This sermon was preached on Mothering Sunday, 30th March 2025.
Bible Reading: Colossians 3:12-17; John 19:25-27
Mothering Sunday is always one of those days with mixed emotions. For some of us, our experience of motherhood is great. We have wonderful mothers in our lives, and being a mother has been a great joy to us. I know that I have had a very positive experience of mothers in my life. But for some of us, Mothering Sunday can be hard. It reminds us of the bad experiences of motherhood we have had, be it from our own mother, our struggle to be a mother, or maybe wanting to be a mother, but it was something that never happened. Some have even experienced the great pain of losing a child. Whatever your experience of motherhood, today is a day when we can bring all these thoughts, feelings and experiences together because God is in the family business, and his church should be, too.
One of the incredible things about our God is that he is a relational God. Contained within him is a relationship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. You can see that at the heart of who God is, there is the relationship between a parent and child. In our gospel reading, we see Jesus talking to his mother, Mary, who plays such a pivotal role in his life, and on many occasions, we see Jesus spending time with God the Father in prayer. Central to Jesus’ life was the relationship of parent and child, and since it was central to Jesus’ life, it follows that it is central to the life of his church.
For some of us, this is easy to translate over to church as we might be sitting next to our mother or our children. Or maybe we have memories of our mum bringing us to church when we were a kid, and we are still coming to church fifty, sixty, seventy years later because of them. But for a lot of us, our experience of church feels very far from motherhood or parenthood. Church is something that we do on our own, or apart from our family. But the reality is that we might be looking at motherhood or parenthood through a tighter lens than God intends for motherhood and parenthood. Our own concepts of motherhood and parenthood are locked in around the notion of the nuclear family and our extended family. But across the Bible and in the life of Jesus, we see that motherhood and parenthood are expanded beyond biology.
Let’s look at our gospel reading together. It isn’t a long reading. It’s a snippet of a short conversation that Jesus has with his mother, Mary, whilst he is on the cross. Mary is stood next to the ‘disciple whom Jesus loved,’ whom we understand to be John. Jesus says these simple words to the two of them. To Mary, he says, ‘Here is your son,’ and to John, he says, ‘Here is your mother.’ But obviously, the two were not mother and son. Yet from here on, John was to bring Mary back to his home and care for her like a mother. You see, in God’s kingdom, motherhood, parenthood, and family are much more than biology. It is about relationship. It is about love.
Our Colossians reading reminds us that God called us as Christians to be one body together. We do not exist as separate family units; rather, we are united into the one family that is the body of Christ, the family of God. In the family of God, we are united not by biology but by the love of Christ. We are a family of love, and as it says in our Colossians reading, love binds all things together in perfect unity. As a church family, our relationship with one another is rooted in love, not biology. Anyone who is part of a biological family can tell you that being related by biology does not always mean that there will be love.
Love has always been at the centre of God’s family. In the letter to the Ephesians, it says that ‘[God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will.’[1] God talks about the family of the church as one not built around biology but by adoption. Sometimes, we hear the word adoption when it comes to family, and we can view it as a secondary thing to biology, but that is not how God sees it. For God, adoption is about desire, longing and a choice. It is about how God chose to make us all one family because he loves us. The church is a family of love. The thing about love is that it is not forced but entered into freely. When we choose to follow God and be part of his family, we choose to be united in love. It is this love that unites us together as one family.
So what does this all mean for us on Mothering Sunday? For me, it reminds me that Mothering Sunday is primarily about love, not just biology. In fact, being a mother is bigger than biology. I think of all the women in my life who are like a mother to me. I live hours away from my mother, and I am so grateful that there are women in my life who care and support me like a mother does. Some of these women do not have children, yet they still play the role of a mother to me. Likewise, though I am not their child, I can play the role of a son and daughter to them. This is possible because motherhood and parenthood are about the love that unites us as a family. This is the joy of our church family. Though we are not biologically related, we get to be mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters and sons and daughters to each other. It was in this same Spirit that Jesus called his mother, Mary, and his disciple, John, to be mother and son to one another.
For in God’s kingdom, people become children to the mothers without one, and women become mothers to the children without one. This is what God’s family is all about.
We mark Mothering Sunday in church because family is at the heart of who we are as church. It’s okay to recognise that Mothering Sunday can carry hurt with it. There are many of us who want to have kids but cannot, and many of us who want mothers but don’t have them. It’s okay to bring these feelings of hurt and brokenness to each other here at church. For as a church family bound in love, we are to care for each other. We share life with each other and hold one another up because we are a family of love. Love builds one another up and holds each other in the hard times. Love binds us together so that we may never feel alone with our pain, but we can find comfort in the love we share with one another.
Today is a perfect day to look at your church family around you. Look at the love we share as a church family. Look at the people who are mothers to you, and look at the people at the people for whom you are a mother (or a father, if you feel more comfortable with saying that). Jesus made motherhood and parenthood primarily about relationship, not biology. As a church family, we might not share biology, but we share the most important thing together: love. We are bound in a relationship of love with each other. We are bound up in the love of God that unites us together as one church family. Today is a day to celebrate that. Celebrate the ways in increases our joy, and the ways in brings comfort to our pain. It is a love that is there for whatever we are going through. For Mary, her new motherhood to John was given at the time of her greatest agony as she watched Jesus die on the cross. Perhaps the love we share as a church family might come to us when we are going through life’s hardest moments. Each our stories are different, but the centrality of love as a church family remains the same. This Mothering Sunday, let us step deeper in to be a family of love with one another, to be the family God called us to be.
Amen.
[1] Ephesians 1:5 [NRSV].
Shakeel Nurmahi 