Mothering Sunday: March 19

1 Samuel 1.20-end, Luke 2. 33-35

Today is Mothering Sunday, and it’s one of the trickiest days of the year for preachers. To judge by the adverts and the cards, we might think family life is just hearts and flowers, and happy people gathered together around the dinner table, full of smiles and sweet harmony. But if we’re honest, we all know that this day comes shot through with all sorts of other emotions too.  In any fair-sized group of people there will be those who long to be parents, but can’t be, those whose children have died, those whose mothers have died, those who families were neglectful or abusive, or those who’ve never really had a family at all, those who don’t want children, but feel judged for that. 

Perhaps an alternative definition of a family might be “a place where things go wrong”, because I’ve never met one where they didn’t. Grief, loss, guilt, shame, betrayal; families are often places where we encounter our deepest sorrows as well as our deepest joys.

That’s why I’m glad that the Bible readings set for today don’t airbrush those realities. To be honest, it’s hard to find a stereotypically happy family in Scripture anyway. Cain kills his brother Abel, Abraham twice gives his wife away to other men, and then tries to sacrifice his son, Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery… and that’s just in the first book of the Bible! It’s like East Enders on steroids. It very rarely portrays family life as uncomplicated or easy.  

The readings we’ve heard today underline that. In the first we meet Hannah, who, we’re told, “conceived and bore a son.” If you didn’t know the background, you might think “so what? Women are having children all the time.” But in Hannah’s case this was nothing short of a miracle. Her husband had two wives, quite a common and unremarkable thing in the Bible. The other wife, Peninnah, had children, but Hannah hadn’t been able to have any, and Peninnah and her offspring took great pleasure in reminding her of it. Hannah was desperate for a child, and when her story starts, in the passage before the one we heard, she’s praying at the shrine of God in Bethel, which was at that time the place where the Ark of the Covenant was kept, the symbol of the presence of God at the heart of the nation. Her prayers are so intense that the old priest, Eli, thinks she’s drunk and tells her to stop making a spectacle of herself. She explains what the problem really is. Eli is moved by her plight and assures her that God has heard her prayers and that she will have the son she longs for. 

That’s where today’s reading picks up the tale, and where it takes a surprising turn, because instead of keeping the child who she eventually gives birth to, as soon as he’s weaned, probably around three or four years of age, she brings him to Eli to grow up in his care. She’d promised to do this when he told her she’d get pregnant, and she keeps her promise. It seems a strange thing to do, though. It might look rather heartless to us, to give away the child she has waited so long to bear. Why does she do it?

It’s possible that she thinks Samuel will have a better life with Eli than in her feuding family, and that might be right, but I don’t think that’s what the Bible wants us to focus on. It’s that Hannah knows, even if only vaguely, that her child, given so miraculously by God, matters not only to her, but to the whole nation. And she’s right. Samuel will grow up to be one of the most important prophets in the Old Testament. He will guide Israel through times of turmoil and change. He will anoint the nation’s first two kings, and listen to God on their behalf, supporting and sometimes challenging them. Hannah brings Samuel to Eli at Bethel because this is where he needs to be to fulfil that calling, centred on God, learning to listen for that guiding voice.

The child we meet in the Gospel reading will go on to have an even more profound impact on the world around him, but at a huge cost to his mother. At six weeks old, Jesus is brought to the Temple to be presented there, as every new baby was. There he is spotted not by the temple authorities, but by Simeon and Anna, two elderly fellow worshippers, who acclaim him as the Messiah. “This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel…” says Simeon. “and a sword will pierce your own soul too.” This child has a job to do, in other words, but there will be pain ahead as well as joy. She will watch him die on the cross. He won’t be there to support her in her old age. But we see her active in the early church, there on the day of Pentecost, bearing witness to what he means to the whole world, not just to her, the one who, in her words, who “puts down the mighty from their seats and exalts the humble and meek”. 

Parenthood often takes guts, but perhaps the greatest challenge is to see beyond the horizon of the family, as Mary, Joseph, and Hannah do. Their hopes are wider than simply having someone they can love and someone who will love them. They see their children as gifts given to the world, not just to themselves. 

We all need people like that in our lives, whether they are our mothers or not. We need people who believe our lives have meaning, who stick with us when we struggle, who support, but don’t stifle, who let us be ourselves. And today is a day for honouring all those people, whether they are parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, godparents, teachers, friends, neighbours, the people who have shown us that we matter, not for what we can do for them, but for who we are. I wonder who those people are for you? They probably weren’t perfect. They may not have been in your life for long. They may not have done anything very dramatic. Sometimes it only takes a word, or a small act of kindness to make a difference.

As I said at the beginning, Mothering Sunday can be fraught with emotional heffalump traps, but perhaps it becomes a little easier when we realise that it was never really meant just to be a celebration of our biological families. It is meant to remind us to look for the love around us, to recognise and celebrate mothering wherever we find it, and to call us in our turn to extend that mothering love to others, reflecting the mothering love of God, who sees in every one of her children the potential to light up the world and longs to set us free to do that.

Amen 

March 12 2023: Living Water

 

John 4.5-42 

 

We live on a watery planet. Over 70 percent of it is covered in water. Water makes up between half and three quarters of our bodies. We can’t live without it for more than a few days. But our dependence on it makes us vulnerable.

Today’s Gospel reading underlines that.

 

Ancient communities formed where they did because they needed access to a reliable water source, and the story we hear today is set around one of those essential local watering places, a well just outside the Samaritan city of Sychar. This isn’t just any well, though. This well has a story attached to it. According to local legend, it was the well where the patriarch Jacob, met and fell in love with Rachel, his bride to be. You can read about it in Genesis 29. As it happens, Jacob’s father and mother had also met at a well, but that’s probably not as much of a coincidence as it might seem.

 

Middle Eastern Biblical women were meant to stay at home, hidden from view, as far as possible, as they still are in some places. Collecting water – an essential task - was one of the only times when they’d be out and about, and therefore one of the only times they might come across men outside their families. But going to the well could be dangerous because of that. So, it was safer to go in company if you could – and it was a rare opportunity to socialise.   

 

But the woman we meet in the Gospel story seems to have no friends. She comes to the well on her own, and in the middle of the day too, the hottest time, hardly the moment for hauling heavy water jars around. There’s obviously a back-story here, though we don’t know what it is yet.

 

When she gets to the well, she finds a lone man already there, and a Jewish man at that – Jews and Samaritans regarded each other with mutual suspicion.

What’s going through her mind? She has no idea who this stranger is, or what his intentions might be. Maybe she remembers those stories of romance blossoming at the village well, but I think it’s more likely she’s wondering whether this man might do her harm, might even have been lurking there on purpose.

 

Women throughout history have been trained to be on their guard in situations like this. We’re taught to be careful, and fearful, about walking on our own or in the dark, about chance encounters with unknown men. The conditioning works. It’s hard to shake the suspicion that something bad might happen, even though women are actually much more likely to be assaulted in the supposed safety of their homes.  

 

Jesus’ request for water is entirely innocent, but this woman doesn’t know that, and her response sounds defensive and prickly. “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” But gradually she realises that Jesus not only means her no harm, but is turning her life around. How? Simply by treating her with respect, listening to her, taking her seriously. Many men at the time wouldn’t have talked to her at all, but Jesus does, and more than that, he talks theology with her, at length. This is the longest conversation recorded in the Gospels. He even declares to her that he is the Messiah, the first time he does so in this Gospel. He answers her questions, shares his thoughts, even chewing over the big issue between Jews and Samaritans about where God should be worshipped - in the Temple in Jerusalem or on Mount Gerizim. He treats her as an equal. How many times has that happened in her life before? Probably never, especially as it seems that this woman has been dealt a particularly rough hand in life.

 

As I said earlier, there’s clearly a back-story to why she is alone at this well in the heat of the day, instead of in the company of female friends. We get a glimpse of that story when Jesus tells her that he knows she’s had five husbands and the man she is with now isn’t married to her.

 

Let’s be clear what that means.  It means that five men have divorced her – women in her culture weren’t allowed to initiate divorce, only men could do that. It’s possible she’d been widowed repeatedly, but she’d probably have been described as a widow if that was the case. Even then, she’d have been regarded with suspicion – what had she done to deserve such bad luck – they’d have assumed she’d done something? But divorce is more likely, and despite it being solely the man’s decision, the shame and blame of it fell on the woman, not the man – five times over in this woman’s case. She’s probably alone at the well because she’s been shunned.

 

But whatever her community think of her, Jesus doesn’t seem to think she’s done anything wrong. How do we know this? Because he never forgives her, and if he felt she was to blame for what has happened to her, he surely would have done.

 

It's not forgiveness she needs. It’s the affirmation of being listened to, properly, thoroughly, maybe for the first time in her life. “Come and see a man who told me all I ever did!” she says in amazement to her neighbours. “Come and see a man who has seen and heard my story, rather than the story others tell about me, who knows me better than I even know myself.”  This is what transforms her. This is the “living water” for which she truly thirsts, and when she finds it in Jesus, she runs off to tell her neighbours, leaving the water jar she’s lugged all the way to the well behind her.  

 

What Jesus does transforms her, but it also transforms her community. When they see what he’s done for her, and come and meet him for themselves, they call him the “Saviour of the world”. It’s the only time in John’s Gospel that Jesus is called “Saviour”, and of course it is long before he dies on the cross. It’s not just Jesus’ death on the cross and his resurrection which saves us, says John – they are just the end point, the inevitable result of a whole life spent saving people, bringing them joy, a joy that he evidently shares in this story. The salvation this woman and her neighbours see in this story is the recognition of her dignity and worth, and that changes them all.  

 

This is the good news, the living water, she and they have thirsted for, and we need it just as much as they did, because we’re just as ready to silence, scapegoat and blame others for things that are not their fault. This week we’ve have seen serious proposals from the government not only to turn away refugees who arrive here in small boats – that’s bad enough -  but also to refuse them any chance to tell their story or plead their cause, no matter what horrors they are fleeing, no matter what gifts and skills they have to offer, and to refuse them that chance not only now, but forever. Whatever the answer to the refugee crisis is, I don’t believe it can be achieved by refusing to hear the voices of vulnerable people.

 Jesus calls us to listen to one another - at the very least to listen - because each one of us is made in the image of God, someone for whom Christ lived and died and rose again, someone whose story is precious to him and needs to be heard, for all our sakes. This is where salvation begins, for the Samaritan woman and her community and for us, in the recognition of our shared humanity, a humanity jesus shared too. This is where the spring of living water bubbles up from to cleanse and revive us. This is what changes us and changes the world too.

Amen

  

 

March 5 2023: The Kingdom of God

 Genesis 12.1-4a, John 3.1-17

In case you hadn’t noticed, there’s going to be a coronation in a few months’ time. Arrangements are in full swing to prepare for it. I noticed a news story the other day about the restoration work that’s being done to the coronation chair in Westminster Abbey on which the King will sit when he is  crowned – not a throne, apparently, because that term is reserved for seats from which the work of governing is actually done like the Sovereign’s throne in the House of Lords. The Coronation Chair dates back to 1296, during the reign of Edward I in. It was built by a craftsman called Walter of Durham. It’s the first piece of furniture in the United Kingdom whose maker’s name we know, and the oldest piece of furniture in the UK still used for its original purpose – your pub quiz facts of the week for today!

The Coronation Chair might look like a sign of national continuity, but in a way it also bears witness to huge change in the kingdoms of those who were crowned on it. The first was Edward II. His kingdom included England, Wales, some bits of France and the Lordship, but not Kingship at that point, of the whole of Ireland. Since then, of course, the French territories have been long lost, Scotland has been added, Ireland has been divided, and a vast overseas Empire has been added and taken away. And who knows what will happen in the future? Will Scotland stay or go? What is this kingdom we say we belong to, and who do we belong with? 

Nationhood, kingdoms, belonging; these themes run all the way through the Bible, and they feature in both of our readings today. We all need a place to be, and a community to be part of. We often define ourselves by where we live – perhaps we’re British, English, Kentish, Sennockian, Sealite, if that’s a word.  We want to feel we belong to a place, and that it belongs to us. But that sense of belonging can be problematic.  What happens to those who have no place to call their own? How long do you have to live somewhere before people treat you as if you belong? Can the place where you are become a prison, somewhere you feel you can’t leave, literally limiting your horizons?  What if you want or need to go somewhere else?

That’s what happened to Abraham in our Old Testament reading. God called him to, “Go from your country and your kindred”. Migrating can be tough today, but it was even harder in Abraham’s time.  Your tribe, your family, your land was all the security you had.. Familiar territory was important; knowing where the good grazing and water was. Home mattered. It was hard to go it alone. Setting out to start afresh in a new country was a huge risk, and God’s promise that he would make a “great nation” of Abraham and his wife Sarah seemed a bit far-fetched. They didn’t have any children and were well past the age when they could have reasonably expected any. 

But Abraham and Sarah went, and they made a new home in that new land, and discovered that God was already there, at home, and because of that so the nation that would eventually be Israel came into being. 

By the time of Jesus, though, that homeland had been lost and found many times over, fought over and occupied by Philistines, Assyrians, Babylonians, Greeks, Romans… But Abraham’s descendants still thought of it as theirs, given to them by God, and they believed that one day it would be as God wanted it to be, free from oppression, a kingdom ruled in accordance with God’s will, the kingdom of God in other words. They didn’t agree on how it would come about, but they believed would happen in human time and space, in the here and now of those who experienced it. It would be Israel made perfect, not some ethereal heaven where their souls floated after death. 

It's important to hold that in our minds as we read today’s Gospel story. 

A Pharisee named Nicodemus comes to Jesus by night. He doesn’t want to be seen, because he is a “leader of the Jews”, probably a member of the Sanhedrin, the Jewish council of elders. What would people say if they saw him visiting this radical new preacher? He seems to be in the dark in other ways too. He’s supposed to know what he is doing, to have the answers, but he’s confused about Jesus. Jesus seems to have something about him of God, something Nicodemus can’t ignore, but he’s just a carpenter from Nazareth, and his vision of what God is doing – giving dignity to the downtrodden, a welcome to Gentiles and sinners – seems to challenge the position of the religious authorities of the time, people like him. We’d call it “cognitive dissonance” today. Nothing seems to add up anymore. It’s as if life, the universe and everything has shifted somehow. Jesus’ words make no sense to him, and yet he can’t ignore them. 

Jesus isn’t surprised at his confusion. “No one can see the kingdom of God,” he says, “without being born from above”.As I said earlier, “seeing the kingdom of God” doesn’t mean “getting a ticket to heaven”, being lifted out of this world after death. For Nicodemus, God’s Kingdom is mainly about life before death, about God’s will being done on earth as it is in heaven. Seeing the kingdom and entering it means noticing what God is doing here and now, where he is doing it, through whom he is doing it, and joining in. The confusing part of all of that for him is that he expects to see God at work in the Temple, and among teachers of the law, like himself, not in this ordinary man, untrained in theology, not part of the religious establishment, whose ideas feel dangerously radical.  

In a sense, like Abraham, Nicodemus is being called to leave his native land, the place where everything feels comfortable and familiar, and go to a new country, a new kingdom. He is being called to open himself up to something that comes from above and beyond himself and his little bubble of knowledge – to be born from above, in Jesus words – inspired by the Spirit that comes from he doesn’t know where, and blows wherever it chooses.  

Eventually, Nicodemus does get it, although he’s baffled at this point. We meet him twice more in John’s Gospel, once when his fellow leaders are debating their response to the perceived threat that Jesus poses - Nicodemus argues that Jesus should be given a fair hearing -   and then again, after the crucifixion, helping to bury Jesus’ body, providing spices and oils for anointing him, finally coming out as a supporter of Jesus. It probably feels like too little, too late, to him, but, as we know, this isn’t the end of the story, and presumably Nicodemus’ name is preserved in the Gospels because he was known to the early Christians, part of their fellowship. 

His story is a message to all of us who struggle to get our heads around what God might be doing, who want to understand, but can’t yet, who feel like our vision of God is continually slipping in and out of focus, just beyond our grasp. It’s an encouragement to us to remember that what we see is not all there is to see, that God can be at work in in places, people and situations we have never imagined, ones that don’t look all that holy to us, ordinary places, messy places, places of failure and tension and conflict. Knowing that, we can have the courage of Abraham, Sarah and, eventually, Nicodemus, and discover the Kingdom of God afresh, celebrate it and join in with its work, wherever we find it. 

Amen