Tag Archives: caring

Children Of God Through Faith

Leave a reply

Sermon preached on the 1st Sunday of Trinity based on the readings Galatians 3:23-end and Luke 8:26-39

May I speak and may you hear through the Grace of our Lord: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

The importance of being aware of our state of mental health is a topic that many of us have come to recognise over the last couple of years. For a long time this subject was hidden away like the people who were affected by it.

Prior to and including the 19th century the authorities thought they had the answer and gathered those afflicted (and sometimes those who were not) into asylums where they could be treated. Perhaps the most famous of these was the Bethlem Royal Hospital, known better by its synonymous name of Bedlam. The buildings of this psychiatric facility were dirty, dark, and cold, with no windows and no hot water. When a group of MPs visited the hospital for scrutiny in 1814, they were shocked at the sight of the small cells where people were chained to the beds or walls. Just one blanket was provided to each patient to protect them from rats and cold. The hospital was even once a popular tourist attraction in London, offering morbid entertainment to the curious.

The Victorians made more humane changes to the way that these patients were treated, but it was still an ‘illness’ that was managed rather than cured. Treatments were often brutal, though bloodletting, purging and electric shock treatment. For many years same-sex attraction was also regarded as a mental illness and right up until the late 1980’s people underwent electrical aversion therapy; who can forget the treatment of Alan Turing.

Of course, medical understanding has advanced enormously over the years, but in Jesus’ time people who were suffering mental illnesses would have invariably been described as being ‘demon possessed’ and this morning we meet one such man.

However, this is not a man who has been shut away, this is a man who has been shunned by society, homeless and alone. As a Street Pastor, I would meet many people living on the streets, and I mean literally living on the streets. No home comforts of three-square meals a day or a warm shower every evening. Their beds were the dark corners of a municipal car park on plastic and cardboard, surrounded by the smell of urine and narcotics. No wonder depression and psychiatric illnesses were common. Now that is not to imply that all homeless people will suffer from mental illness, but very often mental health is affected by homelessness.

There was always the need to see beyond the grime and dereliction of self-worth to the child, son, father, husband, mother that this person was before and still needed to be. When Jesus encounters the demoniac at Gerasene his desire was to restore the man, so that he could play his part in telling others what God could do for them.

The casting of the evil spirits into the swine may have produced a spectacle that amazed and terrified its onlookers, but its effect was to bring people running towards Jesus rather than away.

Jesus’ ‘treatment’ of the demoniac was one of love and caring. The people found him at Jesus’ feet, calm and restored, a world away from the human that they had bound in chains and shackles to protect themselves.

Was the demoniac cured? We would hope so. Would he suffer from future psychotic episodes? We would hope not. But what he would be as he returned to live in society, was released from feeling unloved and rejected. His encounter with Jesus had produced a purpose and a mission to tell his story in order that others might come to see for themselves what Jesus could offer them.

Setting aside his medical rehabilitation, this man had found faith. It had been revealed to him through Jesus’ actions, but what had brought Jesus, from the northern town of Capernaum to a place situated about thirty-five miles south east of the southern end of the Sea of Galilee, in a country that was at that time part of Syria, rather than Israel? This is indicated by the fact that a herd of swine was being kept nearby, which would have been forbidden by the Mosaic Law, since swine were unclean animals.

Paul may have been called the apostle to the Gentiles, but Jesus also extended God’s mercy to both people and locations that were outside of Israel, as he did for the Syrophoenician woman’s daughter and here in the Decapolis region. Both of which are an example and foreshadowing of the manner in which salvation through faith in Christ was later to be offered to Gentiles as well as Jews.

This morning the Galatians, in what is now modern-day Turkey were hearing the Good News that all are one in Christ, and that same promise is given to us right here in our church and community. There is no-one that God can’t use to get his message across, and no-one will be rejected if they have faith through Jesus

Within God’s kingdom there is no-one, male or female, sane or insane, gay or straight, believer or non-believer who is not a child of God through faith.

Amen

Initiating Universal Motherhood

Leave a reply

Sermon preached for Mothering Sunday, 14th March 2021 based on readings John 19:25b-27 and Colossians 3:12-17

May I speak and may you hear through the grace of our Lord; Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen

A few years ago, I sat through an interactive Mother’s Day sermon, in which one of the ladies sitting in the congregation was invited to come forward to be part of a demonstration of all of the things that ‘mothers’ need to be skilled in. It started with being asked to hold a multitude of items representing these gifts, including holding a baby, several pots, pans and cooking utensils, an upright hoover and progressed through chalk and easel, chauffeur’s hat, clown’s wig and nose, to steering wheels, first aid kits and judge’s wig, and more…

Of course, it gave an insight into the many and varied roles that mothers play, and apart from the gender role assumptions that were made, it left me thinking that being able to do all of those things didn’t necessarily make you a super mum… and vice versa, not being able to do some of those things didn’t make you in any way deficient as a mother.

The fact that gender does not have anything to do the skills leads me to think that proficiency does not define you as a mother

Without doubt, we should celebrate those women who have devoted their lives to doing all of those things for their children, they are indeed our superheroines, but, quoting Edna from the film The Incredibles, ‘no capes’ are necessary!

Motherhood is not just about the ability to bear children. For some the painful truth is that they are not able to do so, for others there is no desire to do so, and for some it is simply physically impossible.

So, the biological process of giving birth does not signify motherhood. What defines it more accurately is being the person that offers unconditional love and affection. The care, responsibility, behaviour and affection for a child is the true essence of motherhood. For a child, it is the person whom they will look for in difficult times, who can offer reassurance. It is the person who acts as their first mentor, who provides unconditional support, who acts selflessly whilst taking care of their own physical and mental health, but who is willing to provide firm guidance in the child’s journey in life and the struggles that they face in this unruly world.

Motherhood encompasses all the phases of life, hopes, dreams, acceptance, failures, disappointments, repentance and forgiveness. It includes perseverance to raise the child for upcoming life trials and to show the next generation, the various ways of life.

Today’s briefest of gospels exemplifies the nature of motherhood and familial relationships with its image of Jesus’ female followers being alone, bar one disciple, in offering a physical presence in his suffering; but also, in its fulfilment of Christian love.

For Jesus’ mother Mary, it is a bittersweet moment. As a mother she has raised her child, through the miracle of his conception; knowing, as a new mother, the prophetic nature of his life; watching as some of his siblings challenged and rejected him; the awareness that family ties are not the most important thing in life and now seeing her child die at a time out of sync with the normal rhythm of life and death.

Yet, Jesus shows that love is greater than blood ties as he initiates universal motherhood. ‘Woman, here is your son’ and to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother’.

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple
whom he loved standing beside her,
he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ 
Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ 
John 19:26-27a

This was more than giving shelter to a woman, who may have been widowed; as she also had sons who would have been obliged to look after her. It is also more than a providing a mother figure to someone who would have had a mother of their own. This is the state of motherhood which Christians would come to recognise as being that of the church, in its broadest sense and which we recognise and celebrate on this Mothering Sunday.

Of course, this was to be the ideal and we have to acknowledge that the overall patriarchal nature of the church has not always lived up to this; but that shouldn’t stop us from making sure it does for the future.     

As I said at the beginning, motherhood depends on the care, responsibility, behaviour and affection that we have for others, and if we need a reminder of what that should look like then our reading from Colossians spells it out clearly.

At the heart of our relationships with others we need to act with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bearing with each other in times of complaint and offering forgiveness so that we can live in peace with each other. To share wisdom, good teaching and a firm hand of guidance. To be joyful and thankful for everything that we receive from each other and from God. But to above all love one another because that is what binds us together.

That then truly is motherhood, and today we celebrate and are grateful for it.

Amen