The Womb and The Tomb
Sermon for Mothering Sunday 10 March 2024
Revd Canon Harriet Neale-Stevens
Today we mark Mothering Sunday. In our prayers a little later, we’ll give thanks for our mothers, and for those who have nurtured us in life. And we’ll also acknowledge that as well as being a joyful day, Mother’s Day is also a difficult day for many people for all sorts of different reasons.
The church takes for its inspiration today the figure of Mary, and also the story of Moses’ infancy – how his mother places him in a basket in the river Nile to save his life.
In the Eastern orthodox tradition, Mary has a very beautiful name – she is known as the Theotokos – the God-bearer, or God-birther, in a more literal sense.
And many of the ancient orthodox hymns describe Mary in ways that expand upon this title. These hymns of praise describe Mary as an ark that carried God safely to birth, as a tabernacle and a temple of the Lord, as one who holds the treasure of life. The last line of one of these hymns says of Mary: ‘you received into your womb the Word, you held in your arms the One who holds all things.’
As much as it is at the core of our faith as Christians, the Incarnation is a mystery to us, and throughout church history, theologians have wrestled with this idea that God, the creator and sustainer of the universe became human, was born in the flesh, the son of a human mother.
The icon you have printed on the front of your order of service – which is orthodox in style – depicts Mary and the Christ child, and this particular kind of icon is entitled Our Lady of the Sign, a reference to words from the prophet Isaiah who tells us that the Lord himself shall give a sign – ‘behold a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and he shall be called Emmanuel’. The layout is ancient – Mary was first depicted like this in images painted on the walls of the catacombs in Rome. She has her hands held up in a gesture of prayer – in fact the same position that the priest takes up when celebrating the Eucharist – and she faces us directly – showing us the Christ child – who is held within a round aureole – a sign of his divinity. The icon is supposed to capture the moment Jesus was conceived in Mary’s womb – but you’ll notice Jesus is dressed in robes and has an adult face – showing us that although he is fully divine, as he grows he will be fully human also.
What is most striking about this icon, I think, is that we can see the interior of Mary’s womb – we are given a glimpse into a secret and hidden space in which a great mystery is taking place – Jesus, the son of God, begins his life on this earth, here, in this dark hollow – here, God the creator becomes utterly reliant on the human beings he has created, as he himself is formed in the womb.
You might like to turn back now to the image by Garrick Palmer which is printed inside your order of service. Here we see the entombment of Christ – Jesus, having been lifted down from the cross, is being placed in a stone tomb or coffin. After his death he slides into another secret and hidden space – where another great mystery will take place. His eyes are closed, in death, as in birth, he is at the mercy of his God.
It’s a happy coincidence that the words womb and tomb are so similar in the English language – they have no etymological connection – and yet their similarity seems to point to some significance: both are places where Jesus Christ, the son of God, is hidden away, in complete weakness and helplessness, as he waits for God to act.
You will know that many ancient tombs in Europe, and further afield, are whole rooms in themselves – chambered tombs – they have a central womb-like space – and a long entrance – West Kennet long barrow would be a good example if you’ve ever visited – and there is a line of thought that suggests that prehistoric burial rites involved a belief that in death one returned to the female – to the mother – to the womb – to the place of birth.
On visiting the chambered burial tombs in Rome, the writer D.H. Lawrence noticed their bulging womb like shapes, and he wrote rather beautifully: ‘The stone house – it suggests Noah’s Ark without the boat part – the Noah’s Ark boats we had as children, full of animals. And that is what it is, the Ark, the womb. The womb of all the world, that brought forth all creatures. The womb, the arc, where life retreats in the last refuge. The womb, the ark of the covenant, in which lies the mystery of eternal life, the manna and the mysteries. There it is displayed in the tombs.’
Perhaps D. H. Lawrence saw these connections for the first time – but for centuries, parallels have been made between Mary’s womb, Jesus’s tomb – and the ark – the boat that saves and carries God’s people to a new future. Noah’s ark, Moses’s little papyrus ark, and of course the ark of the covenant – which contained the 10 Commandments and a pot of manna – divine word and divine bread.
Secret hidden places – entered in weakness and from which God draws us out into new worlds, and new life.
As we approach Holy Week – and we are getting very close now – we might begin to ponder what our own weaknesses are – where do we feel most helpless in our lives at this time? What are we ready to surrender into God’s hands? What are we struggling with, and what is the world struggling with?
When we pray, we enter our own secret place where God’s mysteries are at work – our prayer is like waiting in the womb, or surrendering ourselves in the tomb, or sheltering from danger in the ark – while we wait on God to draw us out again, when the time is right, when he is ready to make new life out of what we have offered up in that dark and hidden place.
God is present and most powerful in the depths of life – in all those places where we think he cannot be, weaving new life from old, taking up loose threads, binding what was broken, finding what we thought was lost – even in death itself. The womb of all the world, in which lies the mystery of eternal life.