March 26th, 2026
Hello everyone, and welcome to this week’s video.
Now, I don’t want you to think that I’m spending my entire life away from Hereford, but its quite fun to be in a different place each week. This week I’m in Rochester for a Bishop’s cell group meeting. Putta came from Rochester to become Bishop of Hereford in 676. One of my predecessors, Linton Smith, went the other way from Hereford to be the Bishop of Rochester in 1930. He earned a DSO in the trenches of the Somme and was mentioned in dispatches as an army chaplain.
A couple of weeks ago we marked Mothering Sunday on the 4th Sunday of Lent. I have to let you into a little secret in that I rather dread preaching on the day. It has become a wonderful celebration of mothers and motherhood. We give out flowers and quite rightly make a fuss of them. But I remember when I was a vicar looking out across a congregation that was very mixed, and for whom the general celebration was difficult. Some had been unable to be mothers; some were estranged from their children; some had been through the unimaginable pain of losing children and were carrying that pain every day. Some I know used to give the day a miss.
It wasn’t always thus. Mother’s Day as we now celebrate it was an early 20th century invention instituted by Anna Jarvis an American Congregationalist and later hijacked by Hallmark cards. Its said she regretted it’s commercialisation towards the end of her life. The original festival emerged from the old lectionary epistle for the day from Galatians 4: 26 which speaks of Jerusalem our mother. It was a time for people to return to their spiritual roots, ideally their place of baptism. Apprentices and those in service were given the day off to return home and it became a custom for them to pick hedgerow flowers on the way home to give to their mothers, hence the current practice.
One of the lectionary readings for the day this year was Exodus 2: 1-10, the story of Moses being put in a basket in the Nile to escape Pharaoh’s edict to have all the Israelite male children killed. He is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and subsequently grows up in Pharaoh’s court before an extended time of exile, followed by returning to lead the Israelites to freedom. The Bible often uses irony to demonstrate God’s sovereign purposes, and the reading is especially relevant to those who are struggling with the pain as well as the joy of motherhood. Not just that, but in the wider context of wars across the world, where might we find comfort? What is God doing in the midst of all this?
In the story Pharoah is adopting a cruel response to his ‘immigrant problem’ much emulated subsequently by the likes of Adolf Hitler, Slobodan Milosevic and Rwandan’s Hutus. But his genocidal intentions in which you expect him to be holding all the cards are cleverly subverted. He thinks the power is his, but in the story the power really lies with all the women. The more the Israelites were oppressed, the more they multiplied – rather like the experiences of many churches in the context of persecution today. Moses’ mother saves him by obeying Pharaoh’s edict to put him in the river! She gets paid to breast feed her own son by the daughter of the King who commanded he be murdered. She gets paid to do what she wanted to do anyway. A member of Pharaoh’s family saves the one who will destroy his dynasty. Pharaoh through his own daughter is effectively paying for his own destruction. Later, as Moses grows up, he goes to school in the Palace to receive the best training in statecraft, government, law and administration the ancient world had to offer. Could it be preparing him for something later perhaps? God’s action, never overruling human freewill, none the less uses it for a good end. As Joseph reflected with his brothers after they sold him into slavery, “God meant it for good”. Paul reflects in 1 Corinthians 1: 25, for the foolishness of God is wiser that human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength. God works through those who have no obvious power to achieve what seems impossible.
And next week we will remember the greatest of all biblical ironies. The greatest possible evil – the judicial murder of the Son of God, becomes the greatest possible good – the redemption of the world. The resurrection shows us that all these questions about God’s action happen against the backdrop of eternity. There is a world beyond this one. As Paul reminds us in 1 Corinthians 15, if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. The ultimate irony becomes the salvation of the world. That is the good news we have to share.
+Richard