St Mary's 11:00am Mothering Sunday Talk, Sunday 6th March 2016
Readings:
Exodus 2:1-10
John 19:25b-27
Preacher:
Craig Young
When preparing for today’s sermon I found this on the
Mothers Union website
We come here today to thank God for mothers and carers
around the world. It takes a very special love to care for a family.
Today we’ll celebrate that love and thank God for his own perfect
love for us all. We’re not all mothers ourselves but we all have a
mother, whether or not they are still with us, and we are all
children of God. He is our loving Father but is also the one who
remembers and comforts us as a mother comforts her child, and draws
us close as a hen protects her chicks.
Here we see an idea forming that the love which God has
for us is like that of a mother and that image of a hen gathering her
chicks under her wings for loving protection can be found running
throughout our faith like a strand of DNA. Jesus himself uses this
image of God’s love in Matthew 23:27 when he says of Jerusalem,
“how often I have longed to
gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her
wings.” This goes right back to the
beginning and we see it referred to in Psalms from the Old Testament.
God’s love for us, his children, is something which is as vital to
us today as it was to those who wrote the psalms. This love is best
exemplified in our humanity by the bond of love which runs between a
child and its mother. As you will probably detect I am not a mother
and this is something which try as I might I cannot experience. My
relationship with others whilst loving is not the same. However my
love should always try and emulate the love which Christ showed to us
and which he told us is the same love which God has for each and
every one of us because we are children of God.
In our readings today we have two pictures of that love
in action.
Moses in his life was the great deliverer who brought
the children of Israel out of oppression in Egypt and we can see
God’s plan being worked out from the very day Moses was born. What
was special about Moses was that the Egyptians had passed a law that
all Hebrew boys, of which he was one, were to be killed at birth
because their race was increasing and the Egyptians feared that this
immigrant community would one day turn against them. Moses’ mother
hid him and when he got too big or too noisy to hide at home and she
made a floating waterproof protective capsule for him and hid him at
the river’s edge where he was found by Pharaoh’s daughter.
Pharaoh’s daughter obviously felt for the child and by virtue of
the fact that she organised the care of the child had also adopted
him. As Moses adopted mother she would see him become a powerful
man, a prince of Egypt. His natural mother was actually paid by
Pharaoh’s daughter to do the very thing that she would naturally
want to do. God’s plan for the salvation of his people was made
secure by one of their enemy’s leaders, a princess of Egypt. The
most unlikely people are able to demonstrate the love of God which
transcends all barriers which our earthly authorities can build.
God’s love is something very special indeed and in our
Gospel reading we see how Jesus in his last act as he hangs on the
cross demonstrates that love which we should hold for others. Jesus
says to his friend and disciple that his mother Mary will now be his
mother and he her son. No forms to fill in for the adoption people
just an undertaking that these two people will now love each other as
mother and son. Like Moses, Jesus goes on to secure our salvation.
Isn’t it amazing that in his last act before securing our adoption
as children of God Jesus demonstrates how we should love one another?
If we take a look at children and how they are treated
by society in general we can see that as they grow they will make
mistakes and we see how they may be disciplined and offered guidance
to ensure that they avoid the pitfalls of life. If they err too much
quite often those who do not have a close relationship with them like
neighbours or other adults in the community give up on them and call
them delinquents or hooligans but their parents don’t. Parents
particularly mothers stick with their children warts and all and live
in hope that they will turn out to be fine upstanding citizens.
God’s love for us is like that. God wants us to come to him as a
child comes to a parent but in a way He cannot ignore the times when
we did go wrong. As long as we are truly sorry and have changed so
that we no longer do what is wrong we can with the help of Jesus
approach him. It was for this reason that out of his love for us God
sent Jesus to offer us guidance.
I remember one time losing one of our children, just for
about half an hour as it turned out. I remember that sense of dread
and panic as we tried to find him. How we kept blaming ourselves for
not taking more care and how we kept blaming our son for not doing
what he had been told which would have kept him safe. I think that
God feels all of that about us and longs for us to be safe.
We may have doubts and are a bit like a child who has
stayed out far too late and dreads going home because they are
worried about the consequences, the ticking off, the punishment but
totally unaware that whilst mother will shout and rage at them for
being so inconsiderate inside she is thanking God for their safe
return. As children we have doubts not realising that in fact Mother
does look out for us and has our best interests at heart even if it
doesn’t always sound like it. With “GO TO YOUR ROOM RIGHT NOW.”
Ringing in your ears.
God’s plan for each of us whilst unique and personal
to everyone is that we enjoy His love for us. With life’s
experience even with making mistakes along the way we can in the end
feel secure in the knowledge that when we get home we will not be
shut out, that we will be loved and cherished and gathered up under
His loving wings like a hen gathers her chicks.
Jesus was sent to show us all from the very beginning
right up to the end of time how we should behave towards our loving
parent, God. Jesus teaches that we can safely go home to God the
Father who loves like a mother because he is both Father and Mother
to us all.
Being a Christian is all about following Jesus home to
our loving Father and Mother in heaven. We need to live as he did so
that we will not become lost. That’s the problem some do get so
lost that they never find Jesus in their lives and can never go home.
God loves them all the same but unless they get home they will be
shut out. He has sent Jesus to look for them, to guide them to
safety but they avoid him for one reason or another.
As Christians we need to ensure that we not only for
ourselves, but for those whom we love and know, that we will find our
way to God and help and encourage the others along the way. How we
do this is to live as much as we can in the ways of Jesus. That
maternal love which exemplifies the relationship between child and
mother is strong in the relationship which we have between Jesus and
God the father and mother of us all.
Today is Mother’s day when we reflect on that undying
love that mothers have for their children and we seek to find our way
to God bearing in mind this example of his love for us. But it is
also Lent when we try to find what it is that God wants of us.
As Jesus meditated in the wilderness so we must meditate
and try to see how we fit into God’s plan for his Heavenly Kingdom
something in which we see ourselves forgiven and accepted.
What we need to do whilst we live in the world is to
find ways of loving those we encounter as a mother loves a child. We
need to find that love which is not selfish and only rewards those
who are nice to us. We are to seek ways in which we can be deeply
compassionate and see the person, the one who Jesus is looking for.
We need to look beyond the warts and all of the human condition and
do what we can to help Jesus guide them home to a loving Father who
loves them like a mother. If we can do this in our hearts we can
then turn it into action. But we begin with our hearts.
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