Lent 4: Mothering Sunday

Numbers 21:4-9;  John 3: 14-21

Introduction    Mothering Sunday

Today is Mothering Sunday – a term I confess I prefer to ‘Mothers’ Day’, because it is a day that is about more than just mothers.

All of us begin life with a mother. But not all of us still have a mother living.

Some of us are lucky and have or have had a good relationship with our mothers – but I realise that isn’t true for everyone.

Not everyone’s life journey leads to them being a mother. And not every mother is able to raise her child.

But mothering is for everyone. 

Mothering, at its best, is about nurturing, caring, constancy, and unconditional love. The Bible talks of God as Father, Shepherd, protector, redeemer, saviour, rock, refuge… we might very easily speak of God’s love as a mothering love – and God as mother.

In our worship today we will think of God’s love – and especially God’s loving offer of healing for those who are broken, wounded and in need.

If Mothering Sunday makes you feel wounded in some way, then God’s love is for you, with you and offering you healing.

Reading: Numbers 21:4-9

Talk 1: God’s healing in the desert

The people of God have been freed from enslavement by Pharaoh in Egypt. They have been brought across the Red Sea, and provided with the guidance of pillars of fire and cloud. 

Moses has received the ten commandments, and God has provided them with miraculous water and heavenly food (manna) in the desert. 

Not that you would guess any of that from the reading we’ve just heard from Numbers, where the amazing manna and the equally amazing gift of flocks of quails provided by God is described as ‘miserable food’. 

And so the people of God, as they have a tendency to do, have complained.

In response, God sends venomous snakes and many people who are bitten, die.

The people realise their mistake, and ask Moses to pray that God will take away the snakes & save them.

But God offers them a different plan: whoever has been bitten will be healed by God if they turn and look at the bronze serpent on a pole that Moses has made.

In a sense this shows us good mothering love from God – not removing the danger, but giving the people of God a way of living with the danger and receiving healing. 

A mothering love offers people a chance to learn and grow, it doesn’t wrap people up in bubble wrap.

But this can still seem like a strange story – and you might wonder why Jesus refers to it in his conversation with Nicodemus (which we’ll hear in more detail in a moment).

John 3:14 & 15      "Jesus said, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life."

At its simplest, the story of the serpents is telling us that God offers God’s people healing when they realise what is wrong with them – they have been ungrateful and now they have been bitten by a venomous snake. They turn to the symbol of God’s healing and they are saved by God’s promised healing power.

Even today the symbol of a snakes wrapped around a pole is used as a sign of healing by many hospitals, pharmacies and army medical corps.

When the people turn to see the serpent on the staff they are healed.  In the same way, says Jesus, when the Son of Man is lifted up – so that he can be seen – people will believe in him and receive the gift of eternal life. 

The sign of Jesus Christ living among people, born on earth in a human body and living a life of light and love, offers people healing from everything that ails them.

We turn back to John’s gospel to hear more of what Jesus has to say about healing and salvation:

Reading: John 3:14-21

Talk 2: God’s constant love; Jesus’ offer to Nicodemus; a mothering church.

Of all the verses in the Bible, John 3: 16 has to be one of the most famous and the most quoted. It even appears sometimes on T-shirts, and very often at Sports events in the US – being held up by a member of the audience of worn by one of the competitors.

With all its ‘exposure’ it’s easy to forget that Jesus says these words not as part of a sermon or public statement, but in a conversation with just one person – Nicodemus.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee – a learned, thinking man – who comes to talk to Jesus, but is wary of being seen conversing with Jesus, and so comes at night.

What can be more intimate than a conversation between just two people under cover of darkness. And as part of the conversation Jesus offers Nicodemus the gift of healing and salvation – first of all by making reference to the ‘serpent on a staff’ story, and then by saying the words :

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. 

Martin Luther described this verse as the ‘gospel in miniature’, since it states:

God loves          God gave

We believe        We have life.

When we need healing, Jesus is the sign that God is with us, and that God loves, God gave, we believe and so we have life.

From what might we need healing?

I have suggested that Mothering Sunday can be difficult for some people, for a variety of reasons, and that maybe some of us will need healing from those wounds.

Classically, the church has spoken of people needing healing from sin, and we spoke at the zoom Bible study on Tuesday about what a difficult word that can be for us. 

An interesting theologian and writer, Francs Spufford, has spoken of sin as ‘the human propensity to mess things up’. If you find it hard for whatever reason to think of yourself as someone who sins, who is a sinner – then I’m sure you will find the idea of messing things up more relatable. We all mess things up sometimes. We make mistakes, we snap at someone we love, we find it hard to get out of the chair and do something we know we should do, we get things wrong. 

And when we do Jesus tells us, as he told Nicodemus, that he is there as a sign of the love of God that is constant and caring and immeasurably kind.

If you struggle to think of God’s love as a mothering love – listen to this:

The black woman theologian, Cole Arthur Riley, writes this (p 99 of her wonderful book “This here flesh”):  I think when God bears witness to our lament, we discover that we are not calling out to a teacher, but inviting God as a nurturer – a mother who hears her child crying in the night. She wakes, rises, and comes to the place where we lie. She rushes her holy warmth against our flesh and says “I’m here”.

This Mothering Sunday we are invited to receive the healing of the mothering of God. Jesus tells Nicodemus, and tells us, that in him God is here, with us, close, loving – coming to us when we most need love and healing.

When we experience that healing, we are also invited by Jesus to becomes part of the life of a church which will offer that mothering love to everyone who needs it.

The church needs to be ready to be more like the best parent we can imagine – loving caring, accepting.. so that all might believe, turn to Jesus, turn to the light of the gospel, and receive eternal life. 

Thanks be to God.  Amen.