Mothering Sunday is a festival that has many guises. It is the 4th Sunday in Lent, also known as Refreshment Sunday. Refreshment Sunday originated as a kind of bank holiday to give some relief from the rigours of the Lent; a day off from fasting and horsehair shirts. As part of the break in Lent, it became the custom to give house servants the Sunday off. As such, they would return home and, because that is what everyone did in those days, they would go to their home church on the Sunday. This was their mother church, the church that senior clergy liked to think had nurtured them and brought them up safely in the faith. The senior clergy so liked this idea that they were very happy to go along with it becoming a church festival; Mothering Sunday in honour of the church. Meanwhile, the home coming servants knew which side their bread was buttered and made sure they had a posy of flowers for their actual mothers, who had really brought them up and would be feeding them this day.
Today, for most people it is now “Mothers’ Day”, a purely secular occasion but one which still focuses on mothers. Even within the church, this is now largely what it is, but with some prayers and perhaps a sermon attached. It is good to give thanks for our mothers; the people who brought us into the world, those who nurtured us. But for people of faith, we can also go beyond this if we wish, to remember the female side of God, who is both our father and also our mother.
Rev David Poyner