Sermon-Love at the Cross

Memorial to John Letts in St Olave Hart Street (from 'A London Inheritance')

A sermon given during Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street on Sunday 15th March 2026 (Mothering Sunday) based on readings from Colossians 3.12–17 and John 19:25b–27. 

We have more than one connection to famous diarists here at St Olave Hart Street. Beneath the memorial to Samuel Pepys is another tablet, installed by the daughter-in-law of John Letts, the creator of the world’s first commercially printed diary.

Reverend John Letts was Rector of this parish for nearly twenty years. But the memorial does not only remember him. It also reveals a story of extraordinary family loss. By the time John Letts died, he and his wife had already buried five of their children, many of whom died in infancy.

The memorial, which survived the Blitz, tells us that it was erected by his “sorrowing widow in memory of her husband and their children”. Yet she herself is not named.

I hope that most of us will never imagine the grief she had to bear.

Records reveal that Charlotte Davis Letts survived her husband by thirty years. And also that one of their daughters had miraculously survived a fall from the top floor window of the Rectory to the basement. It is said that the shoes she was wearing at the time used to be displayed here in a case in the church.

A reminder that the life of a mother so often involves holding together joy and sorrow at the same time.

A reality which perhaps we must all learn to bear if we are to come close to understanding the radical event on which our faith hangs: the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And perhaps that coincidence of joy and sorrow is felt especially strongly on this day — Mothering Sunday. A day when the Church invites us to reflect on motherhood in all its fullness.

Both the joys and hopes of this marvellous, creative, life-giving and life-sustaining state of being — and its consolations. The sacrifices. The losses. The letting go.

On Mothering Sunday we hold all of this together. We remember celebrations with our children, grandchildren, mothers and grandmothers. We may lament the absence of mother figures in our lives, or regret the ways our relationships have fallen short of what we might have hoped. Some are rejoicing in motherhood; others are grieving its loss or longing for it still.

Today we bear the weight of all of that — and more.

Which is why the words from our first lesson are so striking. In them the Christian community in Colossae is urged to:

“clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness and patience… bear with one another… forgive each other… and above all clothe yourselves with love.”

The letter is describing the life of the Christian community. But it could also be describing mothering.

Compassion.
Patience.
Forgiveness.
Bearing with another person even when life becomes difficult.

Mothering, in its deepest sense, is about bearing.

To bear life into the world. 
To bear responsibility.
To bear hope for another person when they cannot yet carry it themselves.
And, to bear pain.

The theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that God bore the burden of humanity in the body of Jesus Christ as a mother carries her child.

Some have suggested that this idea of bearing sums up the whole life and work of Christ.

The image of God as mother might sound unusual to some ears. Yet Jesus himself uses maternal images when he speaks of longing to gather Jerusalem like a hen gathering her chicks under her wings. Christian writers such as Julian of Norwich and St Anselm also reflected deeply on the motherly love of God.

Christ bears us.

And because we are called to follow him — to be his image bearers in the world — we too are drawn into what we might call a ministry of bearing.

Our Gospel reading takes us to the moment where perhaps this ministry becomes most visible. The cross shows us what it means to bear the life – and death – of another.

Perhaps that is why places like this hold so many memories of parents who have had to bear that cost.

On the north wall hangs the parish war memorial, listing the names of twenty-seven men who died in the First and Second World War. Among them is William Samuel Perrier – a descendant of the Clarkson Shipping dynasty, the company still headquartered in St Katherine’s Dock. William died in 1916 at the age of twenty-five. Like many young men of that generation, he left behind parents who had to face the unimaginable grief of losing a child.

His body lost somewhere in the trenches, his life and death are recorded on a memorial stone placed on his grandmother’s grave in Reading Cemetery. On it is inscribed a letter he wrote to his mother and father before he went into battle — a letter that was only to be sent if he were killed.

“My dearest Mother and Father… When you let me join the army as an officer you did so with the full knowledge that the greatest sacrifice you could make was to give your son’s life for your country. Well the sacrifice has been made. For this letter will only be sent to you in the event of my death. I know full well the grief these tidings will cause you. Yet you will be happy because I am happy. I am doing my duty, and I know and feel the sacrifice has not been in vain… I am ever your loving son Billy.”

A remarkable letter. And behind those brave words lies the quiet courage of parents who had to bear the cost of letting their son go.

And in a very different way, that is the place where we find Mary in today’s Gospel reading — standing alongside other women and the disciple whom Jesus loved.

And from the cross Jesus speaks these remarkable words:

“Woman, here is your son.”
“Here is your mother.”

Jesus brings Mary and the beloved disciple into a new relationship. He entrusts them to one another.

Jesus draws people together and forms a new community — one in which people are called to bear one another’s lives, their joys and burdens.

Family expands beyond biology.

In the shadow of death, a new community of care is being formed.

The one we now belong to.

The Colossians are told that Christian life is like putting on new clothing; compassion, kindness, patience. These are the qualities that enable a community to bear life together.

To bear with one another when we disagree.
To forgive when forgiveness is difficult.
To accept the God-given freedom of another person, even when we find them intensely challenging.

Perhaps that is the most difficult part of all. Bearing each other’s freedom — allowing others to become the people God is calling them to be — may be one of the heaviest crosses we carry.

That is exactly what we see in the example of Mary: a mother who learned, painfully, to let go of her Son so that God’s purposes might be fulfilled.

Letting go is never easy.

But standing at the foot of the cross we see that this is the place where love is made complete. Because the cross is where Christ bears us.

He bears our suffering.
He bears our sin.
He bears our grief and our loneliness.

And in his presence we discover that we do not bear these things alone.

Which is why Mothering Sunday is about much more than celebrating biological motherhood. It is about giving thanks for every way in which God’s mothering love becomes visible in the world.

In parents and grandparents.
In carers, teachers and friends.
In neighbours and strangers who step forward in moments of need. And in the life of the church.

Today we recognise that rejoicing and lamentation often come together. But we also recognise that in Christ those experiences are gathered, held together and transformed.

So this Mothering Sunday let us give thanks for all who have borne us through life — and pray for the grace to share in that same ministry of bearing for one another.