Sermon for Mother's Day from The Rev'd Canon Meredith Hunt
We at St. John’s-Grace are so honored to have the Rev’d Canon Meredith Hunt deliver a special Mother’s Day Sermon online from Michigan for us on Sunday, May 10th. Many of the folks at St. John’s-Grace have expressed to me this week how they continue to be spiritually nurtured through the week by Mother Meredith’s powerful message. Thank you Merry!
Here is Rev’d Meredith’s Sermon:
Easter 5 Year A - Mothering Sunday - St. John's Grace, Buffalo - May 10, 2020
In 2007 an ecumenical group of Christian clergy from the Detroit Michigan area traveled to South Africa for a two week program of study, volunteer work, retreat, (and some tourism) – including both serious and fun activities. My husband, David, and I were part of this group. Our time was first spent in the Cape Town area, then later in Johannesburg, and finally, about half of the group were able to add a safari to their trip. Some of the fun experiences were going to a Jackass penguin colony near Cape Town (and, yes, they really do bray like donkeys), going to a brandy distillery (hmm, yes, there were free samples), and seeing an actual line in the ocean at Cape Hope, where the Atlantic waters meet the waters of the Indian Ocean.
Some of the serious activities included volunteering in the Townships of both cities, shanty towns of immense and almost indescribable poverty, and visiting a church in Soweto and seeing the damaged altar and a huge stature of Jesus embracing the world. But his hands had been shot off by the police during peaceful student protests prior to the end of apartheid. We also visited Nelson Mandala’s family home, and we were privileged to preach in a Baptist Church in Kliptown, Soweto, where we laid hands on, and hugged more than 120 people during the three hours long service. Unknown to us at the time, we learned that most of the people had AIDS, and no one ever touched them. They were modern day untouchables.
It was in South Africa that I first became an African mother – to a young man from Zimbabwe, a seminarian at the time. David and I met Methius Moyo at an Anglican retreat center near Johannesburg, where he was staying during medical treatment for terrible childhood burns on his face.
Today, Methius is an ordained Pastor in Zimbabwe, in the United Congregational Church of Southern Africa, serving the poorest of the poor. He is married, and with his wife, Sipatisiwe, they are the parents of three children and the adoptive parents of the children of Methius' brother and sister, who both died from AIDS. They are poor.
When Methius' parents died, he adopted me, African style, as his mother, and David as his father, not unlike of the Apostle John, who adopted Mary in today’s Gospel reading. And like good parents, David and I, and many friends and family members, have provided all manner of support for Methius and his family over the years, because of their deep needs.
I share all this because, today, we are celebrating Mother's Day, and we are using the beautiful Church of England service for Mothering Sunday. So, my sermon is a reflection on what our Christian faith might teach us about mothers and mothering, using two themes: the theme of mothers, and the theme of waters and then, in particular, three specific images of mothers for us to contemplate.
The Bible begins with both a mother and a water image – the story of the birth of the universe from the waters of the deep, sometimes called the womb of God. We live in a universe that was born, and water is a very big part of life on this earth.
It goes without saying that we all have biological mothers, whether or not they are still with us, whether or not they were good mothers or inadequate mothers. In addition, many of us have step-mothers or adoptive mothers and many of us have been mothers, or step-mothers, or adoptive mothers, or most of us have been supportive of mothers, in a myriad of ways.
So, the first image of mother I want us to consider is the creative, resourceful, and brave mother. This is a mothering image that we can celebrate today.
The story from Exodus in our first reading, takes us to the Nile River and gives us the resourceful and determined mother image that we are celebrating: the image of those mothers who are resolute and clever and creative, along with all women who support them, seeking for life to thrive.
In addition to the theme of mothers in this story, we also see the theme of waters: the waters of the Nile River: waters of life, waters which sustained the people. But wait – it is also about waters of death because the Nile River was where Hebrew baby boys were ordered to be thrown to die. Waters of life; waters of death. But there were women brave and resourceful enough to confront it.
Exodus begins with two “mother supportive women”: the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah. These women are actually named in the scriptures, which is a very rare occurrence. Even though Hebrew baby boys were meant to be drowned, it was through their cleverness and courage that they managed a ruse, so that the Hebrew baby boys could live.
The Exodus story continues with Moses’ birth, when his mother, with great shrewdness and cunning, actually put her son into the water of the Nile. However, he was put in a basket that would float, and she did it in a manner and in a place where his sister could watch and where another woman could successfully become his adoptive mother. When Moses was taken out of the water by Pharaoh's daughter, his life would become life for the Hebrew people. Through the efforts of all these resourceful women the waters of death became waters of life.
So, this is the first image of a mother, an image for us to celebrate: those mothers who are brave and determined and resourceful and creative, and those women who support them. In addition to many of our own mothers, who perhaps we consider heroic in one way or another, there have always been inspiring women throughout history, not just in the scriptures. We might recall some of them from more recent times.
Jennifer Worth is such a woman. “Call the Midwife” is a wildly popular TV series based on her memoirs. As a young woman, she worked in the 1950's as a midwife with the Anglican Sisters of St. John the Divine in Whitechapel, London. The nuns and laywomen who lived with them, provided extraordinary support for mothers who were giving birth and raising families in the poor neighborhoods of London's East End. We celebrate all of them on Mothering Sunday.
Jane Addams was born in 1860, She rejected personal motherhood in favor of a lifetime commitment to mothers, especially poor mothers. She worked for social reform by sponsoring legislation to abolish child labor, establish juvenile courts, limit the hours of working women, recognize labor unions, make school attendance compulsory and ensure safe working conditions in the factories. We celebrate her on Mothering Sunday.
Lucretia Mott was born in 1793. She was an active Quaker minister and the mother of six children, and she is known as for her dedication to fight for women’s rights. She also devoted her life to the anti-slavery movement, as one of the leading abolitionist voices of her time. She was such an inspiration that many of her six children became advocates for civil rights and women’s issues, too. Her motherhood is a model for all of us.
Maya Angelou, who died in 2014, is regarded as one of the most talented and poetic American writers of all time. She was a single mother at 16 years of age. She wrote these words, “Mothers have the ability to liberate by love … They’re our first teachers; they are our first loves.” Yes, Maya Angelou, we celebrate you, today, as a mother.
Finally, this first model of the resourceful, determined, and brave mother must also include the unnamed Latina women, whom we see standing at the border of this country, anxiously but bravely coming from violence and dire poverty to seek asylum for their families and opportunities for their children in this land of wealth and resources.
These women also bring us to our second image of a mother: the mother of sorrow, not for us to celebrate, but to stand with in solidarity. We cannot see these courageous and desperate Latina women without also seeing the mother of sorrow.
These are the mothers who weep waters of pain, begging the “Egypts” of today not to throw their children into the waters of the modern Rivers of Death: Latina women, Rohingya women, Syrian women, women in Zimbabwe, women in the townships, poor women everywhere.
They are the mothers who weep, like Methius' wife, Sipatisiwe, whose tears could never be counted, when last June their nine-year-old daughter, Unathi, was raped by a man, who believed AIDS would be cured by having sex with a virgin. These are mothers of sorrow, and we stand in solidarity with them, today.
We are living in an era of sorrow now, and the mothers of sorrow are all around us during this time of illness and death from the Covid19 virus. There is so much sorrow, so much pain, all around the world.
And yes, we see Mary, in the Gospel reading, the archetype of all grieving mothers. Mary, the mother of Jesus. Mary who gave birth from the life-giving waters of her womb, but who now stands at the foot of the cross, a mother of brokenness and sorrow. Her tears are the waters of sorrow, her heart surely breaking from watching her son die.
"Behold and see, if there be any sorrow like unto his sorrow." Those are words from Handel's Messiah referring to the suffering servant, and to Jesus.
Yet, who feels the pain of a son more than a mother? Mary, at the foot of the cross is the archetype of the grieving mother, the mother of sorrows, and she is a unique religious image in the world. We don’t celebrate her, we stand with her in the pain, as she also stands with us in our pain.
This brings us to the third and final mother image, but also to our last question: How can the rivers of death become rivers of life once again? The answer for Christians is found in the waters of baptism, the waters where we die to ourselves, only to be reborn into the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, a new life of love and living for others. Yes, Christ is risen, and Baptism brings us into the Resurrection.
In baptism are the waters of eternal life, not just for humanity, but for all creation. It is in the Resurrection, where we also meet Jesus' mother.
Mary, in God’s kingdom, shows us a third image of mother: she is the eternal mother, the Holy Mother, the mother beyond all death, who loves us all. No matter what our mothers were like, no matter their strengths or weaknesses, no matter their presence or absence, in the Resurrection, all is redeemed, and Mary is the presence of the Holy Mother for us all.
Throughout the centuries many Christians have revered Mary, and have seen her motherhood as holy, somehow embracing and communicating the feminine divine to us. She has inspired many icons and representations throughout the centuries, because humans yearn for, not just a masculine, but also a feminine dimension of God to touch us.
In today's second lesson from Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we read a list of Christian virtues, qualities that have long been associated with Mary as the Holy Mother: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, love.
Paul also invokes the word Wisdom in this passage. Wisdom, Sophia, is a feminine gender word in Greek. In the Early Church, Hagia Sophia was the word for Holy Spirit; Holy Wisdom or Holy Spirit is what the early Christians understood as the feminine dimension of God.
The mystery of the Incarnation begins with a young, poor peasant girl, who receives the Holy Spirit and gives birth to Jesus, and who then, as one of the faithful followers of Jesus, her own son, again receives the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Hagia Sophia – Holy Spirit – Divine Wisdom is somehow mixed up with the Holy Mother Mary. And it is a mystery. In some wonderful way, Mary, can touch the yearning in us for the unconditionally loving mother.
I would like to conclude these thoughts with words from Hildegarde of Bingen, who was a mystic born in 1098. She reflected deeply on the feminine Divine, on Holy Sophia. This is what she wrote about one of her beautiful visions: “I heard a voice speaking to me, saying: ‘The young woman whom you see is Love. She has her tent in eternity…’ The young woman is radiant in such a clear, lightning-like brilliance of countenance that you can’t fully look at her… She holds the sun and moon in her right hand and embraces them tenderly…It was love which was the source of this creation in the beginning when God said: ‘Let it be!’ …, the whole creation was formed through love.”
So, three images of the mother and mothering:
• first, we celebrate the brave and creative mothers who give life and who share their lives to save life;
• second, we stand with the sorrowing mothers who grieve for others;
• and finally, we rejoice in the unconditionally loving mother; the eternally loving mother. We give thanks for Holy Mary, the one, who in the Resurrection, can embrace us, and all our mothers, with the balm of her love.
So, let us remember on Mothering Sunday, not only the mothers who are creative and resourceful and brave, like Moses’ mother, but also all mothers who are broken with sorrow, like Mary at the cross. And then especially, let us remember that all our mothers, in some mysterious way, are also made in the image of the divine mother who loves us all.
The Reverend Canon Meredith Hunt Retired, Diocese of Western Michigan