The Jerusalem above is our Mother

Galatians 4:26-5:1       St John 6:5-14

The Jerusalem which is above is free,
which is the mother of us all.

Some might say that Lent is a season to be sorrowful for our sins, a time of mourning.  And certainly there are times within Lent where that is appropriate – when the Spirit reveals our brokenness, and especially as we come to Holy Week, leading to Good Friday.  But my greatest Christian teachers have stressed that Lent is a time of the lightening of burdens as we see and then cast off sin, it is about the recovery of joy, about the breaking in of new life, new love, as we take time to refocus on what is most essential in life – our relationship with Jesus Christ, and a right love of our neighbour.  Jesus says,

When you fast, don’t have a sad countenance, but anoint your head and wash your face, so that it may not appear that you are fasting, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.

In the Newsletter I spoke about other names for this Sunday – Refreshment Sunday and also Laetare or “Rejoice” Sunday.  That name comes from the traditional Introit music sung from Isaiah 66:10 – “Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her all you who love her, rejoice with her in joy.”  (RC churches wear pink instead of purple vestments on this Sunday.)  We picked up on this theme in our Gradual Psalm this morning, Psalm 122.  There is joy as we draw closer to the house of the Lord: “I was glad when they said unto me: We will go into the house of the Lord.  Our feet shall stand in thy gates, O Jerusalem…”  We are following Jesus on this Lenten pilgrimage to the holy city.

May joy be the consequence of our Lenten disciplines.

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But this Sunday is also called Mothering Sunday in England and is the origin of Mother’s Day, that has been taken up in secular societies in the West.  In England the tradition was to go from your parish church to the mother church of the Diocese, the Cathedral on this Sunday.

The Mothering Sunday tradition comes from the readings that we heard.  In the Epistle reading, St Paul describes two mothers, Hagar, who gave birth to Ishmael, and Sarah, who gave birth to Isaac.  The one was a slave-woman, the other was a free-woman.  And Paul says these are allegories or figures of two covenants.  The Old Testament covenant from Moses, can lead to a kind of slavery, if it is seen as an end in itself, instead of provisional.  The Old Covenant reveals the way of love in the Law, but only leads us to see that we cannot fulfil it.  Rightly understood, it makes us cry out for a Saviour.  But the New Testament covenant from Jesus leads us to – “the Jerusalem above, [which] is free, and she is our mother.”  It is free for us, because we no longer see ourselves as needing to obtain the high demands of the Law to be saved.  Instead, under the New Covenant, we cry out to a Saviour, Jesus, who by promise, and His perfect self-offering, enables us to be justified by faith, even now perfectly right with God, fully His children by adoption and grace.  And then, we are sanctified in body and soul, through our union with Jesus, through the gift of His Spirit, made able, in time, to fulfill the high demands of the Law of love.

The “Jerusalem above”, the heavenly city, is the Church, in all times and in all places, a mystical body, in heaven and on earth, formed by Christ, and being adorned and beautified by Christ over time.

Why is the Church described as “our mother”?

Our earthly mother gave us life from her own body, she nurtured us from her own body, she held us close, sang to us, she taught us to speak, shared her wisdom with us as we grew, she called us to account, we learned from the earliest age most tangibly from her what love is and what it is not.

Mary gave birth to Jesus, and so is an image of the Church, because the Church on earth brings Christ to birth in us and so is our spiritual mother.  Through baptism in the Church, we are brought to a spiritual birth.  We believe we are given the Holy Spirit, to dwell in us, giving us the capacity to grow in love and wisdom.

The Church becomes our teacher more and more in the spiritual life, she shares her wisdom with us, not just from this age, but a wisdom gathered up through the ages, she gives us a vision, gives us hope, and she sometimes calls us to account.  That sharing of wisdom is through the teachers but also through the fellowship and friendship with other Christians.  We learn most tangibly, in the Church, by examples in our midst, from fellow Christians, what love is and what it is not.

In the Church we are also fed and nurtured throughout our lives on the Bread of heaven, the mystical body of Christ.  Which brings us to our Gospel today.

In John’s Gospel, unlike the other gospels, there is no account of the institution of the Lord’s supper on his last night.  Instead of that account, John elaborates on two miracles which both point to Holy Communion: the Marriage at Cana, where Jesus changed water into the best wine [2:1-11]; and Jesus’ miracle of the loaves and fishes that we heard this morning.  In this same chapter, after today’s Gospel reading, Jesus speaks more fully about the bread of heaven and of our need to be fed from above to have life.  Jesus says, I am the bread of life, and, the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh, and, Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life. [6:35, 51, 54]  This is the bread of the New Covenant that sustains us in our earthly wilderness wanderings to the promised Land.

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Many of us can have a rough patch for a time with our own mothers as we were growing up.  It was perhaps necessary, in order for us to individuate, to become an individual, since being too close to our mother can stifle or hinder our growth.  Sometimes we were disappointed and even angry when we discover our mother wasn’t perfect.  But hopefully we move to a new relationship after the rough patch where we come to love our mother and recognize her humanity, her imperfection, and care for her with an authentic and grateful, not merely dutiful, love.

As we can have a rough patch with our own mothers, when we realize they are not perfect, so can we have a rough patch with the Church, when we see human failing in her or unhealthy manifestations of the religious life.

It can be helpful to remember that the Jerusalem which is above, the invisible Church, is not identical with the visible Church on earth, but is to be found within it and beyond it.  There are those outside of the present boundaries of the Church who are nonetheless a part of it and are to be drawn in.  And we are in fact warned by Jesus to expect some confusion within it. Jesus told the parable of the wheat and the tares – the good and the bad seed grow alongside and within the same field.  We are to trust that God will sort it out in the end. (St Matthew 13:24f)

Hopefully, if we have had a disappointment that has led to a break with the visible Church, we can in time come to be reconciled with its imperfection, seek its improvement, perhaps we have moved to another local church or denomination (though we quickly discover wherever we go, we find both the good and the bad).  Our call is to love and support and contribute to the upbuilding of the earthly manifestation as the Church because in some way, mysteriously, it embodies the invisible Church that is above.  (This is something for Anglicans to reflect on in their current crisis.)

It is not good to turn our back on our mother.

Usually when we think of our mother, we think of growing up and no longer needing to rely on her.  This is where the analogy with the Church is different, because in fact what we are being led by the Spirit into an eternal Church, the body of Christ, a spiritual and divine community.  It is a place where we can be authentic, where our relations with others are authentic, where there is true and deep and lasting friendship, where there are solid joys and lasting treasure. That is how it is described in our final hymn today.  So in this sense we don’t grow out of our Mother, the Jerusalem that is above, but into her.

St Augustine wrote some beautiful words about this in his Confessions.  Here is a prayer where he speaks about that heavenly Jerusalem as our end, our homeland, the city of God:

Entering my secret chamber, I shall sing to You (O God) songs of love, with groanings that cannot be uttered; in my pilgrimage remembering Jerusalem, reaching out towards her with heart uplifted; Jerusalem my homeland, Jerusalem my mother.  I shall remember You (O God), her ruler, her illuminator, her father, her guardian, her spouse; You her pure and strong delight, You her solid joy, You all at once all good ineffable, because You are the one true, highest Good.

I shall not turn aside until I reach that place of peace, Jerusalem, my dearest mother, where my first fruits are already, from whence comes my certainty; I shall not turn aside ‘till You, my God, my Mercy, shall gather in all that I am, from this dispersion and deformity, and conform it and confirm it in eternity.  [Confessions, XII, 16, 23]

Today as we reach the mid-point of our Lent – we are hopefully transforming more of our desires from the earthly to the heavenly.  Here, in the Holy Communion, we have opportunity to be reassured of forgiveness, and to be nurtured spiritually – to be strengthened in body and soul, re-membered, become once again restored members of the Body of Christ, the Church, the Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all.

“I was glad when they said unto me:
We will go into the house of the Lord.
Our feet shall stand in thy gates,
O Jerusalem…”

Amen +