Fourth Sunday in Lent
Sermon for Mother's Day 21st March 2004
Rev Patrick Commerford
May all our thoughts, all our words, and all our deeds, be in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.
Traditionally, this Sunday in Lent, the Fourth Sunday in Lent, has been marked as Mothering Sunday. It’s not always a happy Sunday for every woman: there are silent, personal griefs, there are quiet tears to be shed by many women on this Sunday, particularly as they see other women being greeted and feted as they silently reflect on their own tragedies.
Perhaps one of the toughest requests I ever had on a Sunday was being asked to preach on Mothering Sunday immediately after the Dunblane Massacre.
But to everyone here, may I wish you your own happiness and blessings on this Sunday, on this Mothering Sunday, on this Fourth Sunday in Lent.
The lectionary provides two sets of readings for this morning: one for Mothering Sunday, and one for the Fourth Sunday in Lent. And this year, surprisingly, the Lenten reading is the story of a Prodigal Son. I say surprisingly because this is a story of a dysfunctional family:
a Father, yes, a very loving father, but nevertheless, a father who first
of all gives in and satisfies the whims and demands of a runaway son, and
then is surprised when the younger son pouts and sulks;
a son who is spoiled, takes everything he can get, and then comes back
for more;
and a son who is spoiled and who has had his share of everything after
his brother has gone, and now sulks because he may not be able to hold
on to everything.
In modern Ireland, these two lads might have been described as “Mammy’s Boys”. One stayed at home long after other boys would have cut loose and gone out in the world. And the one left home too soon probably had been so well looked after at home he didn’t know how to look after himself properly when he found he was out in the big, bad world.
But I said I was surprised. Surprised because, in all this family, on Mothering Sunday, we might ask: “Where’s the Mother?”
The father plays a major mothering role in this family. He’s the one who keeps an eye out, like a loving mother would, for the wayward son, hoping when there was no sign of hope, wishing when there had been no letters home at all, keeping faith when there was no hint that there was any reason to hold on faithfully, holding on in love when even he knew that he had been betrayed. All the loving actions that we traditionally associate with a mother.
And when, against all expectations, that wayward son does return, his Father behaves more like a Mother might, behaves less like we might expect a traditional father in a traditional society to behave. He’s filled with compassion, he drops all his dignity as he runs out to greet him, he hugs him and kisses him. Not the sort of things Irish daddies are good at; lots more like an Irish mammy.
And then mothering and smothering his son, he does all the other things a mother would so in this situation: he runs off to get him decent clothes, and he rushes into the kitchen to make sure his so will have something decent eat. Even when Irish fathers are good at providing, we’re not every good at looking after the details of what our children, particularly our sons, are eating or dressing up in.
This Father is like a real Father and a real Mother to his Son. And the Son who has stayed at home reprimands the Father for being too much like a loving Mother instead of being a stern Father to the wayward son.
On second thoughts, perhaps this is a good reading for Mothering Sunday. A good reminder to the men among us who are parents that when we think we’re being good at playing the role of Father, we sometimes also need to think about what are the good qualities that make the women in our lives good mothers too.
In the past, the Church at an administrative level has been very good at playing a traditional Father-like role, but very poor at playing the Mother-like role when it comes to behaving like the family that the whole family of God.
Administratively, the churches have often been great at making rules, sternly telling people what’s right and wrong, like a disciplinarian father. But weak, quite weak in reality, in caring for people, nursing them, hugging them through the times when things have gone badly, when things have gone totally wrong.
Good at pastoring, but not at real nurturing. We’ve been better at condemning that offering hope. We’ve better at identifying the sinner, than identifying the way out of the mess that we all need to be pointed towards at different stages in our lives.
And so, when we do get it right at times, it’s only natural that the response of those who have been neglected or sidelined is one of begrudgery.
One of the funniest books I have at home is by the late Breandan O hEithir, who wrote what he called The Begrudgers’ Guide to Irish Politics. I suppose the son that stayed at home while the Prodigal Son went off to sow his wild oats could have written The Begrudgers’ Guide to Irish Family Life. And all of us could contribute at least one chapter or two to The Begrudgers’ Guide to Irish church life.
When the Church gets it wrong, we all know about.
When the Church gets it right, someone inevitably asks: “Well, that’s not my experience of church life, you know.”
One of the ways I really think we’re really getting it right at the moment is how our mission agencies – all our mission agencies – are working together these days and working alongside the Anglican churches in other countries, meeting their needs as they identify them, rather than offering our own solutions, offering answers to questions that no-one may be asking at all.
Last month, I a week or two visiting CMS Ireland’s mission partners in Egypt, Gillian and David Maganda, who used to live in Belfast but who are now living with their three children in Cairo, working with a project at All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral known as Refuge Egypt.
I was with a team from CMS Ireland trying to make a new resource video for our programme on Muslim-Christian dialogue, looking at how Christians live as a minority in a Muslim-majority society.
I was impressed. There are almost twice as many Christians in Egypt than there are in Ireland. And there are more Christians in Egypt alone than in all the other countries of the Middle East put together.
There, there is surprisingly little competitiveness between the churches: we received a special audience with the Coptic Pope; we were welcomed officially to the Greek Patriarchate in Alexandria; we received a specially warm welcome in the Greek Orthodox monastery on the slopes of Mount Sinai; and heard how the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches are co-operating ion organising a major Alpha conference.
And despite the restrictions that you might expect in any Islamic society, there is a growing confidence in the way dialogue is being conducted between Muslims and Christians, the way they are building relations. Much of this is due to the strong lead that has been given by the Anglican church in this field, and there is a very obvious friendship between the Anglican bishop of Egypt and the leaders of the Al-Azhar Mosque, not only the principal teaching mosque in Egypt, but the intellectual heart of the Sunni Muslim world.
In Egypt, the Anglican Church is actively engaged in the Ministry of Reconciliation that Saint Paul says in our Epistle reading we are all called to.
That confidence, that real friendship, was cemented, literally, as we watched the cement being poured in and the foundations being laid for a new hospital in Sadat City. It certainly challenges your preconceptions of Islamic societies and of Muslim-Christian relations when you hear about a government asking one of the smaller Christian churches to build, run and manage a major hospital, and when you hear that the funding for this, hopefully, will come from mission agencies and EU governments, including the Irish government.
It challenges your preconceptions of Islamic societies and of Muslim-Christian relations when you visit a poor township on the fringes of a large city like Alexandria and hear local Muslims offering the information without ever being asked that the Churches provide the best health care, the best education, the best social welfare programmes in the slums.
But is also challenges our preconceptions of our own society when you see the priorities of the Church in Egypt and the work Gillian and David are doing with Refuge Egypt and the other programmes linked with All Saints’ Cathedral.
Their work with refugees challenges racism, for many of the Sudanese refugees in Cairo are fleeing a long-running civil war in which northern Sudan’s majority Arabs are dealing badly with their southern Sudanese neighbours, who are mainly black Nubians.
Their work with refugees challenges religious hatred, when you consider the civil war in Sudan is often seen as one in which Muslims are pitted against Christians.
Their work with refugees challenges the misuse of religious hatred when you consider those Sudanese refugees, fleeing the onslaughts of their Muslim neighbours, actually find refuge in a neighbouring Muslim country.
Their work with refugees challenges our notions of evangelism and mission, when you realise that many of these Sudanese refugees realise the reality of the Gospel message when they receive health care and benefit from the feeding shelter and the training programmes offered at Cairo Cathedral.
In our Old Testament reading this morning, we are reminded that God fed the refugees in the wilderness until they reached safety.
Gillian and David’s work with refugees challenges our images of how the church should offer care for all its children: who could be a begrudger when you see the Church watching out, like the father of the prodigal son, for those refugees turning to find their way home, trying to shelter them, feed them and clothe them.
And their work with refugees challenges our own way of being Church here: what are we doing for refugees here, what are we doing to be like the father of the Prodigal Son: watching out for their home-coming? Seeing they are welcome? Providing them with shelter, clothing and food?
Or are we like the stay-at-home brother? Thinking silently that the refugees who arrive on our shores are conning us, have squandered their opportunities, have wasted their money and abandoned their past lifestyle only because they think we have more to offer.
Of course there are chancers in the world today.
But on Mothering Sunday, I’m also conscious that there are many here today who more than ever are in need of Mother Church watching out for them, seeing that after all their problems have been abandoned, they need someone to welcome and watch out for them.
The church is doing this in Egypt, against all the odds.
As the Psalmist reminds us this morning: “Great are the tribulations of the wicked; but mercy embraces those who trust in the Lord. Be glad, you righteous, and rejoice in the Lord; shout for joy, all who are true of heart.”
And now, may all our thoughts, all our words, and all our deeds be to the glory of the Eternal Trinity, One God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.
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(Rev) Patrick Comerford,
75 Glenvara Park,
Knocklyon,
Dublin 16
Republic of Ireland.