Blessed?

We were rather subversive last December; we snuck the Bible into Christmas. A few scenes into our Malmesbury Nativity our four young professional actors started telling the story of the birth of Christ. It wasn’t a fancy script with a new gloss, yes we did intersperse some fairly funky carols, but the actors simply used the complete text from the Bible, the New Revised Standard Version – not a word added, not a word taken away. (And I took the credit as the script writer.) I’m still pretty sure that of the 1,300 people that came through the doors a pretty large percentage had no idea that they were simply listening to the Bible.

What of course this meant was that there was no Little Donkey, Good King Wenceslas stayed in Czechoslovakia, and before the Magi arrived in Matthew’s gospel, in Luke’s gospel Mary and Joseph name Jesus on the eighth day and take him after the 40^th day to present him to the Lord at the Temple – events normally left out of the Christmas story. And there, right in the middle of our Christmas narrative the old man Simeon (see picture above) prayed the Nunc Dimittis, blessed the couple and then prophesied our reading for Mothering Sunday: 

This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. (Luke 2:34,35) 

Mary is an astonishing young woman and mother. When she hears from Gabriel that she is to bear the Christ-child she declares in her song ‘from now on all generations will call me blessed.’ And indeed we do, and we recognise that, on top of the natural blessings of motherhood itself, Mary is what our Orthodox brothers and sisters call Theotokos – the God-bearer. But Simeon’s prophecy, magically portrayed by our actors, concludes with the shattering words ‘and a sword shall pierce your own soul too.’ In these few words the cross enters the birth narrative.

As we remember mothers in our lives and in our community this Mothering Sunday, the text set by the Church of England pays attention to the full spectrum of parenting where the richest blessing can sit alongside complexity and heartbreak. In a very short time we will see Mary at the foot of the cross.

It’s not that we have anything against fathers today, they must have some use, but we honour today those who bore us and who walk(ed) in the diverse blessing of motherhood.