Mothering Sunday and Reflections on Exodus 2.1-10

Exodus 2.1-10

Now a man from the house of Levi went and married a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son; and when she saw that he was a fine baby, she hid him for three months. When she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him, and plastered it with bitumen and pitch; she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds on the bank of the river. His sister stood at a distance, to see what would happen to him.

The daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her attendants walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid to bring it. When she opened it, she saw the child. He was crying, and she took pity on him. ‘This must be one of the Hebrews’ children,’ she said. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, ‘Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?’ Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Yes.’ So the girl went and called the child’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give you your wages.’ So the woman took the child and nursed it. When the child grew up, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and she took him as her son. She named him Moses, ‘because’, she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’

Mothering Sunday is about how we commemorate the lives of women whom God has given the gift ‘mothering’. On this Sunday particularly interesting is an Old Testament reading from Exodus where a King consolidates his power by finding a scapegoat in the Israelites whom he blames for social ills and thus invites his nation to identify them as common enemy. Pharaoh tells the Hebrew midwives to kill all the Hebrew male children, but they tell Pharaoh that the babies are born before they get there. Moses' Hebrew mother and sister and Pharaoh's Egyptian daughter all oppose Pharaoh, yet he does identify them as his political opponents.

There is nothing new here.

In the thirties, it was the Jews and today it is asylum seekers, travellers and so-called economic migrants who are singled out and persecuted. In the UK this group now also includes the young & jobless and that’s before we even start to think about ethnic minorities in the criminal justice system and gender inequality just about everywhere in our so-called democratic society. The sin here is to for the politically powerful to define the rest of us in opposition to out groups and then deny them their essential humanity.

So on this Mothering Sunday we celebrate those mothers who started in each of us the beginning of dreams, aspirations and hopes. So is Mothering an exclusively biological thing? Well, there are women who have never given birth to children but have been mothers to many. So, here’s an interesting question – Can men be mothers and do mothering? Jesus has been described as a mother hen looking after his chicks. Certainly, when I was a Social Worker caring for learning difficulties people I often felt like a mother hen. And sometimes I feel the same as a Parish Priest although my role here is very different in that with my support and encouragement, I want people to take responsibility for themselves. Please tell me if any of this makes any sense as it could inform my next sermon or a future book that I would write.

Father David