Mothering Sunday: On experience
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: 1 Samuel 1:20-end,Psalm 127:1-4, 2Corinthians 1:3-7, Luke 2:33-35
Experience changes us. Not just through memory and expectation. But it changes how we see and experience the world. It changes our understanding, Our framework.
I am colour-blind. My brain can’t differentiate between green and grey so it guesses. Sometimes I will see a green wall and Rhiannon will point out that it’s actually grey; Or I’ll see a lovely grey cardigan, And Rhiannon will point out that it’s green. But the strange thing that happens is this: Once she’s told me – Supplied my humble brain with that added information. I will see it as the colour I’ve been told. My brain says “thank you very much” and changes the colour I am seeing. Weird.
What I’m saying is, experience can change what we see. So when in 1942, radar observers failed to notice the two German warships, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisenau enter the English channel, it wasn’t a momentary lapse in concentration, or because they’d nipped off to make a cup of tea, but a prolonged period of concentration trained their brains to ignore what was on the screen in front of them – even though that was precisely what the observers were there for! Their prolonged experience prevented them seeing what had changed.
Our eyes seem so trustworthy, we tend to view them as objective – our direct window onto reality. We forget that our eyes are filtered through our brain. And our brains are constantly editing. They focus on what they expect to be important. They exclude what seems peripheral. Their lens is shaped by their experience.
Experience can be good, can be bad. We tend to see it as expanding our understanding, even when it’s bad. The Italians haven’t won a 6 Nations game since 2015 – the last time against Scotland obviously – But that doesn’t mean the players haven’t grown and improved in the last 5 years. But bad experience can also narrow our vision and distort our understanding – as is the case with trauma. Repeated experience can help us to anticipate and recognise likely outcomes. But it can also blind us to the unexpected. If we think it’s all happened before we won’t see what’s new.
We can see the conflict of these positions in the classic Mother’s Day track: Father and Son by Cat Stevens aka Yusuf Islam. The older voice advising a patient conservativism, the younger voice demanding change.
While Mothering Sunday historically relates more to Mother church than actual mothers – culturally it’s Mothers who have the ascendancy and our readings today reflect that. Our Old Testament reading tells of Hannah who, after struggling to have children, dedicates her child, Samuel, to the Lord. Our psalm reminds us that children are a blessing. The last verse of the psalm is omitted which is a shame because it’s my favourite. It reads: ‘Happy are those who have their quiver full of [children]: they shall not be put to shame when they dispute with their enemies in the gate.’ It doesn’t say but I assume the psalmist meant the school gate. I like to imagine Natasha Hume or Helen Hargreaves going to collect their quiver of children, and lording it over their enemies.
The Gospel relates the amazement of Jesus’ parents at the prophecies made of their boy, but poignantly includes the pain that accompanies parenting. I can’t speak to the experiences of motherhood. And there are many who do not experience parenting, and that may be a particular loss and burden. But anyone who has become a parent, will know something of the transformations that occur in how you experience and relate to the world.
A friend of mine said to me shortly before Oberon was born: ‘you’ll never be able to watch nature documentaries in the same way’ and confessed to weeping at the trials of anonymous animals – a baby seal who was untimely ripped from the icecap by the mauling paw of a polar bear. And of course the constant terror of injury and death, The unreasonable responsibility placed on men to prevent falling and choking and drowning and the myriad ways this tiny collection of particles could come to harm. Oh, and the feelings – of impotence, frustration, contentment, exhaustion, love –
Batter my heart [small, break-neck] god, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine and seek to mend,
That I may rise and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn and make me new.
Children are something like gods in the way they overthrow our lives and transform us, Bruising us with sleepless, noisy, nights – With constant watchfulness, Consuming energy from every part of lives, sucking us into their orbit, But overwhelming us with love we did not know we had in us. With a standard of dirty beauty, breathless innocence, and careless devotion that we thought only existed in fairytales – but now crushes against us in the most painful delightful overwhelming way. Who is not changed by parenthood? Who is not forced to re-evaluate everything in the light of such urgent intense need and attention?
Only of course in the Gospel we have this early warning: ‘And a sword will pierce your own soul too’ Like the evil fairy this prophecy hangs over the gospel – Mary’s experience in this I cannot comprehend. But grief is also an experience that transforms us. All grief is different and I wouldn’t dare speak to another’s grief. But I have seen the devastation losing a parent even in your 70s can create; That even a lifetime cannot prepare you for.
I have experienced sudden grief for a friend that changed me. I would have guessed before that grief eases with time, you become accustomed to loss and the memories and emotion fade. That is not my experience. I have found that the grief remains the same. The person’s presence remains hauntingly with me. But I accommodate myself to him in this form. I can light a candle for him. He does not diminish, but I have adapted to this new strange absence presence in my life. This will not be everyone’s experience but no one whose world has been turned upside down in this way can think of ‘getting back to normal’.
Faith can also operate in this way. Hannah’s overwhelming joy at the answer to prepare leads her to give her most precious child to the care of another. St Paul in our second reading finds now that even the most terrible suffering – with this new experience he has of God and Christ – Has its consolation in faith. And this faith brings him closer to empathize and share in joy and hardship with his fellow Christians. Mary receives these promises, good and bad, becoming a mother in the knowledge that this the baby will not only change her world but the world.
Life’s most urgent experiences – love, grief, faith – don’t add something to us – Or take something away. They change us. Every other experience is felt and understood differently when there is a mewling piglet in the cot, when the permanent fixture in our life is removed; When we have found eternity and the love of God, which gives shape and meaning to creation. And I suppose a second child won’t be just more of the same, but another hurricane passing through our lives.
And actually every experience: Every novel read, every piece of music performed, every child who enters our lives, every warship that suddenly appears in the channel; every sermon delivered, every sacrament received is not intending to add another experience, to tick off another item from the bucket list, but is seeking to change us somehow; to nudge us in the direction of beauty, truth and love; and eternity.
And for all that children take from us, For all that death can take from us, And even the sacrifices we make during Lent; These are the things that bring new colour to our lives. They can turn a horizon from grey to green; And transform us with an experience that meets us with the force of a revolution. Amen.