Mothering Sunday sermon
Introduction: At the last Prayer and Praise meeting is WSG, Wendy Hill gave a talk that focussed on the motherly qualities of God and she started her talk with looking at Genesis 1.
1. Man and Woman in the Image of God
She pointed out that in Genesis 1 we read
27 So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.
That is that man and woman were made in the image of God – and not just man.
You might wonder why the Bible talks of God in male terms – for example God the Father and other masculine terms. But we forget that there are many feminine metaphors about God in the Bible too.
And so as we are honouring mothers today, I would like to examine some of these terms
First of all I’d like to look at a passage that Jesus himself said:
2. God is Loving and Protective
In Luke 13:34 Jesus said this
34 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the one who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, but you were not willing!
Here we clearly see a feminine image but let’s get behind what Jesus is saying.
He would love to gather his countrymen and women to himself like a mother hen gathers her chicks.
So often we see a picture of God being severe – and the standard stereotype is a grandfather like figure with a white long beard who is unapproachable.
But that is simply far from the truth
We see here an aspect of God that is loving and protective.
So often we feel that God is too busy to take notice of us.
But that isn’t true. He cares for us as much as a mother hen cares for her chicks.
3. God will train us like a mother eagle teaches its young to fly
Isaiah 40 31 says this
But those who wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength
They shall mount up with wings of eagles
They shall run and not be weary
They shall walk and not faint
Now this doesn’t expressis verbis say that God is like a mother eagle, until you realise how a baby eagle is taught to fly.
The eaglet cannot learn to fly comfortably seated in the nest. That is why when the eagle builds her nest she fills it with prickly twigs which she then covers with the skin of say a rabbit.
Now when the time comes for the eaglet to fly, the mother pulls away the skins covering the thistles, so that the eaglet will jump out of the nest
As the eaglet jumps out of the nest , t tries to flap its wings to fly. But the more it flaps its wings -the closer it gets to the earth.
And just when it is about to be splattered on the ground, the mother swoops and catches it and takes it up to the height of the nest over the ground.
And then she drops it. This goes on until the eaglet can fly for itself.
It is only the mother eagle that teaches its eaglet to fly.
And so it is with God.
Sometimes we go through rough times and we think God is being cruel to us. But like the mother eagle he is teaching us to fly.
4. God calms us and delights in us like a mother sings over her baby
The next passage is one I remember reading many years ago and took some time to find again.
It is in the book of Zephaniah Chapter 3 that we read
17 The Lord your God in your midst, The Mighty One, will save; He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing." Zephaniah 3:17
Maddy used to do this with our children to calm them down and because she simply enjoyed their presence.
She sang over them to calm them when they were crying.
She sang over them too and expressed her joy in her children.
The multifarious uses of music is -in my opinion - one of the differences between mankind and the rest of creation.
5. God cares for us like a mother and will never forget us
We read in Isaiah 49:14-16 the following
14 But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me,
And my Lord has forgotten me.”
15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child,
[j]And not have compassion on the son of her womb?
Surely they may forget,
Yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands;
We all know how fiercely protective mothers are of their children and God is no difference
Did you notice that last part of the reading?
See I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands
Not only does God never forget us but we even see a reference to the Cross. How his hands were nailed to the Cross for our transgressions.
We are inscribed on his hands as the nails have scarred his hands at the Crucifixion.
That is how much God cares for us.
Conclusion:
God is never called Mother – why
If God has these feminine qualities too, you might ask why is he never referred to as Mother God.
The Hebrew scholar Samuel Terrien gives for me a very authentic reason and it has to do with the context of the Bible.
He said that the reason the ancient Hebrews never called God “Mother” was that they “reacted against the allurement of the Mother Goddess cult because
they somehow sensed the difference between true divinity and deified nature.”(Till The Heart Sings:A Biblical Theology of Manhood and Womanhood by S. Terrien page 60)
And the concept of the earth being Mother Nature is still with us today.
Shiao Chong on page 4 of his article “Biblical Maternal Images of God” says this
“The Old Testament’s refusal to call God Mother was not a misogynistic act. It was an attempt to emphasise God’s transcendence over nature and steer away from the ancient goddess religions.”
But despite that we must never lose sight of the fact that man and woman are made in the image of God.
Just as we see clear male metaphors about God, please let us also remember that there are also female metaphors of God too.
And today we give thanks for them too.
