Tender Loving Care

Learning to be selfless is hard.

It is undoubtedly one of the essential asks of being a dad. And I know, from seeing it lived in the everyday life of my own wife and how she mothers and cares for our sons, and in the I care I still receive from my own mum, and my mother in law, and in the kind of love I see in my own sisters and sisters in law, that selflessness goes a very long way in family life.

 Of course it’s not the preserve of mums. It’s seen in dads and brothers and sons and fathers in law and uncles too.

But on this very special day in my own home, in your home, in the parish, and in our nation, being Thankful for all that Mothers have been and are, is at the very heart of our life today.

 For many, Mothering Sunday, and many other days too, is a time of great sadness as we remember with Thanksgiving those we love, but see no longer. We remember the selfless life of the one who brought us into this world, and the countless unseen tasks every day in bringing us up. The countless making of meals, the making of beds, the listening and the steering in a better direction. The anticipation of the holes in the road we cannot yet foresee.

But mums can, and often take us through the most unpredictable times.

Perhaps that has been one of the most difficult aspects of this last year. The disruption of normal family life. The ability to while away the time with our family and lived ones, the chance to pop in to say hello. And its upside perhaps, to make us appreciate more what sometimes we can take for granted.

The scripture readings chosen for today carry that mix of heartache and tender loving care which parenting often unavoidably is. We carry the pain and the love for our own, exactly because we bear them in our own hearts. In the generations after Joseph’s family settled in Egypt, the scripture records how the Pharoah became fearful of the people of Israel because they were so numerous. Exodus chapter one makes for very painful reading, as the Hebrew midwives helping the Hebrew women were instructed to kill any baby boy born.

In one of those insightful and endearing comments of the Bible we read how,’  

‘The midwives, however, feared God

and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do.’

When they are confronted with this disobedience, they have a delightful and protective response, saying how the women are delivered of the child before the midwife can aid her.

The king is not to be refused. The whole nation is notified of this planned atrocity.

And in response, we are introduced to a Hebrew mother who resolves to save her child by hiding him in the reeds along the river Nile. An elder sister is tasked with caring for this precious cargo, one who would grow up to be the great Patriarch and Law-Giver, Moses.

You know the story. One woman’s tender hearted and determined care is met by the love of another who raises the boy as her own, and in doing so, a life is spared.

 

So too, the tender hearted care of another mother. In quite another day, in terrible circumstances, another tyranny is governing a land. As her son draws near to the end of His life,

in tender care He reaches out to ensure His mother will be cared for after His death.

‘Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.’

That same mother had carried His life in her heart, she had pondered deeply all that had been told her of Him. She recalled that a sword would strike her own soul. And in those terrible days as she witnessed every assault on the Son she had borne, His kindness to her provided for her future, both then and into eternity.

Tender hearted and sacrificial loving kindness lies at the heart of motherhood. It sits within the hearts of fathers, and it ought to be at the centre of our family life.

God knows this when He calls us His children, longing to gather us to Him much in the way a Mother hen gathers her chicks.

Selfless love. 

Tender hearted love. 

Sitting at the centre of who we are called to be. 

Shown to us in others that love us. 

That is the plan.

Amen.