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Thought for the
Week 2 March 2008 – Mothering Sunday
All the
empires that there have ever been in the world, up to and including the The
Egyptian Empire was certainly based on slavery, and even the pyramids, at
which we marvel some four thousand years after their construction, were built
by a country with a slave economy, even if, as some archaeologists believe,
the pyramids were built by forced labour, rather than slave labour. A perennial problem for slave economies is
the possibility of slave revolt.
Historically, a good proportion of dynasties have sprung out of slave
revolts. From
our point of view, the distinction matters little. The Children of Israel were a virile,
foreign immigrant labour force, and they posed a threat to the stability of a
society that had become overly bureaucratic and effete (does any of this
sound familiar in our society today?)
Accordingly, the Pharaoh (i.e. probably Rameses II) decided to limit
the threat the Children of Israel posed in a crude and brutal way. All their baby boys were to be strangled at
birth. However
the bravery and compassion of two women thwarted Pharaoh’s evil plans. The two Midwives for the Children of
Israel, Shiphrah and Puah, feared God, and refused to carry out Pharaoh’s
murderous plans. Pharaoh
therefore changed his plans, and simply ordered the Children of Israel to
throw all male babies into the River Nile. Moses
was therefore born under sentence of death.
In fact, the bravery and compassion of three more women, two Jewish
and one Gentile saved him. First his
mother, who came of a priestly family, hid him in the house, and then, when
she did finally obey Pharaoh, instead of just throwing her baby in the river
Nile, she put him in a little basket, waterproofed with pitch, put it in a
safe reed bed on the bank, and set his big sister, Miriam to watch over
him. Pharaoh’s daughter, who found
him, knew at once that Moses was a Hebrew baby, and she should have obeyed
her father’s order, and have had him thrown into the river, but she had
compassion upon him. She took him, and
brought him up as her own child, employing his own mother as a nurse. I want
to introduce you to one of the most influential people in history. A thousand years before the birth of Moses,
Sargon of Akkad (often called Sargon the great) was born. He lived from about 2333 to 2279 BC. His mother too was of a high priestly
family, and his father was a gardener, or, more likely, an estate
manager. Sargon too was under threat
of death by the King. Having been
cupbearer to Ur-Zubaba, King of the For the
next two thousand years, emperors modelled themselves on Sargon the great,
and confusingly, two of them took his name.
They were Sargon I of Assyria (1920 – 1881 BC) and Sargon II of The
miraculous story of Moses’ birth is pretty much exactly the same as the story
of Sargon’s birth, according to the legend of his life that we have, which
was written in the 7th Century BC.
History in the ancient world was told by generations of story tellers,
who had the gift to learn and recite – it was only much later that things
came to be written down. In the
case of Moses, who incidentally bears an Egyptian name, the story “rings
true”. How else could a Hebrew slave
(or immigrant labourer for that matter) gain the ear of Pharaoh, and lead his
people to freedom in the promised land?
In the case of Sargon, the basket and river all seem very elaborate,
and very unnecessary. Perhaps the
story of Moses has actually been borrowed, and re-applied to Sargon, at the
time of his namesake, Sargon II of But if
Sargon the Great is immensely important in the history of the world, Moses is
even greater in the history of our Salvation. Moses
is saved from the sentence of death of an oppressive regime, by the bravery
and compassion of five women, each of whom, in their different ways, risks
their life to do what they believe to be right. From these brave and compassionate women,
Moses acquires the vision and the resources to answer God’s call, and deliver
his people from the tyranny both of Today
is Mothering Sunday. Mothers’ Day is a
marketing invention of the greetings-card industry – please, use its proper
name, Mothering Sunday. We are at the
half-way Sunday on our journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter, and it is on
this day that the Church has always dwelt a pause, to reflect on the debt we
owe to the Church, our spiritual Mother.
Make no
mistake, like Moses’ mother, and Pharaoh’s daughter, and Miriam, Shiphrah and
Puah, the Church has taken risks to hand down to you the faith that you now
have. Many brave people have risked,
and indeed given, their lives for the Christian faith, and tragically there
were more martyrs in the 20th Century than in any century before
it. But then the Church is bigger than
it has ever been, and overall, it is still growing. Historically,
it was on this mid-Lent Sunday that congregations of new Churches would
travel back to the mother church which had sponsored the growth of their own
church. In many dioceses, the
Cathedral would be absolutely packed with people from the newer Churches
going back to worship the oldest. In
Team parishes today, Daughter Churches often go back to worship at the mother
Church of the parish. Here, we can’t
really do that; it is too far to Gibraltar or But God
does not just give us spiritual mothers; He gives us physical mothers
too. Most Christians learn the faith
from their mothers. Of course there
are exceptions, but this is still true of most of us. Not only do our mothers give us life, and
love, not only do they feed us and care for us, but, in most cases, they give
us our faith too. This
Mothering Sunday, as we reflect on the story of Moses, and his mother’s care
for him, let us give thanks for our mothers, both physical and spiritual, and
let us together pray for, and do all that we can to support, those who bear
the brunt of motherhood. Amen. Father Charles Howard: Anglican
Chaplaincy of Midi-Pyrénées & Aude To return to main Thought for the Week page, click X at top right to close this window. |