Thought I'd start sharing some of my sermons on here - today is a tough one for me, but because I don't do things by half of course I'd be front and centre for the Mothering Sunday Service, a service I haven't attended since going no-contact - so here's some stuff, mostly my words, some words from people who preach much more articulately than me - I hope God has something for you here.
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I suspect that most of us are very familiar with the phrase ‘blood is thicker than water’. We've heard it said amongst friends, family and across popular media. It's one of those saying that we all know the meaning of and have probably used. But our confidence is actually mistaken.
This phrase that is firmly cemented in our vocabulary actually means something entirely different to what we have been led to believe. The true is as follows:
‘the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb’
Well doesn't that turn everything on its head. Perhaps the phrase we think we know is an easy one to throw around when we want to make the point that families should stick together, but the true phrase, I would argue, can actually be a lot more comforting.
In today's Gospel we are presented with Jesus on the cross. A dark and painful image and yet even in those final agonising moments he is thinking about those closest to him: His mother and his disciples.
As Jesus dies on the cross he is still thinking of others, but instead of calling out, wishing his biological brothers were around to care for his mother, he instead turns to his disciple, and entrusts the care of his mother to him, and the care of said disciple to his mother.
And what Jesus does with this conversation with his mother, at the turning point of all history, starts something fundamentally new.
Jesus is doing a new miracle. Mary finds that Jesus is with her and then she finds that there are others with her too. A seemingly random collection of friends and family. Perhaps not people she would have chosen but often in times of crisis this is the case. Jesus turns to her and says “Woman here is your son” indicating not to himself but to John, the beloved disciple. And he turns to the disciple and says “Behold your mother.”
While most of the disciples had scattered, like a mother hen, Jesus gathers those he loves together, under his wings.
This is more than a kind provision for his broken-hearted mother and friend. Jesus here is starting something that reimagines what mothering, what family is all about.
There is a lot of debate about when the church started. We mostly celebrate it at Pentecost when the disciples had regathered but there’s a strong case to say that the start of the understanding of Church, perhaps even the thing that they gathered around was Mary and John.
Jesus outlines a new way to think of family. In Jesus’ imagination family is not merely about biology. Our understanding about blood relations becomes something different. Now Mary and John are joined in a covenanted, committed relationship through Jesus.
The church can live up to this. I have spoken to many people who have experienced turning up in a new church, myself included, and found a community who have treated them like family. Entry to this family of Christ is now not by biology but by the blood of Christ.
For those of you sitting here today with pain in your hearts, hoping for today to be over quickly, grieving the family or motherhood you wished for, feeling the weight of strained relationships or mothers no longer with us - hear this - God has good news for you and you are not alone.
A new family is created in the shadow of the cross. Through the blood of Christ shed for us, a new home, a new community comes to life. A new family is born.
It is here, at the foot of the cross, as Jesus sheds his blood and a woman embraces a boy and a boy embraces a woman – it is here that the church is formed!
In that tender act we see the love of God, the God we serve, the God who longs to gather up his people and protect them; to provide for them a family whose bonds cannot be broken.
Mary and the disciple formed the church in their relationship with each other. They offered one another comfort. They strengthened each other. They encouraged one another and shared hospitality together.
These, surely, must be the hallmarks of our church today: Love, Comfort, Support and Hospitality - no matter who we are, where we come from or what we look like.
This is what Jesus had in mind when he spoke from the cross in today’s Gospel.
Pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber tells the story of how her church, which had initially been made up of younger, ‘alternative’ people, suddenly started being attended by an older cohort of Christians. This sparked a bit of an identity crisis until one girl stood up and hit the nail on the head: “I’m glad there are people here who look like my mom and dad,” she said, “Because they love me and my own parents can’t.”
There’s a word there about God’s heart for each one of us, a heart that the Bible describes in terms of motherhood, and the Church should be a reflection of that. We will often get it wrong, we are human, but when the Church gets it right, it shows the heart of Christ to the world.
I think that’s why intergenerational church communities are so important, that’s why taking an interest in the lives of those sitting next to us in the pews is a ministry in itself. Because you don't always know what someone is carrying, and in that kind word, that expression of love that you might not think twice about, might be the start of a new life for another person.
How powerful is it that in the short but intimate interaction from Jesus as he is dying we see the beginnings of something so far beyond what we can comprehend, love exemplified in a grief-filled embrace.
A family beginning that we are all welcome to join. In the dark shadow of the cross, in the pain some of us might feel this day, take heart, what God is growing into a garden, he often plants in the dark.
If you are feeling a lack of connection to your mother or your children today Jesus is reaching out to you. If Jesus reached out to Mary from the cross, how much more is he reaching out to you, who are now his family too, today as he sits in glory. Share your sorrows with Jesus today.
Are you feeling at an end of yourself today? Come to Christ, the mother who gathers and who creates new life. Who is near to you today who Jesus might be inviting you to become family to? Is there a mother on your street? Could there be a beloved child near you who you could reach out to with the love of Jesus?
Most fundamentally, Jesus calls us, mothers, all of us, to reimagine with him what motherhood, what family could be. To turn on our imaginations to the possibilities that the people in our lives might be more than we thought they were and to hold that same wonder as we encounter them as we do when we hold a new-born in our arms … that each person is a unique and mysterious gift from God. But then to imagine with Jesus a wider concept of family, a family that has a place for all. And we are recognised in this family not by birth but by baptism.
As we worship together today we are proclaiming the same things that Jesus proclaimed on the first Good Friday.
Here, in this church, is a new community.
Here, in this church, is a new family.
Here, in this church, is a new fellowship.
So dear friends, Happy Mothering Sunday, which need not be a platitude but a declaration. Blessed are you Mothers, Expectant mothers, yearning yet-to-be mothers, grieving mothers, you motherless and you fathers, siblings and friends. Let us celebrate one another, and be gathered into Jesus’ family. We are blood relatives – not through our blood but through his, shed on the cross for us all.
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