A sermon for St Paul’s Church, Ipswich on the Seventh Sunday of Easter, 12 May 2024.
Around the country today and in many other parts of the world people are observing Mothers’ Day.
This year that celebration coincides with a growing awareness of the scourge of domestic and family violence, and indeed the whole of May is dedicated to raising awareness of domestic violence.
More on those matters shortly.
But first, a brief look back at the origins of Mothers’ Day and indeed Mothering Sunday as well.
For churchgoing Anglicans, we have a special celebration of mothers on the fourth Sunday during Lent: Mothering Sunday. That, of course, is the official Mothers’ Day in the UK. However, it is essentially unknown outside the shrinking circle of Anglican Church life.
In medieval times, there was a custom to visit the Cathedral—“mother church”—of the Diocese, or even the local parish church where a person had been baptised as a child on the Sunday that fell halfway through Lent. This was also known as Refreshment Sunday and it offered a brief respite from some of the rigours of Lenten disciplines.
In Early Modern times, servants were sometimes allowed the day off so they could visit their mothers and take some fresh supplies from the kitchen of the great house.
The modern revival of Mothering Sunday in the UK is just over 100 years old, and it was an English response to the development of Mothers’ Day in the USA.
The back story for the development of Mothers’ Day is rather more complex. It begins as a response by women peace activists who were campaigning to ensure that the horrors of the US Civil War (1861–65) were never repeated. That was the war in which my own great-great-grandfather, John Henry Jenks, was killed during the Battle of Cedar Creek at the very end of the war.
In the years following the Civil War, Julia Ward Howell—who we know as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic—appealed for women around the world to work together to prevent future wars. In 1870 she issued the Mothers’ Day Proclamation:
Arise, then… women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient, and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.
That was one courageous woman, even if her prophetic call for women to rise up for peace mostly fell on deaf ears.
Almost 40 years later in 1908, Anna Marie Jarvis held a memorial service in honour of her own mother, Ann Jarvis who was a colleague of Julia Ward Howell. During the Civil War, Ann had worked as a nurse and campaigned as a peace activist. In honouring her own mother, under the cloud of a looming war in Europe, Anna Jarvis triggered the establishment of the modern Mothers’ Day and the reinvention of Mothering Sunday in the UK.
It would be 1924 before the first observance of Mothers’ Day in Australia. So today we mark 100 years of Mothers’ Day here.
Beyond the scourge of war
Back then, the motivation for Mothers’ Day was to empower women to abolish war. It was a grassroots women’s movement for liberation and human flourishing. Who would have thought that behind the commercial flotsam of cards, floral bouquets and restaurant lunches there was such a courageous agenda for profound social change.
And all this at a time when women were finally securing the right to vote!
But now we face another plague of hatred and violence, with women and children suffering at the hands of men who are supposed to love them and care for them.
We have all heard the terrible statistics in recent days.
I was impressed to see these same cruel facts being presented at the Mothers’ Day breakfasted hosted by our local Mothers’ Union branch in the parish hall yesterday morning.
In brief …
On average 1 women is murdered very week in Australia by their current for former partner
By the end of April, the rate this year was about 1 death every 4 days.
And that is just the deaths of women who are beaten and killed by their partners. Even more are injured but do not die. Many of those women are mothers, and their children are caught up in the cycle of violence and sometimes killed as well. How do we count the number of these child victims?
It is a cruel reality.
I know.
I grew up in a home where my father would beat my mother, until the day I was big enough to intervene, even if not big enough to stop my father. At least the beating shifted from my mother to me.
Churches matter
My parents were people of faith, and my family was heavily involved in the life of our local church. We were there several times on Sunday and actively engaged in church life during the week.
How does such violence happen in a Christian home?
Why did we make excuses for Dad rather than address the problem?
The sad truth is that family and domestic violence is more likely to happen in a Christian home than in the average Australian household.
The 2019 National Anglican Family Violence Research Project found that around 23% of Anglicans who have ever been in an intimate relationship reported having experienced domestic and family violence. That is almost 1 in 4 Anglicans who have ever been in an intimate relationship.
We might think it is even worse in the wider society, but that is not the case.
The rate for the general community was 15%.
That is still awful, but it is almost half the rate of domestic and family violence among Anglicans.
There is something about the way we teach people to treat women and girls that encourages violence by the men in their lives.
That is simply horrific.
This Mothers’ Day let’s seek the wisdom of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit to turn that around, and make sure that anyone who we influence treats women and girls as having equal value.
We need to be safe place for women and children.
That can be our gift to Ipswich this Mothers’ Day.
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