‘Jesus said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to John, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.’ John 19:26.
“Sooner or later, we will have to recognise that the Earth has rights, too, to live without pollution…. Human beings cannot live without Mother Earth, but the planet can live without humans.” Evo Morales, Bolivian politician and activist.
Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent, also known as Laetere Sunday, Rose Sunday, Refreshment Sunday and Mothering Sunday. Laetere is taken from the Latin of the introit for the day, Laetere Jerusalem, Rejoice Jerusalem (Isaiah 66:10) which likens the city to a nursing mother. Midway through Lent, which used to be marked much more strictly than now, this was a day of refreshing from the Lenten fast before the rigours of Passiontide and Holy Week sop rose pink vestments were sometimes worn to indicate this. As Sunday is the day of resurrection, it’s always a day of celebration rather than fasting and, with references to mothers and mothering in the set texts, this became a time when people would go to their mother church, the place where they had been baptised or had grown up. This also became associated with Mother Mary, earthly mothers and Mother Earth, although nowadays it’s much more linked with the American secular innovation of Mother’s Day. Finding a card reading Mothering Sunday is increasingly hard to do!
Some remarkable women feature in the set readings today. At a time of great conflict between the Egyptians and the Israelites, when Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew babies to be killed, the midwives involved feared God more than him and so they let them live. As the Israelites became numerous, Pharaoh then decreed that the babies must be thrown into the Nile although the girls could live. Exodus 2:1-10 tells the story of a Hebrew baby hidden for the first three months of his life and then put into reeds near the bank of the river in a papyrus basket plastered with bitumen and pitch so that he would not drown. On being found by Pharoah’s daughter, who took pity of him, his actual mother was brought to her and she arranged to pay for him to be nursed by her. When he was old enough, the Hebrew was then adopted and taken into her own home by Pharaoh’s daughter. It’s an astonishing story of a mother’s determination to see her child live, the willingness of an enemy to have pity on a crying child and the courage of both women and the midwives to defy Pharaoh.
The same is true of Melangell who, by refusing to do her father’s bidding over an arranged marriage or hand over the terrified hare when ordered to do so by Prince Brochwel, enabled the foundation of the church here and its tradition of sanctuary, healing and hospitality. Just as Moses’ name, possibly meaning child of the Nile or drawn from the water in Hebrew and son in Egyptian, was given to him by a childless woman, so the celibate St Melangell carried the title of Abbess or Mother of the community that her story says was founded here. Mothering comes in many forms.
One of those forms is giving care in terrible as well as hopeful circumstances, just as Jesus’ mother stood near the cross with her son at his agonising death. In finding the courage to do so, and being given into John’s hands by Jesus just as John is entrusted to her, so a new family and community is created at the foot of the cross. In the midst of terrible suffering, love and care triumph as life is reshaped, lost and eventually renewed – may it be so for the parents, children, communities and rescue workers in Myanmar, Bangkok and the devastated places that come to mind with all the complex mothering, care and restoration that will be needed in whatever lies ahead.
With my prayers; pob bendith,
Christine, Priest Guardian.