Mothering Sunday is a dangerous day for preachers. I say that quite deliberately. There are some Sundays when the sermon writes itself. Christmas is straightforward: baby, manger, angels, job done. Easter: empty tomb, joy, hallelujah. But Mothering Sunday sits there in the calendar like a theological obstacle course, daring the preacher to put one foot wrong.
And the reason is simple. Every preacher knows that the moment you start speaking about motherhood, you are stepping into territory that is deeply personal for almost everyone in the room. Some will be mothers and grandmothers. Some will be celebrating joyful family relationships. Others will be remembering mothers they have lost. Some will carry the quiet ache of never having had children, or the deep ache of having lost a child. Some will have complicated stories that Hallmark cards have never yet managed to capture.
Which means that if you are a preacher – and particularly if you are a man – there is always the slight sense that you are walking into a room full of experts.
I once heard of a clergyman who began his Mothering Sunday sermon by saying, “I approach this subject with some trepidation.” A voice from the third pew said, “Quite right too.”
Now, the slightly awkward truth is that Mothering Sunday was not originally about mothers at all. Historically, this day in the midst of Lent was the day when people were encouraged to return to their mother church – the church where they had been baptised, or the cathedral of the diocese. In the Middle Ages, apprentices and domestic servants who had been sent away to work were sometimes given the day off to travel home. They would go back to their parish church, and often see their families on the way. And because Lent was a fairly austere season, this became a rare day of reunion and celebration.
Over time, of course, the family visit gradually became the main event. Flowers appeared. Simnel cakes appeared. Mothers were thanked. And eventually, especially in the last century, the whole thing merged rather confusingly with the American “Mother’s Day”, which is a completely separate invention driven largely by the greeting-card industry and the restaurant trade.
Which means that what we celebrate today is really a curious mixture of several things at once: the church as a mother, the family as a place of nurture, and the gratitude we feel towards those who cared for us as we grew up.
And that complexity is actually rather appropriate, because the Bible itself refuses to treat motherhood in sentimental ways.
Take the (mercifully short!) Gospel reading we have just heard (Luke 2.33-35). Mary and Joseph bring the baby Jesus to the temple. Simeon looks at the child, speaks those extraordinary words about salvation and light and glory… and then he turns to Mary and says, quite calmly, “A sword will pierce your own soul too.”
That is not the sort of thing that appears on a Mothering Sunday card.
But it is honest.
Because love — real love — always carries risk. Anyone who has ever loved a child knows that mixture of fierce joy and quiet fear that comes with it. The joy of watching someone grow, learn, flourish. And the constant awareness that the world can be a difficult and painful place.
Simeon is telling Mary, right at the beginning of Jesus’s life, that love will cost her something. One day she will stand at the foot of a cross.
Which is why the Church has always honoured Mary not simply because she gave birth to Jesus, but because she lived a life of courageous, faithful love.
And that brings us to the other reading this morning. In his second letter to the Corinthians (2 Corinthians 1.3-7) Paul describes God as “the Father of mercies and the God of all consolation, who consoles us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to console those who are in any affliction.”
In other words, the love we receive becomes the love we give. We are comforted, and then we learn how to comfort others. We are cared for, and then we learn how to care.
That pattern lies at the heart of Christian life. And it lies, too, at the heart of family life.
The hymn we sang earlier describes Mary giving her body “for God’s shrine” and her heart “to piercing pain”. That is not a sentimental description of motherhood. It is a description of love that gives itself.
And the remarkable thing is that this kind of love appears everywhere.
Of course we see it in good mothers. But we also see it in fathers, grandparents, teachers, carers, neighbours, and friends. We see it in people who cook meals for those who are unwell, who sit beside hospital beds, who patiently guide children through homework, who quietly hold families together when life becomes complicated.
The world survives because ordinary people practise that kind of love every day.
And the Church — when it is being faithful to its calling — tries to become a community where that kind of love is nurtured and strengthened.
Which means that Mothering Sunday is not really about idealised families, or idealised mothers.
It is about recognising the networks of care that hold human life together. It is about gratitude for those who nurtured us. It is about compassion for those whose stories are painful or unfinished. And it is about remembering that the love we experience in human relationships is always, ultimately, a reflection of something deeper.
Because behind all these small acts of care stands the God whom Paul calls the “God of all consolation”. This is the God who gathers people together with the tenderness of a parent; the God who, as our Eucharistic prayer puts it so beautifully, embraces his people “as a mother tenderly gathers her children.”
And the Church itself — the “mother church” from which this day originally takes its name — is meant to be a place where that love becomes visible.
Not perfect.
Not always tidy.
“Faithful, not finished”, as the motto of St Faithful’s Havnot says it.
But real.
A community where people learn, slowly and imperfectly, how to console one another, forgive one another, and care for one another.
Which means that Mothering Sunday is not simply about celebrating motherhood: it is about celebrating the courage of love itself.
And it is about giving thanks for all those people whose quiet acts of care have shaped our lives more than we will ever fully know.
Amen.
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