God as mother

Mothering Sunday

St Mary’s, Barnes, 8 am

Luke 2.33-35

‘Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also’. Words of Simeon to Mary when she and Joseph brought the child Jesus to the temple, which we have just heard read. As a modern translation puts it ‘This child is destined to be a sign that will be rejected; and you too will be pierced to the heart’. Later as Mary stood by the cross watching her son dying in agony that saying came all too true.

And today mothers all over the world, Ukrainian and Russian, Iranian, Lebanese and  Sudanese, Palestinian and Israeli are being pierced to the heart as their children are killed on the battlefield or by bombs.

Even apart from that however, those who have children know that anxiety and pain for them is inseparable from parenthood. To have children is to bring into being those who have lives of their own and to love them is to be affected by what happens to them.

People today are much more cautious about having children than they were 80 years ago. Sometimes they wonder if they should bring children into a world like ours, with so many risks and dangers. Yet on the whole most people in a position to do so continue to have children, albeit many fewer than the past. They take the risk and because they love their children many is the time when they are pierced to the heart.

What we see in the relationship of mothers and children is a reflection of what happens in the relationship of God and humanity. As Julian of Norwich put it ‘As truly as God is our father, so truly God is our mother;’ and so truly is God pierced to the heart

In creating us God takes a huge risk and as we look at the world we cannot help feeling that things have gone terribly wrong. Was God justified in bringing into being a world in which such things would happen? The Christian faith is that God knew what he was doing. Eternal wisdom combined with perfect love and supreme power could achieve what he set out to do, bring into being creatures who would grow into his likeness through grappling with the vicissitudes of human existence. And growing in that likeness would have a life that death could not destroy. So Julian

'the mother may allow the child to fall sometimes and be hurt in various ways for its own benefit, but because of her love she can never allow any kind of danger to befall the child. And even though our earthly mother may let her child perish, our heavenly mother Jesus may not allow us who are his children to perish.'

Taken into relationship with God our mother we have a life that cannot perish.