Mother and Child Reunion

Tracy Niven
Friday 31 March 2023

Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Exodus 2:1-10; Luke 2:41-51

Mothering Sunday has medieval roots.  Mid-way through Lent, people would return to their mother church, where they’d been baptised.  A mother and child reunion.  I very much doubt that was in Paul Simon’s mind when he wrote the song Mother and Child Reunion.  In fact, he’s said he was imagining what it would be like if he lost his wife in an accident.  But this 1972 song, recorded in Jamaica, has been in the back of my mind all week:

No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day
But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away

Of course in the University, most students have a mother or two, often collected in a dimly-remembered moment in Club 601 – before the roof was condemned – during a Freshers’ Week mixer.  Third year students, between throwing some Honours-level shapes on the dancefloor, approach unsuspecting freshers and give a garbled explanation of academic families.  Contact details are exchanged, and if all goes well, so begins a relationship which may involve a number of mother and child reunions – at Raisin, May Dip and throughout the rest of life.  I’m pretty sure I’ve conducted the wedding of at least one mother to her son.

More seriously, as chaplains, we often hear from students about their relationships with their parents, including their mothers.  And we listen in confidence to a huge range of feelings about mothers.  Sometimes a student describes how good Mum is in listening, loving and letting the student share what they’re facing.  That’s always terrific to hear.  Students often worry about their parents, and can be affected by their mother’s difficulties with her health, her marriage, other children in the family, a parent’s struggles with alcohol or food.   There are students who have faced the death of a mother or a father, and we help them navigate their lives with that loss.  Grief groups can help.

Sometimes the relationship between students and parents can be tricky.  Some students feel embarrassed or ashamed about their problems and feel they can’t tell their parents – I don’t want to let them down, they say.  There are students who find their parents don’t respond well when they share they have anxiety or depression, or ADHD or autism – and so the student feels blamed for their condition.  There are mothers and fathers who put pressure on students to be the person the parent wants them to be – when the student knows they can’t be that person.  I’m thinking of students who know they’re not getting a top degree, or who may not be suited to University life at all, and struggle to be accepted by parents.  I’m thinking of students who follow a different faith from parents, and feel they have to hide it.  I’m thinking of students who are LGBTQ+ and are rejected by their parents when they come out to them.  Or who feel they can’t come out to their parents at all, in case they stop funding their education.  These difficulties are often all the harder if there is deep love in students for their parents.

Chaplains hear from mothers too.  We meet lots of parents on the opening weekend in September, proud and anxious about the life opening up for their student.  We sometimes meet them again at chapel services, and often at graduations, just as proud, and usually a little less anxious, and joyfully, at weddings right here.

It’s not always easy being the parent of a student: a St Andrews student who had just received their provisional licence offered to drive their parents to church. After a wild ride, they finally reached their destination. The driver’s mother got out of the car and said, “Thank you”. “Anytime”, her child replied. As the woman slammed the door, she said, “I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to God”.

On occasion we meet parents at times of fear – by the bed of their student in hospital.  Saddest of all, as Chaplains we spend time with parents when their student-child has died.  I cannot truly imagine what it is like to be a mother who has lost her daughter – but I have listened to their pain and sorrow, and held them, and tried to walk with them.

Staff members also share issues around parenthood and childhood – difficulties with ageing mothers, or with their own children, miscarriage and loss.  For students and staff, for children and parents – those family relationships matter, and it is good if, at least once a year on Mothering Sunday, we can pay them the attention they deserve.

Our scripture readings today are stories of mother and child reunions.  First, the story of Moses.  The setting is Egypt, where many Hebrews lived, whose ancestors went there following Joseph’s time as chief minister during famine.  In time Egyptians resented this immigrant population, and the king, the Pharaoh, issued a decree that all male Hebrew children be killed.  It’s to keep Moses alive that his mother puts him in a basket, a mini-ark, and lets him go among the reeds of the River Nile.  He’s spotted by Pharaoh’s daughter, Moses’ older sister offers to help, and Moses’ own mother is found to breast-feed the child – who is her own son.  A mother and child reunion.  Then when the boy is weaned, that is no longer needing the breast, he is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.  A community of women protect the child – I can’t help but feel they all know what’s going on, and work together.  His mother let Moses go, at three months old, and then perhaps again at three years old – so that he and the nation would flourish.  [We see Moses with his mother and sister on the cover of the order of service, preparing to let him go.]

Then we heard the story of Jesus aged 12, who was left behind in Jerusalem following the Passover one year.  You may be wondering – how could Mary and Joseph leave him behind, and not notice?  Well, commentators say that the whole village of Nazareth may have travelled to the Passover, and that the women and men may have left separately, only to be reunited as they made camp at the end of the first day.  So maybe Mary thought he was with Joseph, and Joseph thought he was with his mother.  Anyway, the second day they returned to Jerusalem, fearful, perhaps blaming each other.  Then, on the third day, they found Jesus.  Another mother and child reunion.  He hadn’t come to any harm – indeed, he made the point that he was in the right place, the Temple, his Father’s house, meaning God’s house, learning from the teachers there.

Jesus was 12 – around the age of Bar Mitzvah, becoming a Son of the Covenant, becoming an adult.  And in a way, Jesus is asserting his independence from Mary and Joseph, as adolescents do.  Luke says he went back with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them.  And yet I see both dependence and independence in him in this story, both the child of his parents, and someone following his own path.  Mary and Joseph are sensing that they need to let him go, so that he and the whole world can flourish.

Let’s return to the 21st Century, and to this University community.  We celebrate motherhood today.  And there is, for many people here or watching online, countless reasons to give thanks for mothers and to mothers.  But faith is not only for the good times, it has to face the hard things too.  Often, it seems to me, at the heart of problems between people and their parents is holding on, not letting go.  Parents can hold on to their own image of their child long after it’s accurate or helpful.  Parents can sometimes only see the one they’ve given birth to and brought up as they want to and not as their beloved child has become.  Maybe with the best of intentions, they hold on to their child as – a specific religion, a particular form of faith, as straight, as a particular gender, as following a definite sexual ethic or purity code, as having to study for a particular future, as having to be a brilliant success.

It’s not easy to let any of that go.  And if I were a parent myself, perhaps I wouldn’t preach this sermon.  But I listen to students and staff – sons, daughters, mothers, fathers, children, parents – and I long for some people to learn the beautiful art of letting go, of facing the fear of letting go, and finding the courage to let go.  This is not abandonment: this is recognising that love does not coerce, but allows the beloved to live in freedom, and be the person they are called to be.  This can allow a better relationship to be possible, more honest and more supportive.  This is the deep and abiding love which Moses’ mother had for him, and the other motherly figures in his life – his older sister Miriam, and his adoptive mother, the daughter of Pharaoh.  This is the love which Mary had for her son Jesus, which let him be teacher, healer, teller of tales, and man of sorrows, and which took her to be there at the cross when he died.  This is the way I believe God loves us, as a father or a mother, which does not coerce, but accompanies us in our freedom, to make mistakes, get things wrong, and learn to take responsibility within God’s community.

The mother and child reunion is only a moment away, according to Paul Simon.  We give thanks for those family relationships which offer acceptance, joy and support.  We recognise that some relationships are hugely painful, and there is no easy reconciliation to be had.  But we also pray for those who long for reunion, that in love we can let go, and delight in the God-given life of the one we love.

END

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