Christ Church Moreton Hall

Mothering Sunday forgiveness 

Some people are not sure if this is supposed to be mothering Sunday or Mother’s day.

I prefer mothering Sunday because it gives more attention to activity of mothering rather than on particular group of people.

For in our sad mixed up age, there are many people who have to do mothering who are in fact not biological mothers,

and we need to include and honour them all.

Mothering is more than just giving birth.

Some say giving birth is the easy bit.

 9 months of expectation followed by 24 hours of excitement and pain.

These are just a drop n the ocean compared to the 24 years of pain and frustration, which are about to come your way after the child is born.

For mothering is really about two things both of which have to be done with huge amounts of love.

One is the protection of the child

and the other is development of that child to maturity.

Our reading today Paul takes about putting on the right clothes.

We all have spent ages dressing children why?

There are two reasons. One practical and hygienic and the other social.

The practical reason is so they are protected and kept warm or cool.

We also teach them how it is put on and that it’s clean.

The other reason the social one is so they are acceptable to others

and fit in.

But that is only part of our task we dress the to develop them.

For we are also teaching them to do all that for them selves.

Put the clothes on for themselves

Put on the right things at the right time

Put them on in the right way and make sure they are clean.

This does not just apply to clothes, this applies to every thing we do for children

What Paul says was meant for a church but it could equally to parents and children.

For Paul say the church must get rid of thing it wears that are unbecoming

and put on things appropriate to the new family we have joined.

Once everyone was little better than a slum dweller living on a rubbish heap, as many do in the third world,

Now we are princes and princesses, living in the palace of king Jesus so we need to wear the new clothes he provides. For when we become Christians, we join a new family Father God’s family.

Now he could have said put on success, fame, and power

But he does not, for what we wear effect what we are and what we do.

Success, fame, and power are dangerous things and very few are string enough to have them and use them with out hurting themselves and others.

Remember Jesus more concerned with the content of our characters that the scale of our achievements. That is how he thinks of us as his children.

Now we want the best for our children, but so much of what we are told to do is about developing skills, abilities, and intelligence. Not about Character.

It is more important that that we are honest loyal reliable than famous or even popularity.

It is better to live a simple un-noticed life with these things,

than to have all the success in the world and fail in our relationships,

which is what happens to so many.

We have been learning that the key values we should dress our selves are:

Compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience, Bearing with each other and forgiving each other, forgiving as the Lord forgave us. And putting on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity. 

Today the key theme is forgiveness.

There are two misunderstanding about forgiveness.The first is that it is weakness, that forgiveness all about forgetting about justice. It is what you do when you can’t get your own back.Or it is a refusal to have the courage to punish those who need to be punished.Forgiveness is what you do when there are not enough places in prison for all the bad people top go to. There second misunderstanding comes out of the first one.Somehow forgiveness is just acceptance of a situation rather than change it.A situation has happened in which the family has become divided.We want he family together, so we overlook or forget the impactof what has been done so we are all together againBut for the family to be together, it means those who are injured or angryhave to put up with it and shut up. The sort of forgiveness Jesus wants is a huge and wonderful thing and it starts long before anything goes wrong.1.     Clear boundaries are given for life. They are described and it is also explained why they are there. “Because I say so” is never enough.2.     Clear and just penalties are given out. For failure and the consequences of failure are explained, both what you are being protected from as well as the punishment handed out.3.     The understanding of consequences of failure goes further than the penalties. Some things once broken cannot be repaired4.     The need for true remorse on the part of the person who does bad things. You have to be sorry and mean it.5.     The need for true repentance. That is coming back to the family, living in a new way, and making restitution to those you have hurt.6.     The giving of complete forgiveness. And everything is forgotten. Then and only than can there be true forgiveness and rehabilitation. But if you fail and know you have failed, and if then when you are truly sorry and you find forgiveness, then the liberation that is found is truly life changing. The child who knows all this will be more secure in themselves and their world, and more affirmed and content. They will be wiser than their years, and is more likely to become a mature and well-balanced adult. And all this is best learned from those who mother us if they understand it because they have been forgiven too.If you can teach and model true forgiveness to your child, it is probably one of the best things you can do. Any child who knows what it is to be forgiven and is able to forgive freely from its heart has an almost God like personality. The point is we are all children of God.Our father God has no grand children. Even Jesus calls himself our elder brother.It is he who goes before us and brings us to God.It is he and asks for us to be forgiven, and he does this even at those times when we do not want to be forgiven our sins yet. Now we know that when child disobeys us, say when they go out into the cold with out a coat. We know it can be dangerous for them and we are right to tell them off. But God commands us to dress properly at all times.How many times have we gone out, not in the clothes that he requires but in others ones.How many times have we dressed ourselves with;Indifference rather than compassion,Harshness rather than kindness, and Pride instead of humility,We have been rough when we should have been gentle.Impatient when patience was needed.How many times have we have demanded our rights when we should have born things silently. Oh yes, we may have said we really love people. But supposing what we called love was just a big overcoat,which we flung over the paint stained rags we wear every day, and pretend no one can see what is underneath? Maybe we need to see that for years we have been disobedient children.We need to start dressing as we should and dressing ourselves as he commands.For the values of the clothes he offers are not just because they are the very best. Nor is it because our father God is all-powerful and has the right to command us.It is because of what it cost him to give us to us.Every parent is prepared to go with out so that the child can have what it needs.Every parent will die to save the life of its child if needed.Yet Jesus gave up everything so we could be found and brought back to GodJesus died so we could be forgiven, for everything bad we have done.And he did it all long before we realise we had done anything wrong at all.He gives is the royal robes and asks us to wear them so everyone one will know we are forgiven because we have the power to forgive. This is Mothering Sunday and shortly we will be praying to the father so we will all be better parents. And to say thank you for those who cared us so well. We also know it is a common themes for everyone to complain how bad their parents and to say how they ruined their lives. Wouldn’t be great if we could hear people say: “My parents were not too good, but I want to freely forgive them because I know they tried their best, and I can see their failures were not as bad as some of mine.”Maybe we don’t hear that because we never taught our children how to forgive.And it maybe we don’t know how to forgive because we have never asked Father God to forgive us.And maybe we have never asked because we prefer to dress in the rags of this world rather than the royal robes he offers us.And maybe we don’t dress, as we should because we have not yet learned that we are chosen we are holy and we are dearly loved. So on this mothering Sunday let us learn how to teach our children to forgive. Let us do that by learning how to forgive ourselves.And finally let us get our forgiveness from God.We would never dress our children in rags.Our heaven father does not want us to dress in rags either.Let us put off the foul dress of this world and put on the royal robes of Jesus,which are freely and lovingly given to us.And let us walk in joy peace and freedom that is ours.And let us walk in love.The love that can only be found and shared,when we forgive because we know we are forgiven.Amen