SERMON 21 - SUNDAY 10 MARCH 2013

Sermon at St. Mary’s Parish Church, West Dean   -  Mothering Sunday – Morning Worship  – Sunday 10 March 2013

Exodus 2:1-10; Colossians 3:12-17; Luke 2:33-35

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

When I was asked to take this Mothering Day service and I first looked at today’s readings, I was in quite a quandary as to how to start off my sermon or talk.  The Lectionary gives the preacher a choice of texts to follow and on Monday I was just one of a group of several trainees meeting in Sarum College who had been tasked with delivering a sermon today - and we all expressed apprehension and exchanged some quite different ideas.

Since Monday, I have seen literally hundreds of advertisements from commercial organisations as to how best to celebrate “Mothers’ Day” as it is more commonly known in the secular world – from cards, flowers  and meals to some quite bizarre and exotic gifts – cruises, weekends in Paris and so on.  This  got me into thinking about what the origins of this festival were and how did it develop into the secular celebration we often see today.

Mothering Sunday is clearly set out as a festival within the Church’s Lectionary and indeed, when putting together this service, there were plenty of both on-line and good old fashioned off-line resources to help me – not least from the Church of England itself.  Unlike Fathers’ Day, which started in 1910 in the United States to show equality of honouring fathers with mothers, Mothering Sunday goes much further back and its origin, whilst steeped in ecclesiology, was not quite what we see today and I thought that I would share my research with you.

Mothering Sunday always falls on the fourth Sunday in Lent and as such has no connection with the American celebration of Mothers’ Day.  Traditionally, it was the day when children, mainly daughters who had gone to work in domestic service, were given the day off to visit their mother and family.  As we know, now it is the day when children give cards, flowers and presents to their mother. 

Churchgoers, generally, worshipped in the church nearest to where they were living – although this is not always the case today – known as their “daughter church” – and in the sixteenth century it was felt important that people returned to their home or “mother church” at least once a year.

So each year, in the middle of Lent, everyone would visit their “mother church” – the main church or cathedral of the area.

Inevitably, the return to the “mother” church became an occasion for family re-unions when children who were working away returned home (it was quite common in those days for children as young as ten to leave home and find work away).

Most historians think that it was the return to the “Mother Church” which led to the tradition of children, particularly those working as domestic servants, or as apprentices, being given the day off to visit their mother and family.

How lovely it would be if our modern day employers allowed their staff a long weekend off to visit their mothers and go to their mother’s local parish church once a year)!  Unfortunately, I cannot see that happening.  In today’s modern age many children are separated from their parents by many hundreds of miles – often across continents.

As they walked along the country lanes, children would pick wild flowers or violets to take to church or give to their mother as a small gift – hence the tradition of giving flowers to the mums.  The term given to these visits was to go “a-mothering”.

Another explanation is that Mothering Sunday derived from the original Epistle scriptural text for the Fourth Sunday in Lent as set out in the Book of Common Prayer before the modern Lectionary came into being – Galatians 4:26 – which reads

“.. Jerusalem that is above is free and she is our mother”. 

Paul, writing to the church of Galatia, was wanting to explain to the Christian community there what their relationship as Christians was to the Jewish law which the Galatians were being told, by others, they were breaking by following Paul’s teachings.

In the full passage (Galatians 4:21-31), the two children born by Hagar and Sarah to Abraham are seen as symbolising two promises from God:

One is the Torah which is restraining and earthly.  The other is the Gospel, which is spiritual and liberating.  The Galatians are told to regard themselves as the children of the Gospel.

“Mothering Sunday” has also been called Refreshment Sunday amongst other names.  It stands right in the middle of Lent and traditionally it has been seen as the one day when the rules of fasting can be relaxed. You can eat chocolate and drink wine today!  I rather like that idea. In some Church of England churches, even today, it was also seen as the one and only day during the period of Lent when a couple could get married.

Finally, it was also a day when the congregation engaged in a tradition known as “clipping the church” – when everyone would encircle the church holding hands – a bit difficult with the size of our modern congregations and embrace the building.  I don’t expect anyone to do that today!

Enough of Church history! Neither our modern Lectionary nor Book of Common Prayer has the Galatians reading assigned for today – but they do have the readings which we heard – and how much more they are relevant too.  Both the Old Testament reading from Exodus – part of the Torah - and Luke (one of the Gospels) are well known stories which often appear in the junior bible stories – the first where a mother abandons her child out of the deepest love and emotion she can have – to protect him for a certain death.  What a wrench, though,  it must be for any mother to be separated from her child. 

In the passage immediately before the one we had read to us, Pharaoh has given commands to ethnically cleanse his country by culling the number of Israelites in his country - killing every male child immediately after he is born by throwing him in the Nile.  In a bid to save her new-born child, she hides him in the rushes by the side of the Nile where he is shortly picked up by the daughter of the very same Pharaoh who has decreed he should die.  In a twist of providence, the child’s mother is later employed to act as his nurse.

So many parallels with the Gospel story – the slaughter of the innocence and the hiding of the child to avoid capture – ironically in the case of Jesus by taking him to the very country where the kinsmen of Moses were being enslaved and persecuted. It must have been a wonderful re-union for the mother of Moses but, in its way, must have been quite painful to know that the child being cared for by the Egyptian princess is the very child you went through labour and birthing pains for.  He was, after all, her flesh and blood.

In our Gospel story, Mary and Joseph have taken the baby Jesus to the Temple to present him to the Lord and give praise and thanksgiving for his birth.  There they meet Simeon and Anna, two devout old worshippers.  We read that Simeon had the Holy Spirit on him and that he immediately recognized whom the baby was.  After taking Jesus in his arms he gave praise in the words of the Nunc Dimittis (which we say at Evening Prayer) and Mary and Joseph marvelled at these words.

But, in the next breath, Simeon says something to Mary which must have sent a cold shiver down her spine – “This child is destined to cause a falling and rising of many in Israel and to be a sign that will be spoken against so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.  A sword will pierce your own soul too”.

Prophetic words indeed – Mary, 33 years later was to witness the cruellest of deaths of the child which she had just borne and whose tiny hands clenching in her arms, would one day be nailed to a crude instrument of execution.  One wonders what she must have thought.

All parents have only the best thoughts and intentions for their children.  Both the mother of Moses and the mother of Jesus could not have known, in those early days, how life would pan out for their first born sons. But of one thing that is certain, both mothers lavished so much love on them and formed them into the people they became and Mary’s love for her son clearly lasted beyond his crucifixion and resurrection.

Mothers bear many strains and anguish.  The joy of having children bears with it physical pain and suffering too.  Recently we have been reading in our Lent Groups about the relationship that C. S. Lewis had with Joy Gresham and her words to Jack during their wonderful day out to the Golden Valley ring so true: – "The pain then, is part of the happiness now. That's the deal."   In other words, whenever there is much happiness there is likely to be pain at some time in the future – and the happier the experience or relationship now, the greater the pain is likely to be in the future.

Our mothers are, or have been, cooks, nurses, storytellers, waitresses, bottle washers, shoppers, designers, taxi drivers, preachers, teachers, and much much more. 

Human mothers have a bond with their children which is probably the strongest in nature. 

The reading which I did not choose today is the piece of scripture when Jesus from the Cross says to his mother Mary who is standing next to the disciple John,

“Dear woman, here is your son”, and to John, “Here is your mother. From that time on, this disciple took her into his home”.

Even in the middle of his own agony on the Cross, Jesus realised also the pain which both mother and disciple were going through – a mother needed a son and the disciple a mother. 

We all need our mothers, whether our natural mother or our mother church.  For those who have lost their mothers today can be the painful part of the happiness you have had as described by Joy Lewis.   As we later give and receive flowers as a token of the love which exists between mother and child, let’s not forget that such love comes from God himself and is a sample of the love that he has in amazing abundance for all of us.  Like the Levi woman, the mother of Moses, and Mary, mother of Jesus, they sacrificed up their sons for the greater glory of God.

Amen

 

SERMON 20 - SUNDAY 3 MARCH 2013

Sermon at All Saint’s Parish Church, Whiteparish  -  Evensong  – Sunday 3 March 2013

Genesis 28:10-19a;  John 1:35-51

May I speak in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

Since a very early age I’ve had a fascination for ecclesiastic architecture and, to be more precise, the wonderful heritage of our English cathedrals.  Being brought up in North Lincolnshire, I was very familiar with the edifice which is Lincoln Cathedral – after all it often used to mark the beginning of our journey to our summer holiday destination. Once beyond Lincoln, we were on less familiar territory as we journeyed south to the warmer climes of the English Channel coastal resorts or the west country.  Lincoln Cathedral stands on a hill dominating the city and the surrounding countryside and never fails to impress.  The three tall towers with their twelve pinnacles soaring heavenward.  Indeed, for me it was a glimpse of heaven.

As we passed through towns and cities on our journey – there few motorways and by-passes in those days - I would always ask the same three questions – Is this a city? Does it have a cathedral?  Can we stop and see it?  My parents would generally oblige and I built up an amazing collection of Pitkin Pride guides as holiday souvenirs.

One of our holiday destinations used to be Torquay – well Brixham to be more precise – and on that trip I remember visiting Exeter Cathedral, Wells Cathedral (with the swans that ring a bell) and Bath Abbey (I was never sure whether that was a cathedral or not).  I still have the guide books.  On the front of the one for Bath Abbey is a photograph of the west front depicting, in stone, Jacobs’ Ladder with the twelve apostles ascending and descending up and down its rungs.  I still remember to this day how impressive this appeared to me. 

The stonemasons of the Abbey had imagined the ladder as having rungs; probably modelling it on the ladders they themselves must have used to carve it - but the ladder or staircase in Jacob’s dream, an account of which we had read to us in the first lesson, has been depicted in many ways by painters and often illustrated as a winding stairway or steep path up the side of a hillside or mountain. One such famous depiction is by our own English painter and writer, William Blake who may be nearer the truth than those Bath masons.   In the time of Jacob, it was common in Mesopotamia, or modern day Iraq, to build ziggurats – small sloping towers inside which were staircases leading up to a small temple where it was felt more appropriate to worship God - nearer to heaven.  A bit like the way in which the first two Salisbury cathedrals and Lincoln Cathedral were built on top of hills.  The fabled Tower of Babel would have been such a ziggurat on a more massive scale.  In all probability, then, Jacob’s dream incorporated a ziggurat with the vision of God up at the top where he would be expected to be found.

The importance and relevance of Jacob’s dream in scripture has been the source of much debate by theologians over the centuries but I think the answer is very much contained in Jesus’s words as spoken to his new disciples in our second lesson: but before going on to that, there is another important element of Jacob’s dream which is of importance to us as Christians.

God says to Jacob, in verse 18, and I paraphrase:-

“Your descendents will spread over the earth in all directions and will become as numerous as the specks of dust. Your family will be a blessing to all people”

This is an almost complete repetition of the words of God’s call to Abram found in Genesis 12:-

I will bless you and make your descendents into a great nation. I will give you and your family all the land you can see. It will be theirs for ever. I will give you more descendents than there are specks of dust on the earth....”

And again to Jacob’s father Isaac in Genesis 26:-

“I will give all these lands and will confirm what I swore to your father Abraham – I will make your descendents as numerous as the stars in the sky and will give them all these lands....”

As an astronomer, I particularly like this quote.

The importance here is that God keeps repeating this promise to the descendents of Abraham and this is picked up by Matthew in the opening of his gospel when he sets out in the first chapter the genealogy of Jesus – that Jesus was a direct descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The significance of Jesus’s words to his disciples becomes plain.  He has direct access to God.

Like Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the fishermen of Galilee and those Jesus meets in Bethsaida, particularly Nathanael, are being called by God to service.  Nathanael finds it hard to accept that the Son of Man, the Messiah, can be somebody from Nazareth – “What good ever came out of Nazareth?” he asks. He questions the calling and questions the caller; as have many other biblical characters who have heard a call from God.  In giving the answer, Jesus is making it clear to Nathanael that the reason Nathanael should recognise him as the Son of Man is not because Jesus knew that Nathanael spent some of his time sitting under a fig tree studying scripture, but because he was the one spoken of in the scriptures themselves and when he says that Nathanael shall see heaven open and the angels of God ascending and descending Nathanael would have remembered the promises made to Jacob and realised that it is Jesus who is the ladder between heaven and earth.

At the time Jacob had his dream he is on the run from his brother Esau who has vowed to kill him for having swindled him out of his inheritance and fraudulently received a blessing from their father, Isaac.    There is a belief that the spot on which the dream took place, Bethel as Jacob named it, is the same spot on Mount Moriah where the Temple at Jerusalem was built – the gateway to heaven – the point where heaven and earth met and where God dwelt on earth – in the Holy of Holies.  In setting up the stone, as Jacob does, and later building not one but two magnificent temples on the spot, the Jews were trying to capture the very essence of heaven on earth as being a geographical location – a point whereby, through the intercessions of the High Priests, and the sacrifice of burnt offerings, communications with God,  were possible – yet we know, that at the moment of Christ’s death on the Cross, the veil of the Temple – that physical boundary between the chamber where the High Priest officiated and the chamber where God was believed to live, was torn in two from top to bottom.  We will hear about this again during the Good Friday liturgy.

Jesus is telling his disciples, by the choice of the words he uses, angels ascending and descending, that he is the ladder, the stairway or the means by which Heaven and Earth can be joined.  He is the fulfilment of that dream of Jacob’s.  There is no need for a physical structure to reach Heaven, the need to put God in a box, behind a veil to be reached only through the Holy of Holies, God’s love and grace is available to everybody through Jesus himself.

Those stone ladders on the face of Bath Abbey are high and vertical.  The apostles appear as steeplejacks climbing up and down the sheer face – leaving you feeling quite giddy as you look up.  The ladder looks so difficult to climb.

But Jesus is saying to his disciples, and to us today - through scripture – that it doesn’t have to be difficult – the bridge or ladder between heaven and earth is easily available to all through believing and accepting Jesus as our Lord and Saviour.  John reports in his gospel that Jesus said this very clearly indeed - “No one comes to the Father except through me”.

Ladders and stairways are designed not only to be climbed but also for a safe descent too.  The image of our Christian journey is often a one-way street.  We often think that we are on a journey upwards, we hope for an eternal life somewhere in another dimension.  That is a good thought to have but, I believe, it is also the role of a Christian to think in terms of going the other way too - bringing heaven down to earth also.  Indeed in the Lord’s prayer we pray that

“Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven”

If we are in a true communion with God through the ladder or bridge of Jesus - using prayer in whatever form - then we should also be trying to bring down to Earth a piece of his Kingdom of Heaven – or in other word, if we believe that Heaven is a place where there is no suffering, no envy, no jealousy, no heartbreak and so on we should do all we can to bring as much of that as we can here now.

I remember when I was a law student at university many years ago, a popular song of the time was “A Glimpse of Heaven” by The Strawbs whose first verse went something like this:

The hillside was a patchwork quilt

Neatly stitched with tidy hedge and crumbling grey stone walls.....

If you’d only seen what I’ve seen

You would surely know what I mean

I think I must have caught a glimpse of Heaven

We don’t necessarily have to wait for a dream like Jacob’s - we can always see glimpses of Heaven if we really look. We can also provide others with glimpses of Heaven if we really try.

Lent is a time of reflection.  As we prepare ourselves to celebrate the ultimate sacrifice made for us all on the Cross and the glorious resurrection, let us all pray and meditate on how we can use our communion with Jesus, our ladder to Heaven, to provide a glimpse of that Heaven to those for whom our faith is difficult to understand or irrelevant – and in so doing, just as with Jacob and the apostles, let us also use it to strengthen our own faith.

Amen