Sermon - Our Ministry of Bearing

Alice Neel, The Family, 1927, Metropolitan Museum of Art

A sermon given during the Sung Eucharist at St Olave Hart Street, City of London and at Choral Evensong at St Giles-in-the-Fields on Mothering Sunday 30th March 2025 based on the text of 1 Samuel 1.20-end and Luke 2.33-35.

 

In a recent book exploring his experience of grief, the broadcaster and priest Richard Coles has said that “rejoicing and lamentation often come together - and Christianity gets this.”

 

It’s a reality we must learn to bear in order to come close to understanding the radical event on which our faith hangs - the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. 

 

The coincidence of rejoicing and lamentation is perhaps felt in an especially personal way by us all today - Mothering Sunday. 

 

A day when our liturgy urges us to reflect on our experience of motherhood - in all its fullness. 

 

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

 

Learning to bear the reality of the pains and pleasures of motherhood is challenging. Just thinking about my own experience, I remember those close to me whose lives have been touched by the birth and death of a child or shaken by the effects of a challenging pregnancy. Couples who are trying desperately to start a family, others struggling to provide for theirs, parents who have placed their children into care when they are no longer able to meet their special needs and those who have been faced with the decision whether to medically end a pregnancy. 

 

On Mothering Sunday we bear the weight of all of that – and more. Calling to mind times of celebration with our own mothers and grandmothers. We may lament the lack of any mother figures in our lives, or regret the times when our relationship with them fell short of what we might have hoped. We might reflect on our own experience of mothering others, whether we are biological parents or not. 

 

Our readings from scripture offer examples in which the rejoicing and lamentation of motherhood is laid bare. Two mothers who let go of their children in order that Gods purposes for them might be fulfilled. 

 

 

First we meet Hannah, one of the wives of Elkanah, who suffered terrible abuse and prejudice even from members of her own family, because she had been unable to conceive a child. Hannah became desperate, refusing to eat. She fell into a state of deep distress. 

 

She went to the temple and prayed to the Lord, promising that if He gave her a son, she would dedicate him to God’s service. God heard her prayer and she gave birth to Samuel.

 

When Hannah had weaned her baby, she took him to the temple and left him there to be raised by the priest, Eli, as she had promised. 

 

“She left him there for the Lord”.

 

By letting go of the son she loved and that she had waited so long for, Hannah fulfilled her vow to God and allowed Samuel to fulfil the purpose God intended for Him, becoming a prophet and playing an important role in the history of Israel. 

 

Our second short reading is from the gospel of Luke.

 

Forty days after the birth of Jesus in the most amazing circumstances, Mary and Joseph presented their baby to the Lord in accordance with Jewish law. In the temple they encounter the elderly prophet Simeon. When he sees the child, his eyes light up. He knows he has come face to face with the Messiah, the saviour of the world that he has been waiting for his whole long life. He praises God. Then he turns to Mary and Joseph, blesses them and says;

 

“This child is destined for the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed – and a sword will pierce your own soul too.”

 

Amidst the joy, Simeon foretells the suffering that would be endured not just by Christ in his Passion but that which his mother would also have to learn to bear. Like Hannah, Mary would have to let go of her son in the most painful way, in order to fulfil God’s purposes for her. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a theologian who died eighty years ago in April 1945, wrote that God bore the burden of men in the body of Jesus Christ, as a mother carries her child. Some have said that ‘bearing’ in this way sums up Christ’s entire life and work. The idea of God as mother might sound shocking to some. The image of God as a mother hen is found in the gospel of Matthew and it’s an idea that St Anselm, Julian of Norwich and others have explored in their writings, which inform the words of the Eucharistic prayer used here on Mothering Sunday. A Mother Goose might be more locally appropriate here at St Olave Hart Street, although harder to justify scripturally.

Our call to follow Christ means acting as his image bearers in the world - and so we too are called into this ministry of bearing – to share his light and life.

 

 

The most difficult lesson to learn as we practice our ministry of bearing is how to bear the burden of one another. Accepting the God given freedom that each of us has received. Allowing each of us the freedom to be the person He wants us to be, even (perhaps especially) when we find that person challenging and annoying. Bearing each other’s God given freedom is, arguably the biggest cross we have to bear!

Hannah and Mary - exemplary image bearers of God – can inspire us here. Their letting go of their sons representing a relinquishing of their desire for control over another human being. Relinquishing that desire, that control to God.

The ultimate expression of the cost of discipleship.

An act that that allowed the fulfilment of God’s purposes in their own lives, as well as their sons.

 

In bearing the burden of one another we must learn to let go of our desire for control over each other too.

 

Today specifically, our ministry of bearing means engaging with the coincidence of rejoicing and lamentation that meet when we gather to celebrate Mothering Sunday. Accepting and affirming the reality of the diverse burdens we are all carrying with us as we come here to worship – and bearing them together as a community of faith, as we offer our thanks and praise to God for motherhood in all its forms.

 

As we pray for all mothers.

For mothers here today,

For mothers far away,

For mothers with children and those with none,

For mothers and children who are alone,

For mothers feeling blessed,

For mothers feeling stressed,

For mothers giving birth,

For the fruits of mother earth,

For mothers to whom we have much to say,

For mothers who will die today, 

For mothers feeling homely,

For mothers who are lonely,

For mothers who are giving,

For mothers who are grieving,

For mothers who are tired,

For mothers who have inspired, 

For mothers taken for granted,

For all the faithful departed,

For my mother and for yours,

We give thanks to you, O Lord.

Amen. 

Links

A Prayer for Mothering Sunday I wrote in 2018
Prayers of intercession for Mothering Sunday I wrote in 2022

Image : The Family, Alice Neel, 1927, The Metropolitan Museum of Art