Mothering Sunday
The mother within- Perfect love casts out fear...1 John 4:18
Today in the United Kingdom it is Mothering Sunday. As I sit and write here in the most glorious location in the mountains of Switzerland, I am struck by the sheer majesty of the world, of just looking up. How creation itself heals us, like a good mother, wraps us in a blanket of beauty. I feel nurtured and inspired by this mountain scene.
Mothering Sunday over the years has become more and more about celebrating actual mothers…and whilst I am not against celebrating the sacrifice and the ultimate joy of being a mother, I am a mother myself, the UK’s Mothering Sunday is not in fact about mothers at all.
If you look into this - and some of you may have - it really was about returning to your ‘Mother Church’. In other words, going back to the church where you were baptised and grew up. Those in service would return to their ‘mother church’ on the forth Sunday of Lent and be able to take a break from fasting and celebrate with their families at church. An interesting fact, whilst many now search for community online, and many more meet their mate for life on an app instead of down the local pub, it was not always so.
The most common way to meet a partner now is? Yes, you’ve guessed right, online. In fact, eighty percent of us, according to the latest data, now meet or hook up with a partner online. But what was the most common way to meet someone a hundred years ago I hear you ask? Was it the pub? Or the dancehall? No. It was your local parish church.
Until relatively recently, the humble parish church, a beautiful spire in every village across every county of the English Countryside and beyond, was where villagers would congregate and meet one another. And not just for use on Sundays and high days. The vision was for each parish to be the social hub, allowing each village a space and place to worship on Sundays, but also to socialise during the week. So it meant dances, festivities, music and drama all took place there. Often there was a minstrels gallery for the choir and those playing wind instruments. Morris Dancing began in church, we still have Morris Dancers arriving en mass outside our local Whaddon Church at Pentecost, a celebration of the outpouring of God’s spirit on his people, entering into the heart of the church. So before the pews, this was where your activities would be held and hosted. And whilst there were always some churches with a few pews to the sides, most were without, and certainly in the central aisles, there was plenty of room to move and make merry in the centre of each building. In fact it is where we get the phrase, “Let the weak go to the wall”, if you were too weak to stand for the duration of the sermon and service, you could lean up against the wall, or sit on the benches along the side. It meant there was lots of room for fun and family and community events.
Church, like a good mother, has always been about and centred on hospitality. If you think about it, even on Sunday, the Principle Service of communion is the recalling of a Christ’s last Passover feast and a celebration marked by bread and wine in which we all partake. A call to be ‘lights of the world’ ends the service with the words, ‘Send us out in the power of your spirit to live and work to your praise and glory, in the name of Christ’ Amen! The word, “Amen” meaning literally - “so be it”, or “I agree”. This is how each service used to, and in most Anglican parish churches, still does, end.
Before the advent of the radio, the cinema and finally the television and computer, as forms of entertainment church was something to do on a Sunday which was a day of rest from labour. It was the great leveller of society where you would see everyone and get to know who they ‘really were’. There were no filters and better still, if you liked someone, they would be there with some of their family members too. Then, you would meet mothers, and fathers of anyone you liked. It was easy to spot the right choice for yourself. And we like to think in this country only the upper classes had their arranged marriages, in the Middle Ages. Yes and no. We didn’t have ‘arranged marriages’, for all social groups officially, but in one sense, we did. Where you sat in church and with whom, showed where you came in the pecking order. Who was from which family too, helped to find out in church if they were a ‘good fit’ for you. It was a really simple way of getting to knowing someone, but not in a void, as part of the community. For example, if your father was a drunk, the village would all know, if your mother was a gossip, everyone was aware. If you were from a hardworking family, again the village knew. There was very little way to escape your past, which was both a curse and blessing at the same time. But on balance, a blessing. Most simple ways, like meeting for prayer and talks about how to live a good life, in the end, are.
Now, as we enter an ever more virtual era, it is good to pause and look at how we can reconnect today. Do not rule out your local church.
In each parish church across the Britain today they will have held a Mothering Sunday service. Those who come, be they single, or married, are given a small posy of flowers, when I was a child it was voilets, now it is usually daffodils. These posies are made up by the village and given out by the children. It goes on all over Britain. It is a wonderful welcoming tradition because all are welcome.
I have vivid memories of running up to elderly spinsters in my local church as a child and handing them a posy and the delight in their eyes as I did so. You see, the point of church is that it’s not a ‘hobby group’, it’s not for ‘one type of person’, it’s not even an ‘age group’, it is for everyone. The whole family, and no one gets left behind. It is in fact for those who have no family, or who lots of family. For those from small families, or large, for those who have families they find it hard to be with, or for those who love their family, but realise the significance of being part of the biggest family of all, the human race.
God’s family is non-exclusive and includes…well, everyone. That’s me and you and even those we find it hard to love. That’s why Christ says when asked by his disciples ‘how often must I forgive my neighbour, seven times?’ (This sounds like a lot to those of us who have tricky neighbours), but Jesus’s response is, ‘no seventy times seven’.
In other words, forgive those around us always, as our father in heaven forgives us. As a parent would continually forgive a child.
If I think I’m better than you, or nicer than you, if I’m comparing my life to yours and finding it wanting, then I have no chance to grow and change in relationship to you. But if I am only looking upwards and comparing myself to God, then I know I too have an infinitely long way to go before I reach perfect love, but I am ‘failing’ in the right direction. I am looking up the mountain like the one I sit in front of here and seeing the glorious white peaks of God’s grace, truth and love that I will at some point reach.
The truth is, we are all sinners, we all fall short of the grace God shows us. Far from making us sad, we should love God all the more as we realise, like a mother with a toddler, who isn’t listening, God loves us anyway. He cares for us, even when we go our own way.
This is a relaxing stance, grow in grace, continually asking God to forgive me my sins, starting with my own sense of sinning. We can grow up together in God’s family, as we let the light of Christ’s love through the power of the holy spirit into our hearts more and more, as we walk with the faltering steps of a child towards our heavenly father, who is family. Through asking to be filled up by his holy spirit (sometimes depicted as the ‘mother’ female side of God’s life force) and the son, Jesus Christ. We are designed by our creator to live ‘in communion with one another’. In other words, we are designed to be a family, an eternal family, an eternal community of hope, peace, joy and love (agape love, self sacrificing love) of which the joy and happiness is the by product whatever circumstances in our earthly life we find ourselves in.
So this Mothering Sunday, think about this, how you are loved and known by God and how every one of us is a child of God, part of the largest family in the world, our Creator’s family. That our hearts are restless until we come home. Home At Last to the source of all love and forgiveness, God.
I have been made so aware, more and more aware, by my dear new friend Freya (who is part of ‘the anxious generation’) of the need for her generation to reconnect, to foster community, to learn the secret of a self-sacrificing love that leads to long lasting love and happiness. The call for this, is something I have discussed often with my other wonderful friend Tammy and her husband Jordan as we sat in similarly beautiful surroundings as I sit in today, overlooking lakes and mountains around a fireside of their lakeside home.
Tammy and I are have become so attuned to the need this next generation of woman have, through the words of Freya, the need for “guidance”. We felt it was a pressing need to speak out about this topic, just as Jordan has rightly understood the need for young men, like my own son, to be encouraged to embrace taking responsibility for their life and actions. We hope that this will help both boys and girls to know how to navigate those waters.
This podcast feeds into the need of those girls who feel lost and at sea. The smart phone generation, trying to navigate the choppy waters of the culture wars that they find themselves in. It is showing them the lighthouse of love, the way back to this divine love, a way that has become lost in the sea of memes and “me toos” and litigation, which is found within their own precious and unique soul, the heart and hearth. A way back to the love which longs to heal every broken heart, every worry and fear, and when we open our heart to this divine love, love enters in. Not the love that looks inwards, but the love that looks outwards. The agape (self-sacrificing) eternal source of love that calls home, to our true eternal, everlasting home.
In conclusion, this love says, ‘‘perfect love casts out fear”. These words are not there to frighten us, nor to judge us. They are not there to make us feel inadequate, or insecure. We are not the ‘perfect love’, but we simply allow it to flood into our hearts. It is there we find our true home. When we feel we haven’t “arrived” at that “perfect” love yet, that we are under pressure to live our “best life” because everyone else seems to be living theirs, as they send us glossy images of amazing meals, and destination holidays, it is not true. The longing for home is real, but it is as we open our hearts to God calling us home, we find the real source of love. God is the center, the source of all perfect love. He is our home, both our mother and our father. And as we entrust our sinful fallen natures to God, as we open our hearts to allow more of God’s forgiveness, holy spirit and truth in, as we let God’s light into our darkest places, we become part of that family, our true, divine family where everything is no longer black and grey, but colour.
The truth is, we are never alone. God has and will always be there for you and for me. We can then from a place of complete trust in God, entrust ourselves to love better, in this life, those around us and ourselves. To love those broken people around us as we are intended to, not to judge them or ourselves too harshly, but allow more of God’s love and grace and light in, to heal their heart and our own.
And… be blessed!
Breaking news: this is the launch of our podcast exploring this idea of ‘What girls really want?’ The first episode here where I explore with Tammy and Freya that question.
If you want some practical ideas and steps and ways of doing that today, then please view the podcast we have launched this Mothering Sunday entitled: What do girls really want? Below…