Genesis 2.4b-8, John 19.25b-27
You might be wondering why, on this Mothering Sunday, I chose the passage from the book of Genesis we heard today for our first reading. It might not seem to have any obvious connection, but bear with me, because it seems to me it does contain a birth, of sorts.
God reaches down into the soil of the earth he’s just made, scoops up some handfuls of it, and makes a mudpie in the shape of a human being, this new thing he’s just thought of. Then God breathes his own breath into it – the same Hebrew word used to describe the Holy Spirit – and the creature becomes a living being.
I’ve given birth twice, and, I have to say, it was rather different from this serene description, but it had some things in common with it. Firstly, both experiences involved the arrival in the world of a new creature, a whole new person, with their own life to live, their own thoughts to think; and, secondly, both were very definitely physical experiences. Creation, whether it’s the creation of Adam from the earth, or the birth of a baby, is a physical business; mud, blood, water, sweat, tears, mess... And in the case of birth that’s just the beginning. Parenting goes on being a physical activity, to do with bodies; feeding them, washing them, changing them, holding them, carrying them. You can’t do parenting in a “hands off”, cerebral way, from afar. It has to be hands-on, sometimes quite exhaustingly so.
And studies have shown that touch – the physicality of childcare - isn’t just important for practical reasons. It also creates a bond between parents and their children which helps them to develop emotionally and socially too. We can’t live disembodied lives. Matter matters.
That word “matter” is an interesting one, and worth a little digression. Linguistic experts say that it comes, in a slightly convoluted way, from the same ancient root as the word “mother”. In Latin it’s more obvious. Mother is “mater”, matter is “materia”. It’s the single syllable “ma” that seems to be the link, a syllable which is part of the word for mother in an astonishingly wide range of languages; mum, maman, mutter, amma, majke, matka, makuahine. That last one is Hawaiian; this isn’t just a European thing.
“Ma” is the easiest syllable to pronounce, and very often the first one babies babble when they are learning to make sounds. Through most of human history, mothers, breastfeeding their babies, would have been the first to hear and respond to those “mama” sounds. And because “ma” seemed to get a response from their mothers, it became the name their babies called them. And because mothers bring us into being physically, “ma” also came to mean the source or origin of physical life. We can’t become “matter” except through our “mater”.
Let’s follow that linguistic thread a bit further, though. We use the word “matter” not just as a noun, to describe physical stuff, the matter of the universe. We also use it as a verb, a doing word. I matter, you matter, it matters, we say of people and things that are significant to us. That’s not a coincidence. When we say that someone matters to us, we are saying that they are part of our life, our world, that we can’t ignore them or pretend they don’t exist. They aren’t just a face in the crowd, a name on a list, an idea in our heads, but a real physical being that occupies space in our heads and hearts.
Mothers – maters - bring matter into being, and that matter matters, to them, and to the children they bear. Mothers and their children may have good or bad relationships. They may become estranged or lose one another through death. They may never know one another at all, but they can’t pretend they didn’t exist, even if only as a distant memory, or a question without answers, a gap that they wonder about.
But of course, it isn’t just biological mothers and children who matter to one another, who occupy significant spaces in our lives, and that’s why it’s so important that this isn’t “Mother’s Day” as far as the Church is concerned; it’s Mothering Sunday. Biology isn’t the be all and end all of mothering – it’s not even close - and it never has been. TheHawaiian word for mother illustrates that, makuahine, can refer to any adult female who cares for you – aunts, grandmas, cousins, friends. They are all “ma”. That reflects the reality of mothering throughout human history. Death, disease and economic pressures have often meant that children didn’t have their biological mothers around or available. But other people could step in to help and be every bit as good as those lost mothers. Fathers can mother and often do. So can big brothers and sisters, friends, guardians, godparents, neighbours, church members, teachers, leaders of groups and clubs who encourage and care and support. It takes a village to raise a child, as they say. Blessed is the child who has many mothers.
That’s why the few verses we heard in our Gospel story are so good to hear today. Jesus hangs on the cross, close to death. According to John’s Gospel only a few of his followers have found the courage to stay with him – an unnamed disciple described as the “disciple Jesus loved”, often assumed to be John, and a small group of women, including his own mother, Mary. Jesus looks at Mary and he looks at John, and he sees a mother who will soon lose her child, and a man who will need love and support as he mourns the loss of his friend. And in a wonderfully tender and brave moment, this dying man entrusts them to each other – “Here is your son…Here is your mother… You need each other.” They may not be biologically related, but that doesn’t mean they can’t matter to one another just as if they were. Mary will matter to John. John will matter to Mary.
The early church treasured and preserved this story partly because many of them didn’t have families of their own to relate to. Sometimes following Christ had estranged them from their families. Some were enslaved, torn apart from their families. Some were vulnerable widows or orphans, or had fallen through the cracks of society. But they found in Christ a new place of belonging, with new sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers in their church families, people to whom they mattered and who mattered to them. Biological relationships, precious and important as they can be, don’t say everything there is to say about love. Love is bigger than biology.
When God creates that first mudpie creature, and breathes his own life into it, he declares that all matter matters to him, that all creatures are beloved . He reminds us that whatever the size and shape of our biological family, however happy – or not – it is, we are also part of a wider family, which is girded around with the love of God which is broader and higher and deeper than anything we can ask or imagine.
This Mothering Sunday, then, let us give thanks for all who mother us or have ever mothered us, and all those whom we mother, and pray for the grace of God to see that in his eyes, everyone matters.
Amen
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