I am fully aware that today can bring such a range of emotions for people, and aside from Fathers' Day, I wonder if there is any other day in the year quite like it.  

Every single person in the world will have feelings about the word ‘mother’. Everybody has one. 

And the word mother can evoke feelings ranging from peace, security, joy, fondness to sadness, confusion, guilt, grief and everything in between.  

I am sensitive to this as we speak today. And I speak to you as a mother, and a daughter, who holds lots of those feelings all at the same time. 

And so I want you to know that I am speaking from a place of knowing what it is like to find it hard, and of finding hope in God. 

Psalm 34:11-20 - the Lord is near to the brokenhearted 

Exodus 2:1-10 - Moses mum. Heartache. Sacrifice. Selfless. All for her child.  

The passage from Exodus about Moses being hidden in the river is an incredibly moving piece of  Scripture. The mere ten verses could be an entire movie, filled with drama, tension, suspense and relief. It is beautiful and heartbreaking, and it tells the tale of two women, each a mother, and each moved by a mother’s love. 

It is incredibly selfless of Moses’ mother to leave him in the reeds for someone else to find and nurture. I can only imagine the ache in her heart as she did so. To leave her child, knowing it is for their benefit, takes a brave and strong woman. I can imagine it was only in her wildest dreams that he would end up in the palace - however I have no doubt not a day went by when she didn’t think of him and wish for different circumstances where he could have lived with her. 

Pharaoh’s daughter is moved with compassion when she sees the child. She correctly identifies him as a Hebrew baby, and so she fully understands that someone has tried to protect their newborn baby boy. She didn’t have to notice, she didn’t have to act. I can only imagine it would have been easier to support her father’s wishes as pharaoh. Her actions were against the grain and were motivated by tender compassion towards an innocent child. That is mothering. We know little of her own life story, but we know that ultimately she adopted Moses, as her own, and this also takes a brave and strong woman. 

Both women were acting in the best interests of the child. This is mothering. They were selfless and sacrificial and experienced heartache in different ways. 

We often call God our Father, but God is also described as being like a mother in scripture, and the sacrificial and selfless nature of God, with loving-kindness and direction for our best interests,  makes God very relatable as the perfect parent. These two women in Exodus reflect that aspect of God’s love beautifully. 

As Moses’ mother left him in the reeds, I wonder how Mary felt as Jesus was nailed to the cross. I  wonder how many times during her pregnancy had Mary pondered these things and wondered what might become of her son. 

As Jesus prepares to die, we are shown this powerful moment of him connecting John and his mother. 

There are so many fascinating things about this. We don’t have many other details - we don’t know about John and his own mother, and we don’t know where Jesus’s younger siblings feature in all this. But what we seem to see here, is two people who Jesus was clearly very close with. We know that John is described as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and we can assume as the 

woman who raised him and is weeping at the cross, that there was a closeness between Jesus and his mother Mary. As Jesus is dying, his concern moves to these two people he loves and are mourning – a demonstration of the Lord being close to the brokenhearted. 

Why does Jesus do this? 

One thing I adore about both of the scriptures we have had today is that both have a strong theme of mothering - maternal care - being a mother - and yet both involve this relationship between people not connected biologically.  

The theme of adoption is central to the gospel. 

From the beginning, God has chosen us to be his children, and we have a choice as to how we respond to that.  

The Israelites are the children of God, and through the fulfilment of the law in Jesus, the gentiles are grafted in as children of God. There is a strong theme of the outsiders (gentiles) coming in and joining the family (Israelites) under God our parent. And the blending of this and what it means to be adopted. 

Moses’ adoption as a Hebrew into the Egyptians, ultimately so that he will set the Hebrew people free, depicts his conflict of identities as an adoptee, and his sense of self. 

I think a lot about adoption when I think about my faith.  

When someone is adopted, there is an instant moment when they legally become part of a new family. It is permanent, legal and binding. You have the same rights as a blood relative and I find this incredibly moving and beautiful. 

This is like our faith, when we choose to follow God, we are instantly adopted into God’s family. It is permanent, and we have the same rights as anyone who has been a Christian for a lot longer, or as someone ‘born into’ faith. This is God’s grace. He chooses to give us this. He does not have to. However, it can take us some time to really believe that, and to live and act in the full freedom  that comes from being a child of God (is this discipleship? Journey? Do we ever reach it?) We can experience a sense of conflict about our own worth and sense of belonging. Am I really God’s child? The answer is yes! 

Just as the princess did not have to take in Moses and John did not have to take Mary into his home. Both of them did this instantly. This is an outward demonstration of love. And there seems to be something extra beautiful about going out of your way to love someone when you don’t have to. 

When we receive grace from God, it is so that we might share that grace with other people. I  believe that God puts us in families with the intention that we might participate in the mutual giving and receiving of love, from the moment we are born: the interchange, the reciprocal dance of loving and being loved comes very naturally to children. This is God’s purpose. And the more we are loved, the easier we find it is to love others. Just as children learn from watching their parents,  (whether this is for good or bad!) we learn from God. 

As God loves us, we can love others, and this love can heal them in the way it has - or may - heal us.  

But much like adoption, love is a choice.  

Mothering is a choice.  

Just because someone gives birth to a child, it does not automatically mean they love or even can love them. Biology has very little do with it. 

I believe that in God’s creation there is something beautiful and spiritual about a mother caring for her child. But we know in our broken world things do not always work out like that, but our God heals the wounded, binds up the brokenhearted: our God can pour his love into the cracks that this fallen world can leave us with, and we can find wholeness, love and purpose, despite difficult circumstances or beginnings. 

You can love people with whom you do not share genetics. I expect you know that already. But it is significant today. And it is significant for the gospel.

We must not be so closed-minded as to limit maternal love to a 2.4 child family unit. THANK  GOD it is so much more than that. God - the creator of love - is so much bigger and broader than that. 

It is in God’s very nature to - graft us in. It is a theme throughout Jesus’ life, to go after the outsider and bring them close, bring them in. Jesus takes the orphans and puts them in families.  God is moved with compassion towards the broken and it is in his nature to heal. Jesus essentially giving his mother to John, is so selfless, so tender, so incredibly attuned to the needs of both, it is a passage I come back to again and again.  

Jesus knows the power of love and relationships, and he knows the wholeness that connection can bring. 

It is not just God’s desire that we might love him, but he deeply wants us to love each other too.