For those who want a change from the Gospel

Mothering Sunday – Psalm 127

Now that we’re all woke up it has become almost a cliché to say that Mothers’ Day can be a very difficult day for many people, so while some of us are busy celebrating mums who love us, of course others will be missing those who have died, or grieving for difficult or even estranged relationships, or desperately wishing that they could become mums themselves. Today really is a minefield, and our thoughts and prayers need to be sensitive to whose who have different things to say to God. I have chosen from the options Psalm 127, another of the Psalms of Ascent which we have looked at previously, perhaps used during a pilgrimage to the Jerusalem Temple for a major festival. Psalm 127 is also a Wisdom Psalm, containing teaching on how to live well. Whilst it seemingly has two unconnected parts, v.1-2 about the need for reliance on God if we are to be successful and v.3-5 about the blessings of children, there may be an interesting precedent for linking these two themes. We have a song from the Sumerian empire, the oldest known human civilisation which dates back to around 5500BC in southern Iraq. This is a song of praise to the goddess Nisaba who was believed to be the deity without whom no house, palace or city can successfully be built, but who also built families through her gift of children. It may be that this song was known and used later for the worship of Yahweh. It is unlikely either that the ‘house’ is the Temple, or that the author was Solomon, easy though it may be to make those connections. Interestingly Deuteronomy 25:9, among other places in the OT, refers to ‘building up’ the family line through bearing children.

So actually this is not a Psalm in praise of mothers or motherhood, but rather of the God who grants children and builds up the community through them. In biblical thought children, and sons in particular, were the first line of defence of the family when times became hard, particularly for widows with no husbands to provide for them. The picture of your kids as arrows in your quiver speaks of this idea of children as weapons of survival. And of course sons born early in your life will be reaching their prime just as you are getting a bit past yours! This idea is perhaps echoed in the NT’s instructions to children to care for their parents, an apposite comment in a time when we have the ability to pay for others to care for our elderly.

What else can we learn about God from this text? Our dependence on him, of course. It is customary in Church to begin business meetings with a prayer that God will guide us, and the more seriously we take that prayer, according to this text, the more likely we are to be successful in our enterprises. It can be so easy simply to pray the prayer and then get on with our own agendas. After many years of chairing PCC meetings I think I would say that the times when we have most clearly known God’s very specific guidance have been the times when we have been most desperate. God loves it when we simply have nowhere else to turn but to him: that’s why he allows us to get there from time to time. But perhaps it can also give some help to those who are parents about how we treat our kids. I realised pretty early on as a parent that the most important part of my role was always to treat my kids as God would treat them, so that I would reveal through earthly parenting what divine parenting was like, and how my imperfect fatherhood was completed and perfected in the fatherhood of God. That meant, of course, that I had to know how God would treat them in any given situation, which meant that my own discipleship became a vital task if my parenting was to be the best it could. We rarely think of parenting as a theological task, but it really is, and it’s one which doesn’t end when our kids leave home.

Therefore I’m reassured by the first part of the Psalm. Unless God is involved in my parenting, unless he builds me up so that I can build up others, it’s all in vain. Like all parents I felt, and continue to feel, daunted by the task, so it’s great to know that behind all my hard work, joy and tears is the wisdom of a loving Father who, if I let him, will work together with me to build a strong family. You’ll have to ask Steve, Paul and Vicki how well God, their mum and I have done between us!