Sunday Thoughts: Mother's Day - and God's family

My Mother’s Day flowers from 2017

One of the tops rules of leading a Mothering Sunday service, or indeed having anything to do with it: be sensitive.  Rightly so, whilst celebrating what God has given us we are constantly aware that this is a day that is hard for many people - where grief feels extra sharp and the gulf between what should be and what is feels even wider than usual.  There are those who so desperately want to be mothers, and those who have lost children of any age - including the ones that never made it to birth.  There are those who are 'motherless' in some way - either having lost a much-loved mother or whose relationship with their mother is broken and irreparable.  Finally, there are those who are not called to have children - either through choice or necessity or maybe some combination of the two, who are so often made to feel like second-class women for not joining the 'motherhood club'.

The corporate PR world is waking up to this too - many large brands are inviting people to opt out of mother's day marketing communications.  Should we do this too?  After all - Mother's Day is merely a human invention, not a divinely appointed observance.  In the UK, it's the crashing together of Mothering Sunday - where traditionally servants had the day off and returned to their 'mother' church, and Mother's Day that originated in the United States, whose creator immediately regretted it as it quickly became another avenue for capitalist consumerism.

The day itself may be a human invention, but the truths we tend to end up celebrating in church are not.  Firstly, God made mothers.  When God made men and women equal but different, the only completely undisputable difference in roles was that played when commanded them to go forth and multiply.  God gave women this unparalleled privilege of carrying precious children into the world, giving birth to them and feeding them - and so continuing in God's mission of creation.  Even if we don't have children, we all have had a mother: we all were born.

And God's design of motherhood is part of his making men and women in his image.  The image we see is, of course, broken and distorted - I don't even have to look beyond my own weakness as a mother to know that - but it teaches us about God all the same. God is compared to a mother several times in the Bible, (e.g. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem, Isaiah 66:13). And above all, many, if not all mothers who have given birth have been been torn, pieced and broken in order to give life, and this is what God did too.  It's not glamorous, but painful and ugly, and yet this is what God was willing to become for us, both when he came to earth as a tiny baby, and then when he shed is blood and was broken outside and in for us on the cross.

So we celebrate what God has made in his image and we worship the God that that image points us towards, but the story does not stop here - because although God created men and women - mothers and fathers - in his image, that extension of his love in families is broken and restored, and the restored family, the restored love, is bigger and richer than the original.  It acknowledges the pain of brokenness, but then makes us whole again in the love of Jesus.

When someone mentioned his earthly mother and brothers, Jesus said: ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked...‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’ (Mark 3:33-35).  And for any step-parents out there - remember Joseph - who accepted Jesus as his son and was referred to as his father - there was no step father status. And for any mothers who have lost a child - remember Mary, to whom Simeon prophesied: a sword will pierce your own soul too (Luke 2:35), and to whom Jesus said of his disciple John: here is your son and then turned to to John and said: here is your mother. (John 19:26-27).

Entry to the kingdom of heaven is not through physical birth, but through birth through the Holy Spirit. As John writes: to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God— children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:12-13).  God's family cuts across bloodlines - and yet is bound together in the blood of Jesus.  And so we can start to see all women in our churches as mothers (regardless of whether their ministry involves children!), and all of their stories reflecting the image of God - from the miracle of giving birth for some, to the pain of loss for others; in those who care for step children, foster children, adopted children or any others - reflecting beautiful biblical truths of adoption into God's family, and in those women who would otherwise be alone being part of a big family.  In our church playgroup the women who lead it are called 'aunties' - perhaps today they should be called 'mummy'.

In every church in which I've spent Mothering Sunday, every woman has received a daffodil - whether they have children with them or not, and this is the way it should be.  My sincere hope today is if any of those countless women for whom Mother's Day is painful attend church and receive a flower, that this is the message they will here through the body of Christ that surrounds them, and therefore from Jesus himself: I feel your pain - my heart was pierced too.  Let me make you whole again, for you are part of this family.