Mothering Sunday

Date:22nd March 2009

Preacher: Revd David Carpenter

Mother Earth: a gift that comes with responsibility

In the name of God: our wisdom and our truth.

My mother died just before Christmas last year. Had she lived until the end of December she would have been eighty-four. For some years she had lived with us, and with increasing need, Susan looked after her: In her final months, having to do the most personal of things. As I look back down the years, flashbacks occur of times remembered with fondness and great joy, but I do not have rose tinted glasses, and sadly cannot say that we had a very close relationship. I have no doubt that my mother loved me, as I loved her, but the reality was that I had a closer relationship with my father. Yet not withstanding this, she was a good mother, although it seems to me, that she herself had an inhibiting and sometime oppressive relationship with her own mother: a relationship that often held her back, preventing her being herself. In many ways she remained her own mother’s little girl, and never had the chance to grow up and be herself: living with, and caring for her own mother until she herself was well into her seventies.

I tell you this, simply in the hope that, as you reflect upon this information; it will serve as a trigger. If my intention come to fruition, you will at some stage begin thinking and reflecting about the relationship that existed, and maybes still exists between yourself and your own mother. However, not all these memories will be good ones. There’s a tendency when you look at flowers, with inflated prices, in the shops at this time of year, to assume its all sweetness and light. If those are your memories very well and good, but we should bear in mind there are those for whom today can painful.

Another important reflection we might make on this Mothering Sunday is that of the Motherhood of Mary. We know very little of how she cared for her infant son in those early days, and how she nurtured him to adulthood. There are certainly suggestions in the gospels and we see her alongside her son in his final days, and still later, she figures in the infant church. For most Christians in the West and East she is a central figure in their faith story. Years have layered story upon story, and no doubt much of our own maternal expectations for good has been added to our mental image of the Mother of God. Most, of the many Christians in the world, turn readily to her, asking her to pray for them and to grant them some favour. She is a loving and personable intercessor, and I think it probably true to say, for most people, she is viewed as a kind of gold standard for motherhood. But the same conclusions can be drawn that I have already highlighted. For some the reflection is not a helpful one.

Yet a third reflection for us this morning might be the Church itself. Not especially the building, although we refer fondly to our parish churches and often they are viewed as places of nurture and centres of community. Rather today, I think, we should be reflecting on the wider community to which we belong, and into which we are born when we took the name Christian. This is a community that crosses boundaries, exceeds continents and time itself. Grafted into, what we understand to be the very family of God we are taught to view this community as our true home in which we are nurtured in faith and love of God. In which we receive the sacraments, and look towards a life lived in the presence of a loving God who we understand to be our father. Yet once again this path may be a thorny one. There are those whose experience of the church has not always been wholesome: Those who have very negative, painful and destructive images of paternity.

So, three strands of motherhood are presented for us today, and we reflect upon them as best we may.

For some, maternal reflection will be a joyous and a profitable thing, for others, scars and deep pain may conjure other emotions.

Mary herself may seem just a tad too idealised for you. We carry much protestant baggage in this quarter which is not always correct or constructive, but remains a force nonetheless.

Then finally, there will be others whose experience of the Church has not been a happy one? Those who have found judgement and rejection rather than forgiveness and acceptance?

All of these matters are very real issues, and can surface quite readily, and can easily bring a sense of pain and distance.

May, I then, offer you a fourth reflection?

I have in my living room a Franklin Mint plate entitled “The Waters of Life”. It shows a native American woman holding an orb, a world of its own, filled with water flowing from snow capped mountains. She herself very real, but at once part of the land and sky of our own world is understood to be the spirit of creation itself, and she is pouring from this orb, abundant, refreshing, rejuvenating water into the lakes and rivers and streams of our own world – a mirror of that place from which all life flows.

It is, in picture form, a hymn of creation, and calls us to a point of reverence for this planet and the life we share and hold in trust. It speaks, certainly to me, of the urgency of our need to understand that we have a duty and responsibility for Mother Earth that has been gifted to us, by the creator. No other creature stands in such unique a relationship with this planet as we do. No other creature, stands as healer and destroyer in the way that we can and do.

You will not be unaware of the problems of global warming. Much damage has been caused in ignorance, but now that ignorance has been lifted we find ourselves locked into a way of life that is difficult to change. All sorts of issues arise about affluence and poverty, the sustaining of a first world life style and the example that sets developing third world countries.

On a more basic level: tell me where is the logic of a people that dump their rubbish in hedge rows and lay-bys? What are people thinking, when they discard their industrial effluent, scaring the environment, damaging wild life, polluting rivers and oceans? Where is the logic in people who wilfully damage trees and shrubs and destroy the flowers, planted to beautify our towns? More importantly, what has gone wrong that such a selfish and regardless mentality has so many people in its sway?

It has not always been so, and need not be so now. Religion as we inherit it has a legacy domination over creation, often manifesting itself as creation abuse. Other perspectives exist however: perspectives that value and treasure the creation and see it as gift and trust.

Could I offer you Mothering Sunday as an opportunity to reflect on Mother Earth. To reflect upon our home; gifted to us by the creator. A home rich, beyond our wildest imaginings, in diversity and creative beauty, and to remember that seeing all he made, God beheld that it was good.

Every act that protects this creation, every action that enhances this creation, is a sharing in the creativity and gifting of God. And it falls to us all, to each and every one of us to treasure this gift. To protect this gift, for ourselves, for our children and their children, but above all, to understand, that because it is entrusted to us by God, it is a gift that comes with responsibility.

Could I conclude with the words of an old Native American saying?

“Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors; we borrow it from our Children.”