I don’t know about you, but I felt engulfed by the emotional agony of John’s account of Jesus’ mother Mary steadfastly remaining at the foot of his cross; then almost immediately infused with the warmth of Jesus’ care for her as he says, ‘Woman here is your son’ and to his beloved disciple John, ‘Here is your mother’. We feel the sheer strength of that loving bond as Jesus ensures his mother is taken care of.
This weekend similar scenes will be played out in many of our care homes as children will be allowed in to reconnect with their parents and rejuvenate that eternal bond of love that both have felt starved of during the past months.
We have plenty of examples in our bibles telling us of the potent love of a mother figure being shared within a family. Consider Ruth and her relationship of loving care for her mother-in-law Naomi. After Ruth’s husband died Naomi urged Ruth to return to her own country and find herself another husband, and we remember the phrase Ruth used ‘wherever you go I will go and where you stay, I will stay also.’ We could consider Hannah and her sacrificial love for her long awaited son Samuel. As in answer to God fulfilling her prayers, she gave him back into God’s service to live in the temple with Eli and he went on to serve as prophet, priest, and judge. Or we could remember the Levite woman who for love of her son placed him in a rush basket in the hope that he might be saved from the Pharaoh’s edict. And so it was that Mosses lived to become the greatest Jewish leader and prophet.
We sense that incredibly strong bond that can exist between mother and child and appreciate Mary, chosen by God to be the mother of his son Jesus, to be for us an example of strength, integrity, and warmth against all the odds. God also speaks to us as a mother figure as both Matthew and Luke quote Jesus in his lament over Jerusalem. ‘How often have I desired to gather your children together ‘as a hen gathers her brood under her wings’. You will recognise the phrase from our Eucharistic Prayer at certain times of the year, as God calls us to come and feed from him in the sacrament. God presents for us both the mother and the father figure and we are his children.
The sight of the hen with her chicks was something that we frequently witnessed when we used to keep hens and loved to put a broody hen on a clutch of eggs and when hatched to put her with her chicks out in a run in the sun. We would sometimes see her and hear her calling and chiding her chicks, to come quickly into the safety of her outstretched wings, as she noticed the shadow of a perceived predator pass overhead, and that could apply to any of us mothers too; hence the phrase The Mother Church is sometimes used for the principle church in an area that might call us to gather together for special occasion. A wise person once said, ‘God couldn’t be everywhere, so he made mothers!’
Revd Sarah Hobbs
