement and sorrow, as Simeon reveals to her the shadow side of Jesus’ saving work, the rejection and opposition he will face and what it will cost – ‘and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’[2]
On this fourth Sunday in Lent, which is also Mothering Sunday, I’d like us to reflect on God who in Jesus, comes to the hidden places and people of our world, to the hidden experiences of our lives and to our souls, with his transforming presence and like a mother giving birth, brings all that is there to life. He bring to life the sorrow and the joy of it – seeking, as the women in Yarls Wood give us glimpse of, the full and just flourishing of humanity and all creation.
Mary as Jesus’ mother gives us an insight into that flourishing;
– as the place where Jesus himself was hidden, in the months of her pregnancy, as he was formed in the womb;
– as the person who knew joy and sorrow like us: Who could cry ‘my soul magnifies the Lord’, at the joy of God, who comes to the hidden people of our world, lifting up the lowly and turning power structures upside down, but was also cut to the heart, by the loss and devastation she faced.
– as the God-bearer, offering for the church a way to be a transforming sign of God’s grace for the world.
The place where Jesus was hidden; the person who knows the joy and sorrow we know; a way for the church to be a sign of God’s presence for the world.
In his book ‘Ponder These Things’[3], Rowan Williams invites us to contemplate the icon of the Virgin of the Signs. It is a striking image. Mary has both her hands open extended in prayer, as a priest does when she is presiding at the Eucharist. Mary is looking directly at us. And rather than holding the infant Jesus, we see on her breast a medallion in which Christ is depicted. It is as if Jesus is praying inside her.
The icon could be given the title from Paul’s letter to the Colossians today, ‘Let the word of Christ dwell in your richly’[4].
Brendan Byrne in his book ‘The Hospitality of God’[5] reminds us that Luke’s gospel focuses on the way in which people don’t just hear the gospel but how they respond to it at a deep hidden level. It requires a conversion of the heart that will challenge comfortable assumptions – in us and in the world. This image of Christ within Mary shows us that work going on in her – the word of Christ dwelling within her bringing new things to life, a pattern that we are invited into in our own hidden lives of prayer and faithfulness.
“Jesus is hidden in our lives.” Rowan Williams says. “This image recalls to us what the friendship and saving work of Jesus is for: it is to bring us into the life that he lives and the prayer that he prays. And when we find the hiddenness of Christ in us removed for some instant, it is not to reassure us that we have made a success of things, but to give us a hint of the wealth of Christ’s life in us.”
So we are invited to be the place where Christ prays, bringing his transforming presence to life in us. But as a child forms, and eventually comes into the world, Christ’s hidden prayer in us is to be lived out in loving word and action.
Mary opens her hands to God in prayer, but her eyes are open to the world, unguarded, aware of the human joy, pain, hope and suffering. It is a way for us to look at the world, with the hidden love of Christ within, aware of our own joys and sorrows, and see how we can be part of that transformation, bringing life.
Another tweet from International Women’s Day, this time a quote from Dorothy Sayers: “Perhaps it’s no wonder that women were first at the cradle & last at the cross. They had never known a man like this man who never flattered or coaxed or patronised them. Who never urged them to be more feminine or jeered at them for being female.”
God in Jesus lifts up the lowly and gives us new eyes to see how to live and behave in our world. The #MeToo and #TimesUp movements have created a wave of solidarity around our world of women standing up with one another, speaking out about abuse of power. It has given confidence to women to speak about hidden things. It is a sign of God’s transforming presence in our world.
The church is called to be a sign of that living presence, like Mary the God-bearer bringing to life and nurturing the new things of God.
This week Sarah Mullally at her Confirmation of Election was legally made Bishop of London. She will be installed at St Paul’s Cathedral on 12 May. It is a sign of God’s loving grace working through the life of the church, transforming boundaries and expectations, especially to all who said ‘Oh, London would never appoint a woman bishop’. God it seemed has other plans!
Here at St Martin’s a sign of God’s loving presence is coming to life in the newly forming Nazareth Community as it takes shape, being a place for Christ’s praying and serving love at the heart of this city in an intentional way. We hope and pray that it will be a sign of God’s flourishing, caring and compassionate love in this city. It will take all of our nurturing loving support to encourage and affirm this community as it grows. Members of the community will be commissioned at this service next week.
But the flourishing of the church and signs of new life, also come with sorrow for its failings too, as this week also saw the start of the public hearing of the Independent Inquiry into child abuse in the Church of England, using the diocese of Chichester as a case study. It will lead to more robust practices and the independent oversight of safeguarding may be a possible outcome. The church also has to face the judgement Jesus brings. Renewing the life of the church is sorrowful as well as joyful. It is the ‘tough love’ the church also needs to face and be renewed by, set free to love and serve with tender compassion and care all of God’s precious children.
As we make a place for Christ to pray within us, as we open our arms in love to the world, and are part of the renewing hopeful life of the church, we are aware of being children of God. How we experience that will often be through those that are closest to us.
I share memories that might resonate with yours today of my own mother who helped me to know myself as a child of God. Of a busy teacher coming home from school and cooking tea, still with her coat on, a final bedtime kiss from the doorway caught in the palm of a hand, of her unconditional love for her mother, who lived with us until she was 95, a grandmother who taught me how to sew and to swear. We each have moments of tender mothering that we tuck away in the store cupboard of our lives to draw on in leaner times.
But we also acknowledge the difficulties that this day also holds for us, of teenage words we yelled at our parents telling them we hated them, or those we hear from our own children that cut us to the quick, or the longing for children that is never fulfilled, of difficult relationships that have wounded rather than cherished, or the loss of a mother who was the centre of our life and whose loss never fades and whose memory and love is woven into our days.
God is a loving parent who understands all of that, who knows the love and sorrow of our lives and holds that, with us, and calls us to be the place where his love resides for the sake of the world.
As you give thanks for those who have nurtured you, who have shown you what it means to be a child of God, bring to life and share your ‘hidden love’, your joy and sorrow, all that will make you a God bearer too.
[1] Luke 2.29-32
[2] Luke 2.35
[3]‘Ponder These Things: Praying with Icons of the Virgin’, Rowan Williams, Canterbury Press 2002
[4] Colossians 3.16
[5] ‘The Hospitality of God’, Brendan Byrne, Liturgical Press, 2015
