The Holy Fabric In Our Relationships

Mothers’ Union Lady Day

Luke 1:26-38  Ps 40:3  Luke 2:40  Luke 2:52

My Grandma Cunnington was a God fearing woman. A regular church attender, a daily reader of her bible. Someone for whom prayer was as much a part of her life as breathing.

She was the only member of my family who went to church regularly, she took us along with her at Christmas and Easter. She sat me on her knee and read me bible stories when what I really wanted was Thomas The Tank Engine and when she came to babysit, I was made to go down on my knees and say my prayers. She was a kindly, loving woman and just lived long enough to see me ordained. She lived right next door to us in Worthing. She had quite an influence on my life.

My Grandad Fish, on my mum’s side of the family never set foot inside a church unless he had to. He smoked roll up cigarettes and let me puff at one once. He enjoyed drinking bottles of brown ale and let me take a sip.  He took me horse racing when I was seven and showed me how to place a bet. He supported Brighton at football and Sussex at cricket. He lived with us and I would go and get him from the pub when it was time for Sunday lunch. He died when I was nine, right there in our living room with the Show Jumping on the telly. He had quite an influence on my life.

My mum will tell you that I am a most curious mixture of these two people who themselves were like chalk and cheese. When ministry is tough, I think of what Grandma might say or do, sometimes I almost pray through her, and then when I am relaxing in the life beyond ministry, I sincerely thank God for the traits of granddad in me.

So I have come to understand the theme behind this service.

Relationships mean everything in this rapidly changing world of ours.

God weaves his way into the human relationships we form with one another to make us the people we are.

Where those relationships have been destructive and negative, he needs to be allowed in to heal our family tree. Where those relationships have been strong, stronger than we might have realised, we need to allow him the space to draw out the goodness and the blessedness in those domestic encounters.

That God could stoop down into our relationships in this way could seem like wishful thinking, were it not for our Gospel reading this evening.

God comes weaving his way into a family to make his love known in Christ.

Not just through the life of Mary – although his calling of her stands supreme.

But in all those little family ties with which the infancy narratives are littered.

Joseph. Elizabeth. Zechariah. The cousin, John The Baptist. The brother, James.

God touching human relationships for the furtherance of his kingdom and the setting forth of his glory.

Then God stooped down even further as our reading from Hebrews describes, itself reflecting words from Psalm 40 “Consequently, when Christ came into the world, he said – sacrifices and offerings thou hast not desired, but a body thou hast prepared for me”

A body, where the being of God could be touched and influenced by parents and grandparents, cousins and brothers. And if God himself chooses this way to draw close to us, we should realise just how hallowed and holy all the relationships within our own family tree, truly are.

There is a little gem of a church inside the old city of Jerusalem.

It has the finest acoustics in the whole of the Holy Land.

You can sing a verse and pause and your voices echo and ring round the pillars and the arches.

It is the church of St Anne. It is believed to be the birthplace of Mary.

It is built over the site where the Grandma and Granddad of Jesus lived.

There is little evidence to back this up of course, there is considerable wishful thinking and legend about the place – but it is like a cathedral for Grandparents. It is like a shrine where you can pray for the relationships that have been so important for you and those where you wished they had been more important than they eventually turned out to be.

 It is a place to go and ask the question  about how far you are prepared to allow God to weave his way into the lives of those you call family. It’s a place to give thanks for the blessings of grandparents and it’s a place to lay before Christ the wounds of relationships which have been personally hurting.

The annunciation turned the life of Mary upside down.

All her relationships with her family were changed forever by this momentous event.

There is the wonderful verse right at the end of the infancy narrative in Luke, when after all has been said and done, Mary, “kept all these things and pondered them in her heart”.

She allowed the way God had been working in her relationships to become the place for reflection about the nature of her own spiritual journey.

A chapter or so on from there we just a few insights into the years our lord spent with his family in Nazareth. We know little of the events which took place in this time, but we do get a sense of what Jesus was becoming “he increased in wisdom and in stature and in favour with God and man”.

Within the family set up, both Mother and Son grew in their understanding of what God wanted from them. They both caught hold of blessings amidst their daily living and daily praying.

There is always a danger that we take our nearest and dearest ones for granted.

We normally think of this in terms of the practical tasks performed in the home.

Tonight we think about the way our nearest and dearest ones mediate the reality of God to us and we to them. We celebrate the holy fabric at the heart of the christian family and we begin to see a crucial role for the church today, and the MU within that church, of healing that fabric when it has become frayed.

RH  31.3.08