Archives for posts with tag: Rose Sunday

Sermon for Rose Sunday 2025

By hughdbryant
March 30, 2025 //
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See https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=610162457

Rejoice! Let me speak to you in Latin. ‘Laetare Hierusalem et conventum facite omnes qui diligitis eam: gaudete cum laetitia…’ : it means, ‘ … be ye glad for Jerusalem, all ye that delight in her: exult and sing for joy with her,’..

It says on your pew sheet that today is Mothering Sunday. So what is all this Latin stuff – ‘Laetare’ – all about? This is also, and indeed it has been for a lot longer than it has been Mothering Sunday, what is called ‘refreshment’, or Rejoice! Sunday, which is what the Latin word ‘laetare’ means: laetare, ‘rejoice!’

Traditionally, pink vestments can be worn by the priest on Refreshment Sunday, so it’s also known as Rose Sunday. It’s halfway through Lent, and it’s a chance to relax the rigours of fasting. So if you have been denying yourself, today you have no need to lay off the Ferrero Rocher and vino di tavola rosso di Toscana. Today, you can indulge without feeling guilty.

Mothering Sunday is an old mediaeval concept, which fell into disuse, but was revived during the last century by a lady called Constance Adelaide Smith, a vicar’s daughter, who picked up on plans in the USA to introduce Mother’s Day, which came to fruition in the USA in 1914. Miss Smith wrote a booklet called ‘The Revival of Mothering Sunday’ in 1921, and it started to be celebrated again in the UK around that time, on the fourth Sunday in Lent, Refreshment Sunday.

The rather formidable Miss Smith campaigned for Mothering Sunday to be a celebration of a number of various aspects of motherhood: these were ‘Mother Church’ (the church where you were baptised), ‘mothers of earthly homes’, Mary, the mother of Jesus; and Mother Nature. It is a very wide spread of people and places and things, all to be celebrated as being aspects of motherhood, motherhood to rejoice in on Mothering Sunday.

I think it’s fair to say that these days we mainly think of it as a day to celebrate our mothers, ‘mothers of earthly homes’. It’s a nice opportunity to make a fuss of them, for those of us who still have mothers around, or if not, at least to think about and remember our wonderful mothers.

At this point I must say that in the midst of all this happy celebration, for quite a number of people Mothering Sunday or Mother’s Day are not happy times. If you are a mother who has lost a child, or who has not been able to have a child, this is not a time you want to celebrate. We should pause, and take that to the Lord in prayer. If any of you are suffering in that way, I hope you will excuse my carrying on in a way that may not suit the way you feel. You are not forgotten, and you are in our prayers today.

I don’t think that you really need a homily from me on how to be nice to your mother or to be nice about her. But I would just like to take a minute or two to look at a couple of the things that come up in our Bible readings. I’m struck that in two of them the interesting thing is that the compilers of the Lectionary have selected passages, which come just after, in one case, and just before, in the other, verses which are perhaps more familiar to us and more significant than the ones which have been selected.

The first story, from the first book of Samuel, is the story of the birth of Samuel to his mother, Hannah – obviously today, one of the common themes is stories of mothers – and it is a bit like the story of the birth of John the Baptist to his mother, Elisabeth. Neither woman had been blessed with children for a number of years.

Hannah was praying to the Lord for children, and eventually her prayers were answered. In her prayers, she had said she would dedicate any son who was born to the Lord as what was called a Nazarite. This meant that she would give him over to the priests of the Temple to become somebody who was dedicated, set apart, for the Lord in the Temple. He would not be allowed to cut his hair, touch strong drink, and a whole load of other restrictions, which are all set out in the law of Moses in the book of Numbers.

But the bit which you might expect the story to go on to tell us, is what Hannah did to celebrate, because she sang a song. The song that she sang is very similar to another song in the Bible. She sang:

‘My heart rejoices in the Lord. …

Strong men stand in dismay…

Those who faltered put on new strength …

Those who had plenty sell themselves for a crust,

The hungry grow strong again.’

It has strong echoes of Mary’s song, the Magnificat, that everybody will remember from Evensong.

‘My soul doth magnify the Lord,
and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.…..

He hath shewed strength with his arm.
He hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He hath put down the mighty from their seat
and hath exalted the humble and meek. ….

He hath filled the hungry with good things.
And the rich he hath sent empty away.’

Clearly, Mary knew her Bible, and she remembered Hannah’s song from the story of the birth of Samuel. And not only that, but in these songs the two mothers-to-be really forecast the way that God wants us to do things. The last shall be first. The humble and meek shall be raised up. The hungry shall be filled up with good things. A really important message. Think what the world would be like if we really followed it.

And then, in our reading from Saint Paul’s letter to the Colossians, ‘..[C]lothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience..’, all those lovely ideas about how Christians should treat one another. ‘Clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.’

Wonderful words; but the ones, that are not captured by our reading, come just one verse above.

‘There is no question here of Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and freeman; but Christ is all, and is in all.’

No such thing as Jew and Greek. This is the first sign of Christianity bursting out from being just a small denomination within Judaism.

Anybody could become a Christian. Christ was, is, there to become a saviour for anyone. It’s the origin of Inclusive Church, which is a charity that the Ministry Area Committee have decided to register our churches with. Of course, we know that we are inclusive, we welcome everybody: but we will also have signs outside, and we will do lots of practical things, to let everybody know that they can come in, and that they will be welcome.

The Lord is here. His spirit is with us. His spirit is for everybody, whatever they look like, wherever they come from.

I suppose if you go away and do your homework and read the lessons at home, you will come and tackle me to say that, when I was mentioning things that weren’t in the lessons, I should have mentioned not just the bit that comes before our lesson from Colossians. but also the bit after, because it has St Paul’s rather infamous words, “Wives, be subject to your husbands“, and to be fair, “Husbands, love your wives, … children, obey your parents, for that is pleasing to God, and is the Christian way“, and so on. Given that there is nothing really about mothers in the lesson from Colossians that we heard, it is quite important to remember that St Paul did include, in this great letter, his own ideas on what makes for happy families.

But then perhaps in our Gospel reading, there is the most moving reference to a mother in the Bible, the story of Jesus on the cross, and what he said, while the three Marys were standing there.

More Latin – ‘Stabat Mater dolorosa’: ‘His sad mother was standing there’; the Marian Hymn, as it’s called. Some of us will no doubt be able to hear in our heads one or other of the beautiful musical settings, by Palestrina, or Charpentier or Vivaldi, among many others right up to today, including James McMillan and Karl Jenkins.

When I was looking at this heart-rending scene in my mind, it did slightly remind me of another time when his family was mentioned, in Saint Matthew’s Gospel chapter 12, at the end of the chapter, where he was speaking to the crowd when his mother and brothers appeared, and someone said, “Your mother and brothers are here outside, and want to speak to you”. Jesus said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” And, pointing to the disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my heavenly father is my brother, my sister, my mother.“

This is different; it’s more simple than that; it’s just the story of Jesus, as he was dying on the cross, making sure that his mother was looked after by the disciple whom he loved, (who is sometimes identified with John the Evangelist). It looks as though his earthly father, Joseph, was no longer there, and had perhaps died already.

What a nice example Jesus was setting. Even in a moment of the most acute pain and suffering, he took time and made sure that his mother was looked after. I don’t think there’s anything I can say to improve on that. ‘I was glad’ – and I hope that today, you mothers, and children of mothers, on this Mothering Sunday, are glad too.

Amen.

Hugh Bryant

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Sermon for Mattins on the Third Sunday of Advent, 16th December 2012 – Rose Sunday Philippians 4:4-7, Luke 3:7-18

By hughdbryant
December 17, 2012 //
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ImageToday is Rose Sunday, in the mediaeval church known by the Latin name Gaudete Sunday, ‘Rejoice’ Sunday; the third Sunday in Advent. The mood of watchful expectation which in the church’s tradition in the first two weeks in Advent is supposed to be rather sober, rather monochrome, is now relieved by a hint of colour – we lit the pink candle today as a symbol of this lightened mood.

We are getting closer to our celebrations, closer to the time when we remember Jesus’ coming as the baby in the manger. In some ways it might seem odd to introduce the story of John the Baptist at this point. Certainly John the Baptist had a prophetic mission which introduced the beginning of Jesus’ work. But as S. Luke puts it very precisely, in historic terms which can mean only that John the Baptist was working around 29 or 30 AD, ‘in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius Caesar’, we have moved thirty years beyond Jesus’ birth.

In the Orthodox churches, the story of John the Baptist is celebrated after Christmas for that reason, so as to keep the chronology more logical. Jesus is first a baby, and then grown up. After he has grown up, and before he starts teaching, along comes John the Baptist.

All through the Old Testament, the history of the Jewish people, the history of God’s chosen people, is expressed in a way which relates their successes and failures not to economic factors, not to whether they were rich in natural resources which they exploited successfully; not to whether they were successful in wars, conquests or alliances with other powerful nations, building up empires: but rather the story of the Jews is a story of their relationship with God.

If you think of the story of the Jews in the Old Testament – Moses leading them out of Egypt through the Red Sea; the exile in Babylon – the only thing that matters, the only historical driver, is whether the Israelites listened to their God, followed his commandments, kept their covenant with God. If they did that, they were blessed and they were in the promised land. If they turned aside and worshipped other gods, forgot about their covenant with the one true God, then they were invaded, they were taken into captivity, they became slaves.

The Jews believed that God loved them much in the way that a father loves rather unruly teenage children; that sometimes God needed to punish them because they hadn’t obeyed him, but on other occasions they felt the full warmth of God’s love and blessing. The way in which they learned about their relationship with God was through the prophets – Moses and Elijah and the lesser prophets were the ones who brought before the people of Israel the word of God.

Jesus was born when the Jews were going through a hard time. The promised land was under occupation by a foreign power, the Romans. The relative prosperity of the the time of Herod the Great had given way to a break-up of the kingdom into four parts. There had been rebellion against the Romans by the Zealots, which had been brutally suppressed. This was not a high point in Jewish history.

As before in Jewish history, along came a prophet, a prophet who interpreted how the Jews found themselves, their difficulties and their lack of success, in terms of a breakdown in their relationship with God. That prophet was John the Baptist. John’s message of repentance – ‘O generation of vipers …’ was very much in the prophetic tradition. John is saying that the Israelites’ troubles are directly attributable to a breakdown in their relationship with God, that they have forgotten God’s commandments. So his message, the various things that he tells them to do, in order to restore the covenant, are from the heart of the moral teaching in the Jewish Law. After the basic Ten Commandments had been given to Moses on the tablets of stone, then in Deuteronomy, which means Second Law, the law of Moses is developed and refined. Indeed, for the first time in Deuteronomy you have the golden rule, ‘love your brother as yourself’ (Deut. 19:19).

So here, John teaches, ‘He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.’ And the ‘publicans’ who are told not to exact ‘more than that which is appointed you’, are not innkeepers, but tax-gatherers. Privatising government services is not a new idea. At the time of Jesus, the Romans had private contractors, τελωναι in Greek, who were authorised to collect tax. They were paid by charging a percentage on top of what they were due to hand over to the Romans. So if the Romans needed 100, your friendly local tax man might actually charge you 110. What John is saying is that the price, what the private contractor, the ancient equivalent of Accenture or KPMG, is charging, has to be reasonable.

The point about this is that these are not just good moral precepts, which they certainly are, but also marks of the Jews being faithful to their covenant with God. It’s not enough, John says, to say, We have Abraham for our father, we are Jews. Instead, John says you have to bring forth ‘fruits worthy of repentance’, you have to show in tangible form evidence that you have repented, you have come back to the fold.

The Jews recognised that this message that John was giving was indeed a prophetic message, and they began to think that perhaps he himself was the Messiah, the chosen one whom they expected to lead them again, like Moses, out of slavery. What John was doing, in baptising, was certainly a new thing. There was no precedent in other religions for baptism in the way that John was practising it.

It was a single ritual washing. Of course are plenty of religious observances where ritual washing is involved. The symbolism is very clear. You wash away everything bad and you become clean, pure, before God. But in other religions that’s a sacramental practice, something that you do as part of a religious service regularly, purification.

But with John it was an altogether bigger thing. The idea of a total immersion in the River Jordan was that it marked a complete reversal in the person’s life. ‘Repent’, said John – μετανοειτε, Greek which means ‘turn over your minds’, ‘turn back your minds’. It’s not so much turning back as turning over, turning over a new leaf, a clean page in the book. That you can only do once. When you have been baptised, you are a new person, a clean person. It is very powerful symbolism indeed.

But despite the power of this, John says that he is making way for Jesus, who will come and not baptise with water, but with ‘the Holy Ghost and with fire’, that he will bring God to his people in an all-consuming way. You can come up out of the water and dry off; but once you have been touched by the Holy Ghost and by the divine fire – ‘set our hearts on fire with love for you’ we pray – then really you are changed. It’s a glimpse of what that baby is going to be able to do.

He will not just be a prophet like John. He will not just be a man, a man grown from the baby in the manger. He will be God, God among us, Emmanuel. That is truly something to look forward to; something to add colour to our expectation. Today, the colour of the rose.
So enjoy Rose Sunday. But also, remember the message of John the Baptist. ‘He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.’ … ‘Do violence to no man, neither accuse any falsely; and be content with your wages.’ Finally, a message to the tax men, ‘Exact no more than that which is appointed you’. The obverse of that teaching is something which some of our multi-national companies should reflect on too. If HMRC should not take too much, Starbucks and Co should not pay too little.

It’s the same message which S. Paul gives to his friends in Philippi. ‘Let your moderation be known unto all men. The Lord is at hand.’ This ‘moderation’ that he talks about is a word which really means ‘even-handedness’, ‘sense of balance’. It’s really a word that S. Paul took from the Stoics. Nothing to excess, moderation. When Paul wrote to the Philippians, perhaps around 60AD, the baby had come; he had grown up. He had been baptised by John, and those wonderful three years of teaching, his life, his death and his resurrection, had taken place. As John had predicted, Jesus had brought the Holy Spirit and fire, first of all at Pentecost, on the disciples. The Lord is at hand. The Lord is here. His spirit is with us.

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