Mother Church

Preached at Trinity Methodist/URC, Honley
30th March 2014: Mothering Sunday (AAW)
John 19:25-27

What is a family? Who is in your family? What does your family look like?

Someone a few years ago gave us a tea towel saying: “Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.” Friends are also part of our family. Sometimes they can even be closer to us than our real or biological family. There’s a proverb in the Bible that says the same thing: “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” It’s possible to have friends who are more like family than family are.

It’s one of the amazing things about the story we’ve just read that even as Jesus was in terrible pain and about to die, he was thinking about other people and more worried about their problems than his own. Jesus looked down at his mother and his best friend standing next to her at the foot of his cross and in love he entrusted them to each other. There at the cross, Jesus created a new kind of family; a family where all of Jesus’ friends became brothers and sisters to one another.

There’s a story in another place in the Gospels when Jesus is told that his mother and brothers are outside looking for him and he responded by asking, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” He then pointed to his friends sat around listening to him and said that whoever lives the way God wants them to live is his brother, his sister and his mother. This is God’s family; a family of people like Mary and John who are willing to stand with Jesus to the end even through the pain of the cross.

Jesus gives us a whole new picture of what it means to be family. It is a family of all different sorts of people; people from every place and country, people from every age and ethnicity—men and women, old and young, rich and poor, black and white. This is a family of people tied together by more than genes; it is a family of people tied together by the love of Jesus and a desire to follow him in living lives that make God happy. In this kind of family, God is the Father and we are the children.

This is a family like no other. A third century Christian teacher called Cyprian once said: “You cannot have God as your Father unless you have the Church for your Mother.” And like any of the families we’re born into, you can’t choose your siblings; some you’ll get along with, some you won’t. In the Church, we are related to everyone who is a friend of Jesus. As a Methodist minister in America, Will Willimon, put it so wonderfully, “We have got to eat with anybody Jesus drags in the door.”

Like most families, the Church family can be dysfunctional at times. It too has its fair share of spats and quarrels; but what makes the Church family unique is that it always keeps coming back to sit and eat with one another around the Lord’s table. Because we are related to one another by the simple fact of being Jesus’s friends, it means that if we want to sit and eat with Jesus, we also have to sit and eat with anyone else Jesus chooses to sit and eat with. It is the love of Jesus which holds us all together, which binds us as family.

Now I want to stay with the idea of the Church as our Mother for a bit longer. I want you to think for a moment of what that means. What do our mothers do for us?

There’s a huge long list we could make: they love us, they care for us, they forgive us, they pick us up when we fall down, they change our dirty nappies when we’re babies, they feed us, they cook for us, they clean for us, they wash our clothes, they nurture us, they tell us off when we’ve done something wrong, they give us a hug when we’re feeling down, they encourage us, they spend time with us, they talk with us, they play with us, they eat with us, they laugh with us, they cry with us, they watch over us, they protect us, they give us the freedom to make mistakes, they teach us things, they show us how to do things. The list could go on, I’m sure.

Something else they do for us that we haven’t mentioned: they give birth to us. We are all here today because a mother gave birth to us; they carried us in the womb and gave birth to us. The Church is our Mother because it is the place where Christians are born, where people begin life in relationship with God. Now when I talk about ‘the Church’ I’m not talking about a building, but about people, about the Christians who come together to worship God and centre their lives on Jesus. None of us get connected with Jesus by ourselves; we come because other people show him and share him with us, we come because Jesus reveals himself to us through God’s other children, through his family. It is through the Church we learn the life of faith.

The Church is the place where Christians are born. And like the love of our heavenly Father, Mother Church loves us and accepts us just as we are; we are welcomed and cherished without doing anything to earn or deserve it, but simply for being ourselves. Sometimes, like children, we come home with a scraped knee and mud all over us and it is the Church our Mother who cleans and dresses the wound, washes and changes our clothes. It is in the family of the Church that we learn both to receive forgiveness and to give it as well. Sometimes our mothers tell us off for doing something dangerous, selfish or unkind and sometimes Mother Church will do the same. We are loved as we are; but too much to allow us to stay infants forever.

The Church, like a mother, also teaches us to speak. She shows us who we are and why we’re here. She tells us our story, our family history. She explains why we’re special, why we’re different and why we don’t behave like everyone else does. Mother Church names us as God’s children and helps us work out what it means to live as God’s children. She instructs us in what’s right and what’s wrong. She feeds us and nourishes us with the food of God’s word in the Bible and God’s presence in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Mother Church helps us grow and flourish as the people God made us to be. She holds us in her land like a clutch of helium balloons and releases us to soar upwards into God. She rejoices when we rejoice and when we’re sad she puts her arm around us and comforts us.

This is the family Jesus creates at the cross for anyone who will be his friend. It’s not exclusive little club for holy Joes; it’s a Sunday school for children learning how to walk. Mother Church is our home away from home; it is the place we come in order to find God’s presence, power and purpose for our lives, preparing us for the day that home is here to stay. The question for us this Mothering Sunday is this: The kettle’s on and the food is in the oven; but are on our way back home to God?

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.