Some mothers get a raw deal. I feel inclined to start with reflecting back to the news bulletin images we have probably all seen of Mothers trying to protect their children from the shelling both in the Ukraine and in Gaza. I guess if Luke has it right in today’s gospel reading, Jesus’ upbringing in his home in Roman occupied territory had a good deal to do with how his family environment helped shape his mind and personality.
Since the Christian faith is meant to make a difference to our relationships and since today (12 May) is on the nation’s calendar as Mothers’ Day, (more recently known by Methodists as Home and Family day)…so a question… Does our faith and upbringing change the way we treat, not only our mothers, but other family members and those we encounter from day to day?
At best, church attendance can only take us part way towards living the Christian life. Sooner or later, we need to decide for ourselves what is important enough to give direction to our life’s journey, and it is good to pause every now and again to ask ourselves how we are living this life, even in our very different homes.
History teaches it is easy to lose one’s way when it comes to Christianity. Sometimes the arguments over the details of interpretation and what the earnest minded and even the fanatical, might call the basics of belief, draw attention away from something Jesus claimed to be at the heart of his message.
Jesus is very clear about the attitude required for this commitment and, according to the gospel accounts he himself was prepared to die for this principle. Remember our reading last week from the gospel of John, we discovered Jesus telling his disciples that they are to love, not just in general, they are to love as he has loved them. How does that work out in our families? The first problem is that families and communities are typically more diverse (and I suspect getting steadily more unsettled as the years pass by). Families are often fragmented and strained for example when marriages breakdown or perhaps when family members shift around the country perhaps seeking better prospects elsewhere.
Dr Liz Carmichael from Oxford University, herself one who committed her efforts to working with the afflicted, saw this radical Messianic friendship of Jesus as: “Making friends with people who are not my sort”. It occurs to me that may at the very least the very least include family members.
Our families should be an easier challenge than strangers. “You may choose your friends” goes the adage, “but you can’t choose your relatives”. If, as the history of Christianity’s saints suggest, if it is possible to commit oneself to those who might even have a different viewpoint or culture, then how much easier should it be to share commitment to those whose connection is that of a relationship by birth.
Which brings us to Mothers’ Day, celebrated in this country on the second Sunday in May, and for some now called “Church and Family Day”.
The first versions of Mothers’ Day emerged from an ancient past. The ancient Greek Holiday of Cybele and the equivalent Roman holiday of Hilaria, both in their own ways a recognition of motherhood, then underwent many changes. Today the Mothers’ Day current traditions affecting this country seem largely influenced by England and the US.
The Anglican Church organization in the English countryside in the past was normally that of a Cathedral based in a city or large town with satellite smaller Churches scattered through the countryside – each serving its local community who typically needed to be within walking distance of their church, particularly during the winter when the roads were virtually impassable. The first Sunday in May which generally coincided with a time at which the roads had become passable, the snow melted and the worst of the puddles dried. This was set aside as the day where the small congregations could make their way into the town and there join in celebratory worship in the cathedral.
As this Mother Church Day (or Mothering Sunday) in the Northern Hemisphere developed through the years, since it was also a time when the spring flowers returned, it became customary to gather flowers and give posies of flowers and small gifts to the mothers as they gathered with their families.
Another part to the modern tradition of Mother’s Day as the second Sunday in May comes from the US. Perhaps we should remember one founder Julia Ward Howe. Julia made what she called a Mothers’ Day proclamation in 1870 as a means of encouraging women to support her call to disarmament. In 1908, one Anna Jarvis further suggested that an annual holiday be declared to honour mothers and eventually convinced President Woodrow Wilson to make such a national holiday which he did for the first time in 1914. The idea rapidly caught on, but the commercialization of Mothers’ Day with cards and expensive gifts became so extreme that a disillusioned Anna Jarvis began calling it Hallmark holiday and claimed she regretted ever having started the commemoration.
The day has evolved in different ways in different societies. In most modern Western countries with the changes in society, the typical simple acknowledgement of mothers in a setting of a close nuclear family worshipping together with their local community is now a light year from the reality that many mothers face. With the constraints of the modern economy, even finding an entire family that stays together and worships together is increasingly uncommon. Employment opportunities are often transitory and geographically wide apart. Sunday trading and a diverse society encompassing many beliefs and interests mean that Church itself is now a much more minor part of this nation’s Sunday scene. True that in many groupings in New Zealand society women are often still given subservient roles, yet for the most part relatively rapid changes have been occurring.
Some of these changes are no doubt a consequence of advances in technology. For many homes, the drudgery of household tasks such as of cooking, washing and cleaning, once immensely time-consuming, is now largely a thing of the past, and there are many more roles now available in the workforce to women. In today’s society, which is still far from perfect, women play a far more significant role and enjoy more freedom.
Unfortunately, with that freedom comes more potential for disaster.
Just to take one area of concern. In Jesus’ day, the mother was the one most likely to bring up the young child. What Mum did back then would be key for the upbringing of most children. Today I guess what often happens outside the home has had a bigger influence. These make the role of the mother much more problematic. You may have heard of the German proverb that roughly translated says: “to become a mother is easy, to be a mother more difficult”.
If you want evidence of this difficulty look around. Ram raids like the recent ones in in the Town centre have included children. Just think of young children as a part of ram raids at one o’clock in the morning. Solo parenthood in some parts of this country is now almost the norm. Youth gangs, youth pregnancy, accessibility to drugs and alcohol, statistics showing an increase of violence in the home, youth suicide, the insecurity of short-term employment, youth unemployment, divorce, custody battles … we should not pretend that all is sweetness and light.
Marriage itself is now seen as sometimes optional and certainly less permanent, and solo parents are increasingly the norm. This calls for a different form of community support. Jesus himself foreshadowed one aspect of this change by suggesting that the Church family rather than nuclear family should be a point of support. This has a modern ring. Loving those whose circumstances bring our way could only help a fractured and uncertain society where there may be no immediate family to fill this role.
In practice we should be truthful with ourselves and admit while John records Jesus as making the ideal of love key to his message, few, if any of the saints were able to achieve this ideal in all aspects of their lives, so while clearly it is an ideal worth striving for, it is probably best understood as a goal rather than as a prerequisite for starting the Christian journey.
Ethics are inevitably situational in that we cannot know in advance what the calls upon the best of our intentions are going to be.
“Greater love has no man than this, that he is prepared to lay down his life for his friend” said Jesus. The catch is that in the real world we have no knowledge of whether or not such a dilemma is going to confront us and still less how we will respond in practice. We do know that such situations are uncommon.
The one who dashes into the burning building to save a trapped child, the one who responds to the call for help against the armed assailant, or the one who swims out in treacherous surf to the drowning swimmer are inspiring but rare examples of Jesus’ injunction, but in the same way the disciples were found wanting when the soldiers came for Jesus, the truth is that we do not know how we would be found in such circumstances.
We know from history that the practice of prayer and Bible reading would not automatically equip us for such an occasion. How many clergy actually stand up against unfair provisions for families? How many of us speak up against inhumane Government policy or campaign for tolerance for unpopular minorities? Even Church position is no guarantee of a loving and sacrificial attitude.
Nevertheless, Jesus places this ideal squarely before us so what should our response be? If we are to take his message seriously perhaps the most sensible reaction is to make a determined effort to begin by shifting our first loyalty from ourselves to those around us. We can never be certain that our commitment to others is going to win through when the unexpected arises, but it does seem to me that until we see those about us as worthy of attention, worthy of sympathy and worthy of sacrifice we have not begun to understand how to honour those we claim to love.