Sermon by Rev Sydney Maitland for Sunday 30 March 2025.
Moses found in the river. Fresco from Dura Europos synagogue, Syria, c. 3d century
• First Reading: Exodus 2: 1-11 (Birth of Moses, hidden then committed to the Nile. Rescued by daughter of Pharoah. His mother nurses him)
• Epistle: 2 Corinthians 1: 3-7 (God’s comfort in our troubles, shows us how to comfort others also facing troubles)
• Gospel: John 19: 25-27 (Jesus commits Mary to the care of John)
I think that they call it the School of Hard Knocks. Others may know it as the University of Life. But we have all been there: a place of disappointments, reverses, even betrayals.
It is a place where we withdraw into ourselves and nurse our wounds, trying all the while to maintain a dignified appearance and a sense of calm and control. Inwardly, the feelings will be quite different.
But these are also places where we ask questions: was it me? or was it someone else? Is it all random, within a meaningless universe, with no design or purpose?
And if this is so, then where does our sense of love, loyalty, commitment, even duty come from? Are these purely Darwinian responses or is something else in play?
All of these things challenge our faith and sense of being. They can take us into a pit of despair whose only end is terminal depression.
But it does not have to be like that. There are other options and other ways at understanding the reverses that life throws at us.
For myself, I recall one response – even the place and situation where it came out. It was on a bus when I was reflecting on one particular personal disappointment, leading to a level of distress that I had not known before.
It was the conclusion that I could not believe that there was no point to it all. There had to be a reason for it – a design and a purpose, even if it was well and truly hidden from me.
Maybe this was the point where a dim personal faith came into play: it was definitely a starting point. My church life up to that point had been formal and rather cold. There was no fellowship and it was more about compliance than the worship of God.
For others in our lessons, there were other pointers. In Exodus, we have the birth of Moses and his concealment at home until he became just too noisy and had to be hidden more effectively.
We can only guess at the feelings of his mother as she determined to safeguard him. He would be committed to the waters of the River Nile and she would hope and pray for the best.
It would be a letting go of the youngest of the family, and a release of him into an unknown and incalculable future. There would be no turning back.
Taking pride in her first-born was one thing, but letting go of the youngest and in his most vulnerable state was quite different. We might say that God indeed saw and heard her plight and the desperation of her prayers.
There would be a most unexpected saviour, in the shape of the daughter of Pharoah. Moses would have a privileged upbringing but remote from his own personal family. Always the outsider, and a foil to the heir apparent to Pharoah.
But the starting point was the readiness of his mother to let go: to release him from her care and control. No longer there for those personal intimacies of the close family. Now it would be a life within the royal court, with all its intrigues and conspiracies. Who is in? Who is out? Who is for the chop?
But then there is another aspect of the life of the family.
In the gospel, John tells of how, on the cross, Jesus made provision for His mother. After His death she might have gone back to Galilee. She might have looked for shelter from her family and friends. We are certainly told of how Jesus had other brothers and sisters, who may have been Mary’s subsequent children with Joseph, or have been Joseph’s with a now departed first wife. We are not told directly but the suggestion is that they were Mary’s. Maybe not an issue when the gospels were written.
But Jesus knew that having followed Him from Galilee, His mother now had a deep kinship with His other disciples. There was a shared knowledge and faith, a tableau of experiences that bound the wider group of disciples together.
That was where Mary belonged, and that was the community where John, the beloved disciple would look after her. There could be no other home.
Again, Jesus was looking to the ongoing care of those closest to Him.
When writing to the Christians in Corinth, Paul again looks at how God had sustained him in his personal trials. His life had also been one of uncertainty and of not really having a home.
As a tent-maker, he could travel light. He would have had his own needles and cutting tools, and everything else he would buy wherever he could find work.
He had been shipwrecked, imprisoned, beaten, betrayed, left to hunger, thirst, cold and the heat of the sun. He had been alone, even despondent, and yet the Lord never failed him. Always only a prayer away: closer to him than his own heartbeat.
Paul knew the comforts of God in his personal needs. And being sure of them for himself could also assure others how trustworthy they were.
There are those psalms where God is represented as a mother, caring for and comforting her children. See Psalms 123 and 131.
Always there, always on the look-out, always ready to draw us close with His strength and reassurance. Maybe with a word, a piece of music, the taste of a favourite delicacy, a glorious sunrise or sunset or landscape.
None of this is by accident. The One who made the heavens and the earth also made the family and motherhood within it. He is that intimate with our lives – and the School of Hard Knocks. For he also lived it Himself.
