Reflection:

A little girl asked her mother, "How did the human race start?"

The mother answered, "God made Adam and Eve, they had children and so all of humankind was made."

The little girl walked away, but two days later she asked her father the same question.

The Father answered, "Many years ago there were monkeys from which the human race evolved."

The confused girl returned to her mother and said, "Mom, how is it possible that you told me the human race was created by God, and Dad said they developed from monkeys?"

The mother answered, "It is very simple. Both are true... I told you about my side of the family and your father told you about his."

Moms always seem to have the right answer!

Today is Mother's Day or Mothering Sunday, google states a mother is the female parent of a child. Mothers are women who inhabit or perform the role of bearing some relation to their children, who may or may not be their biological offspring. However, a mother can take many forms and not necessarily female. If you feel that you fulfil the role of a mother for another, regardless of your formal role or gender, may you be blessed in the exercise of that task. If you long or longed to be a mother, and have not been able to be one, may you nonetheless know yourself loved and cared for.

The role of a mother can be very conflicted and has been known to cause conflict. As a mother, you will have brought life into the world, and you may well feel a responsibility for the ongoing nurture and development, the living out of that life which you gave to the world. That sense of responsibility can continue well into the adult life of the child, and can, on occasion, teeter perilously close to control, if not actually tumbling into it.

You may have experienced something of that in your own parents, or you may recognize it in yourself, as a parent. Whatever our experience, we gather today in thanksgiving for having been given life, and for the privilege of bringing and giving life to others. Giving thanks for what has been good in our parenting, and in seeking forgiveness or healing for what has fallen short.

As we gather here in this place, we are reminded that we are away from our mother church and so let us reflect together on what it means to be the mother church. Google suggests the mother church is a term depicting the Christian Church as a mother in her functions of nourishing and protecting the believer. If you are here as a visitor today, I hope you will bear with us as we continue to explore this particular calling, and that you will nevertheless find in our exploration a word of life for you.

The church is like the family home. As the family home, it is a place which should be held in love, and we hope respect. A place where all who are in it should know they have a place, whatever their circumstances. A place which above all should let them know that they are loved. A place to come to celebrate in times of joy; and a place to come to be held, whether tightly or more gently, in times of sorrow and brokenness.

Some of you will be travelling home later today, to be with mothers. Some of you will be welcoming your own children, grandchildren, or great grandchildren. Maybe you will have written cards, or arranged for flowers to be sent, or chocolates. It's amazing what you can do with a few clicks these days - we have come a long way from what used to feel the minor miracle of the early days of Interflora. What were your emotions as you wrote your cards, or made the plans for travel later today? For some of you, it will be quite straightforward: you know you are loved, you know you love in return - and it's simply a day to celebrate that fact. Rather like the line in Baz Luhrmann's film "Moulin Rouge": the greatest thing in all the world is to be loved, and to love in return.

Yet for others, it will be more complex: yes, there was love, almost always, but mingled with other memories and emotions. Inevitably so: the process of growing up is one of flexing against that which brought us to birth, and eventually breaking free. In the best of histories, that breaking free is followed, sooner or later, by rediscovering the relationship as adults, with shared responsibility and a maturing of affection and care on both sides.

I don't wish to embroil you this morning in amateur psychology. However, there are surely parallels to be drawn between our relationship with our physical, earthly mothers, and our relationship with the church. It is the church which gave us new life, in the waters of baptism. The church which has nurtured us and seen us grow. The church which has blessed us and has sometimes asked too much of us. The church we love, and where we are loved - but where we are sometimes driven to distraction. The place where we belong, like it or not.

So, to today's readings: they speak to us, I believe, of home. They help us understand that everyone has a home with God, because of God's reaching out to the world through Jesus Christ - but also reminds us that not everyone has taken up their place - the place that is set for them - around the family table.

And because that is the case - that not everyone has yet discovered that a place is set for them, kept free for them, we are all diminished - because not everyone's there, we're not all there ... and if we are not all there, the family is incomplete. There are spaces at the table. When we gather at family celebrations, if we know someone is missing there is a sadness ... until everyone discovers their home in the Kingdom of God, there is a sadness in our hearts and in the heart of God.

But I am skipping ahead. How can I say that everyone has a home in heaven? Well, it's a promise embedded in the epistle, the first reading, and unpacked and illustrated in the gospel, the second. There, we read that although humanly speaking we might really not want to associate with all sorts of people, people not like us - perhaps either better or worse - we actually don't have the liberty to make those judgments anymore. It's the same as with Christ: left to our own devices, we might just have seen him as an inspiring teacher who promised great things but who came to a sticky end - but now we know that he is the Saviour of the world, the man who was somehow God walking amongst us, who passed through death to everlasting life, and invites us to share that everlasting life with him. We look at him differently, and so we look at ourselves, and everyone else differently too.

With Christ's death and resurrection, everything starts again: what looked like an ending became a beginning.

This is our ministry and message: the reconciling love of Christ, bringing all the world back home to the Father, through what came to be known as the mother church. No matter how total the devastation, within or about us, there is always the love of God and a window of hope.

The windows of our church symbolize in all the richness of their colour and design the light of God's hope, his love and his salvation pouring into our world and our lives - revealing them in their true and wonderful colours, just as God sees them.

If there is a continuing tragedy, it is not just that our world still needs this message just as it did so many years ago, but that the message of God's abundant and astounding love remains unheard and unknown by so many. Even, if truth be known, by so many of us, as we struggle to allow ourselves to be held by God and embraced in his love. There is a deep vulnerability in that place -the place of healing where our hurts are gently exposed and cleansed - which means we can find it difficult to find our way there. Can we trust? We have learned to stand on our own two feet: to be gathered back to God's arms is to return to childlike dependence. That's not easy.

But our church is a place of reconciliation. And to be that the barriers have to come down. And for us to be a reconciling people, we have to know reconciliation for ourselves.

Our reading today contains a wonderful picture of reconciliation, of the young son literally coming to himself, coming back to his true identity as a beloved child and falling into his father's arms. It seems a shame there is no mention of the mother - but perhaps she always knew he'd come back! Yet there's something about the story which only takes us halfway to the truth of the gospel, if I may be so bold: if it was really true to the gospel, the father might have gone and eaten pods in the pigsty with the son until he was ready to come home.

God's love comes to us wherever we are - astonishingly, he makes his home with us until we are ready to come home with him. You may need to know that for yourself. Or you may need to ask how can we embody that truth as we exercise the ministry of reconciliation on Christ's behalf today? Are we ourselves going out to where those who are lost may be found? And are we welcoming them into the home which is both theirs and ours when they return?

I've spoken quite a lot about home today. The message of the gospel is that we have a home in the Kingdom of God, an eternal home, which no one can take away. It is a home which should find an embodiment, some physical expression, in the church. Our church should be a foretaste of heaven. Those of us who have the privilege of being here week by week bear a special responsibility to make it that for those who visit, and for the community which we serve. If you are visiting or you attend regularly, I hope that you are at home here, and that you know yourself loved.