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Hello and welcome and Happy Mothering Sunday. It’s a little bit different from normal Mothering Sunday’s - But….
We are reminded “God is good ALL THE TIME” - and if he is good “all the time” - that includes even now when things are very uncertain
I’d like to share with you a story from the bible - a tale of four mothers.
But first -
Imagine you are three years old. Take yourself back to when you were that little. What does it feel like to be three years old? (long pause).
And if something went wrong - if you have just hurt yourself? Or if you are scared? Who do you run to? You run to your mummy and she gives you a big hug.
This is a very scary time at the moment. We are meant to be the adults - yet there is a bit inside each of us that is still three years old and in these crisis times we want to run to our mummy and she’ll give us a hug and make it all better….
Even if a few of you sadly had poor relationships with your mothers, I think all of us can relate to that longing to run up to someone whose hug will make it all better. So what does that look like in these Corona Virus times?
Lets here from Exodus 2 a tale of four mothers…..
2 1-3 A man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman. The woman became pregnant and had a son. She saw there was something special about him and hid him. She hid him for three months. When she couldn’t hide him any longer she got a little basket-boat made of papyrus, waterproofed it with tar and pitch, and placed the child in it. Then she set it afloat in the reeds at the edge of the Nile.
4-6 The baby’s older sister found herself a vantage point a little way off and watched to see what would happen to him. Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the Nile to bathe; her maidens strolled on the bank. She saw the basket-boat floating in the reeds and sent her maid to get it. She opened it and saw the child—a baby crying! Her heart went out to him. She said, “This must be one of the Hebrew babies.”
7 Then his sister was before her: “Do you want me to go and get a nursing mother from the Hebrews so she can nurse the baby for you?”
8 Pharaoh’s daughter said, “Yes. Go.” The girl went and called the child’s mother.
9 Pharaoh’s daughter told her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me. I’ll pay you.” The woman took the child and nursed him.
10 After the child was weaned, she presented him to Pharaoh’s daughter who adopted him as her son. She named him Moses (Pulled-Out), saying, “I pulled him out of the water.” (Message translation)
So four mothers -
(1) Moses’s birth mother
When we think of Mothering Sunday - perhaps we think of little children running down the church aisle to give posies of daffodils to all the mothers in church. Or make cute hand made cards for their mummies before “taking them out to lunch” at a Weatherspoons where the grown up actually is the one who ends up paying. But for many mothers and children around the world, motherhood is not like that. In Idlib or Yemen children don’t get to make cute hand made cards for their mummies - and that does not mean they love their mothers any less.
Moses’s mum - we don’t even know her name - gives birth to her boy - a great and wonderful thing. It ought to be a time when she can celebrate with her friends and have them all come round and coo. Except - not now. A genocidal dictator has decreed that all male babies from her ethnic group are to be killed at birth. She has to hide the fact that she is pregnant - self isolating for nine months? And then for another three months - she hides the babies existence.
Until finally she has to show the ultimate mother’s love - she has to give up her little baby to keep him safe. In the Second World War, Jewish mothers packed their children onto the kinder transport knowing they would never see them again - to keep them safe. In every other conflict, many mothers have had to do the same thing.
Yesterday in the paper I saw some very moving photos of elderly (grand)mothers in a care home holding up sheets of paper with messages for their families. One said “looking forward to seeing you through the window on Sunday. All the messages expressed a deep sense of longing for the family members it was not safe to see - yet all the women were smiling.
So what can we learn from Moses’s mother? The sacrifices we have to make are far less than what she did when she placed baby Moses in the little reed basket in the Nile. The sacrifices we have to make are far less than the Jewish mothers had to make with the kinder transport. When the prime minister says “STAY AT HOME” that’s what we need to do. That’s the way we keep our children safe and keep our mothers safe. That’s the way we keep our elderly neighbours safe. It hurts not to be able to gather to see family - but not as much as it must hurt for that family in New York who had a large gathering a couple of weeks ago only for most of the extended family to become ill and three to die. It’s hurts not to be able to gather as Church - but not as much as it would hurt to know our actions would endanger other people’s lives.
The sacrifices we have to make are very small but they are the difference between a million UK citizens dying and only a few thousand dying.
2) Moses’s sister
We do know her name (from later) - Miriam. We don’t know how old she was, but she was young enough that it was obviously not her baby. If their mother had been hiding, watching - well it would have been a little bit too “convenient” for a woman of child baring age to have happened to be in the vicinity of an abandoned baby when Pharaoh's daughter showed up. So let’s suppose Moses’s sister was probably about ten. Can you imagine what it would be like for a ten year old to have to step up to save their sibling’s life? The birth mum cannot help so she the sister has to step up and act like the mother to save her baby brother’s life.
Around this country there are thousands of children acting as carers - either to disabled or sick parents or sometimes to siblings. According to the Guardian there are 700,000 of them, some as young as five. Children, out of necessity having to step up and act like mothers. (1)
Some people are suggesting that in this time when we are stuck at home we are all going to have endless free time to sunbathe in our gardens and learn Japanese from the computer. I don’t get that. I think that like Moses’s sister we are going to have to step up and do things we don’t feel equipped to do.
I think of my friend - I won’t embarrass her by mentioning her name. She works for Tescos. She hasn’t received any orders to do this, but she has been doing the shopping for nurses on shift work. They come in when the shelves are empty and give her their shopping lists. And as soon as the delivery comes in - before the shelves can be stripped by the hoarders - she puts aside their shopping for them for when they come back from their next shift.
We are all going to have to step up and we don’t even know what that is going to look like yet.
3) Pharaoh's daughter
The third mother in the story is Pharaoh's daughter. Perhaps she was 17 or 18 years old. Young enough not to have her own baby - but old enough to look at a baby and now she had to protect him. “She opened it and saw the child—a baby crying! Her heart went out to him.”
She is no biological relative of Moses’s . Some of you I know were raised by your aunts or grandmas or sisters while your parents had to work - sometimes in a different country. And it’s amazing the love they showed you. But they were still your relative. Pharaoh's daughter is not related to Moses. Yet she steps in to adopt him. I know many people - some in our own congregation - who have served as foster parents and adoptive parents. It is an amazing thing to do.
But Pharaoh's daughter goes further. She shows that in the biblical sense mothering someone has nothing to do with biology. The bible talks about how the “sins of the fathers shall be vented on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me”. When our closes nearest and dearest do something wrong it is very hard for us to distance ourselves from them. Think of what it must have been like growing up after the second world war knowing that your father was a member of the SS. “the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me” - it’s so easy for “blood to be thicker than water” and for us to collude with the wrongdoing of a family member or a partner.
But Pharaoh's daughter breaks that cycle of evil. She says “This must be one of the Hebrew’s babies” She knows that her dad has ordered the murder of every one of them- yet she saves and adopts this child. Like an ancient Schindler she saves a life who would have died.
In the bible the truest family relationships are not formed by genetics but by love. On the cross Jesus starts a new family saying to his mother “behold your son” as he places her in John’s care - and to John “Behold your mother”. Theologians see that as the start of the Church, a new family formed not by blood ties but the blood of Jesus, not by genetics but by love.
As Theresa of Avila said “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”
At this Corona Virus time we are called to show motherly love to those in need, be they younger than us or older than us, whoever they be.
But there is a fourth mother in the story.
4) God
Whatever the quick thinking of Moses’s birth mother, or the watchful eye of Miriam or the moved heart of Pharaoh's daughter, it took God’s providence for Moses to be safe. If you pick up the King James version and read Exodus 2 you read “And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein”
And that is accurate - the word Ark here in the Hebrew - for the mini-boat baby Moses is used in - is only ever else used in the bible to describe Noah’s ark. It is the boat God uses to save someone from death.
In the bible repeatedly God is referred to as a mother
In Hosea 11:3–4 "it was I who taught Ephraim to walk; I took them up by their arms … and I bent down to them and fed them."
In Isaiah 49:15 "Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you." In Isaiah 66:13 "As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you."
I could mention the Psalms Deuteronomy and Matthew.
I began this sermon by asking you to imagine yourself back to when you were three and you were desperate for someone to give you a hug and make it all better. And perhaps there is a child inside you (like in all of us) who still needs that. Well in these days when physical hugs are rationed, the good news is that there is still one who can hug you and make it all better. The bible says of God that he is the Mother who will take you in his arms and comfort you. However tough it feels at the moment, he will make it all better.
Happy Mothering Sunday!
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jan/26/crisis-young-carers-uk-child-schools-end-secrecy-stigma
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