We’ve not had a special Mother’s Day service before, but it seems like a good idea for us to celebrate the mothers among us.
But it’s interesting to look at why people started Mother’s Day in the first place.
- As we do that, we’ll actually need to look back a little into church history (400 years ago!).
- Then we’ll need to look at what the Bible has to say.
- And then we can take a look at what it all means for all of us today.
Whoever you are, whatever your life circumstances, I can promise you some surprises – and, hopefully, much blessing.
These notes accompany a sermon on YouTube delivered on Mother’s Day, 30th March, 2025 at Bromborough Evangelical Church. You can find more sermons in our sermon index.
The first surprise is in the next heading:
Return to Jesus
In truth, the phrase “Mother’s Day” is actually American. The original phrase is “Mothering Sunday”, and it’s over 400 years old in the UK.
Oddly, the date of Mothering Sunday moves from year to year. The reason for that is that it’s always on the 4th Sunday in Lent, and Lent depends on when Easter is. Easter weekend is always after the first full moon after the Spring equinox. So Mother’s Day gets about too.
So Mothering Sunday has its roots in the church calendar. Why?
The Anglican Book of Common Prayer has set readings for each Sunday in Lent, and on the 4th Sunday it’s what we read earlier from Galatians 4, including: But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother (Galatians 4:26). So you get the idea that the church is, in some way, your mother. We’ll come back to Galatians later and see what that means.
So there became a tradition where, on the 4th Sunday in Lent, you’d go back to your “mother church” – the church where you were baptised (or possibly to the local cathedral).
To understand why, we need to see the connection between Lent and Easter.
The Easter Connection
Think about Easter. On that first Good Friday, Jesus Christ was crucified. It was a seismic, cosmic moment. That man was none other than God the eternal Son; he was the eternal Word who became flesh. He was doing it for you.
You are a sinful person, and your offence against God draws his anger. Your sins deserve punishment. But he loves you – with an infinite, eternal passion. That’s actually why your sins are such an offence: You’re spitting in the face of the God who loves you. And because he loves you, he is willing to forgive you – if you just ask him. He can forgive you and still ensure there’s just punishment only by taking your punishment for you. So he did.
Then, on Easter Sunday, Jesus rose from the dead.
And he still lives, and is able to offer you forgiveness and eternal life – because of his death and resurrection. God himself calls you to come to him. Turn from your sin, and ask him to forgive you. He will. The universe changed that weekend. You can change this weekend by coming to the God who came to save you.
Forget penances, pilgrimages, indulgences and mass. God has done all that is required for you to be saved. Ask him.
Turning
Lent is meant to be a time in the calendar when you consider again your own sin, turning from it, remembering again all that God has done for you in Jesus. So the idea of returning to your ‘mother church’ on the 4th Sunday in Lent was actually part of that process. If you’ve drifted in your walk with God, and you’ve dabbled and compromised with sin, it’s a time to go back.
But obviously, the more we make it about “Lent” or returning to your “mother church” we’re in danger of making it all about church, or religion, or liturgy. But you’re not called to Christianity.
God calls you to turn from your sin, and return to Jesus. If you’ve never done that, hear God’s call to do that right now.
But still, where did the idea of a “mother church” come from? We need to look at that passage in Galatians:
Live as a child of promise
Galatians 4:21-31 takes a bit of Bible history and uses it as a kind of allegory.
It starts with one man, Abraham, and his two sons. Read Galatians 4:22-23.
God had promised Abraham a son through Sarah. But because they were both old (long past our retirement age), Abraham took matters into his own hands. He got Hagar, the slave woman pregnant first. So Hagar’s son Ishmael was “born as a result of the flesh”. And Sarah’s son, Isaac, “was born through promise” (God’s).
So now we get some allegories lined up:
- Hagar, the slave woman, is lined up with:
- Mt Sinai, the place where God’s law was first given.
- And that’s connected to the city of Jerusalem, where people were trying to please God only by keeping those laws.
- It was a form of slavery: Read Galatians 4:24-25.
- Those who try to get to heaven by obeying laws are her children – children of slavery.
- So things like giving up stuff for Lent, or getting baptised, or going to mass – things you do in the hope of heaven – it’s slavery. It will fail.
- So, the other woman: She’s Sarah, Abraham’s wife.
- She’s lined up with “the Jerusalem above”.
- Obviously, a different Jerusalem!
- It’s also referred to in the Bible as the “heavenly Jerusalem.”
- And it’s not a place, it’s a people.
The heavenly Jerusalem (Jerusalem from above) is a picture of all God’s people all gathered together. If you’re a Christian, you’re in that heavenly Jerusalem. You’re not there because of anything you’ve done, but because of everything Jesus has done for you.
You’re only ever saved by faith in Christ, not by your own religious efforts.
The heavenly Jerusalem is our mother
So what does it mean to say that “Jerusalem… is our mother”?
- To be in that heavenly Jerusalem is to be a child not of slavery, but of promise.
- It means that you’ve believed what God has promised, and you’ve asked for forgiveness of sin.
- You’re trusting God to save you.
- You’re on the “Sarah” side of things, not Hagar.
- Born of promise; born of grace; born from above.
- A citizen of your mother city, the heavenly Jerusalem.
And that has a bearing for you right now and in the future.
Read Hebrews 12:22-24. Right now, if you’re a Christian, you’re part of that heavenly throng! As we gather here, we gather with them there! Our gathered worship isn’t just us gathering on our own: Your singing is added to the singing of countless millions of others around the throne of God: Praise to Jesus.
And there’s a future reality for being in that city: Revelation 21:1 says, “I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband” – an image of all God’s people on the day of Christ’s return.
You’re to live as a child of promise, a child of the new Jerusalem.
- Your mother isn’t slavery to rules, and law.
- Jesus has kept that for you.
- He has saved you by his death and resurrection.
- By all means, if Lent is helpful to you to go back to him in repentance and faith then do so.
But if the church is your mother (remembering that that’s figurative language, not literal), how can this local church be a mother to you and to others?
What does it mean to be part of that heavenly Jerusalem now?
Be a mother in the church
We come to some practical lessons for this church (for you) as we think about the church as a mother. And this is for everyone here: Young, old, men, women, all of us.
Older women are to mother younger women:
Titus 2:3-5 In the same way, older women are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers, not slaves to excessive drinking. They are to teach what is good, so that they may encourage the young women to love their husbands and to love their children, to be self-controlled, pure, workers at home, kind, and in submission to their husbands, so that God’s word will not be slandered.
Younger women are to mother older women:
1 Timothy 5:16 If any believing woman has widows in her family, let her help them. Let the church not be burdened, so that it can help widows in genuine need.
Mothers and grandmothers teach
Mothers and grandmothers have a key role in teaching young family members (as do fathers and grandfathers, obviously):
2 Timothy 1:5 & 3:15
I recall your sincere faith that first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice and now, I am convinced, is in you also.
You know those who taught you, and you know that from infancy you have known the sacred Scriptures, which are able to give you wisdom for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
Men are to care tenderly
Likewise, men have key caring roles to play. Paul could say he’d cared deeply for the church at Thessalonica.
1 Thessalonians 2:7 Although we could have been a burden as Christ’s apostles, instead we were gentle among you, as a nursing mother nurtures her own children.
Being born again
But what about you who are single, or who never had children?
Think about the church as a mother, this Jerusalem from above:
- How are her children ‘born’?
- It’s not through childbirth. No-one is a Christian simply because they’re brought into a Christian family.
- No, those who are born into the church are those who are ‘born again’ / ‘born from above’.
- John 1:12-13 But to all who did receive him [Jesus], he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
- Or as Jesus said in John 3:3, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again [or from above], he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
So you who never had children, or you who are single, or anyone here who knows Christ as saviour, if you would like this church to see new children of God, what can you do?
- Tell people about Jesus, and pray for their salvation.
- That is how this church, this ‘mother’, will see newborn babes in Christ: Pray for people to be saved. Tell people about him.
Compassion and Comfort
But the church has a role to play in caring for another type of mother. Especially on Mother’s Day.
- Some mothers never get to hold their children.
- Some children are ‘born sleeping’ in stillbirth.
Likewise, there are those who have lost mothers, and grieve.
This church must care as only a mother can: With love, tenderness, sensitivity, compassion.
Weep with those who weep. Don’t hide from pain; go to it.
2 Corinthians 1:3-5 says, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort. He comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any kind of affliction, through the comfort we ourselves receive from God.
- It’s no comfort to say, “I know just how you feel.” You don’t.
- No help saying, “I know what you’re going through.”
- Worse still, “That’s just like me. Let me tell you about me.”
- Those verses call for kindness, gentleness.
- “I hope you don’t mind, but would it be ok if I shared with you how the Lord helped me through a difficult time, a bit like yours?” Share comfort.
Those of you who have suffered any pain or loss, if you have received comfort from the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, you can be a mother to a child of God in pain.
Share the comfort you received, not the pain.
So, what have we seen?
- Mother’s Day is really “Mothering Sunday”
- It’s connected to Lent, which is really all about what Jesus did to save you at Easter.
- Mothering Sunday was a day of returning to your mother church – but you must make it a day to return to Jesus.
- The church is your mother in the sense that we’re all children of promise: The promise God made to save you by faith, not by works. You’re free in Christ, not a slave.
- And then, you can take up your place in Christ’s church, so that others will experience the love of this church (of all of us) like the love of a mother. Take your place in that, to the glory of God.