Today’s hymn from Sing Praise is the second of two in the book suggested for Mothering Sunday. Yesterday’s blog post covered my thoughts on this subject, so here’s a briefer review of this hymn by Timothy Dudley-Smith, “Our Father God in Heaven”.
For a hymn specifically about mothering, it may seem odd that the first line addresses God as Father. Some Christians (including myself) are happy to address God also as Mother, since clearly the God who “made them in his own image, male and female” is neither exclusively one nor the other, but both and more. I suspect Dudley-Smith, being of an older and more conservative generation, is not among them.
The first verse gives thanks to God for families generally – “parents, sisters, brothers, a home where love belongs”. Of course not everyone gets on with their parents, sisters and brothers, and many are the loveless homes, which is perhaps reflected in the more realistic second verse with the words “Our deepest joys and sorrows a mother’s path must trace, and earth’s unknown tomorrows are held in her embrace”.
Those “sorrows and unknown tomorrows” are found even in loving households. This was especially true for Mary the mother of Jesus. The third verse focuses on Jesus who “[found] in Mary’s keeping the warmth of human love”. Her love for him was unbroken, yet her heart was broken by his suffering; and while there can be no doubt of his love for her above all people, yet there were moments when he rebuked her and appeared to forsake his family, as he embraced his true vocation as the Son of God. In everyday experience, many are the mothers who have had to wave goodbye to sons and daughters who chose a path in life that took them away from the family, whether into a different culture or a different land.
The fourth verse comes back to giving thanks for mothers’ love, with a prayer that every child should be shown tenderness and care. That is the foundation for whatever path they may choose in their own lives, in the knowledge that there is always a loving home to return to.
The tune suggested here is a familiar and easily sung one, “Ellacombe”. But it is best known as a setting for the words of the hymn “The Day of Resurrection”, so it feels odd to be singing it this side of Easter. There are plenty of alternative melodies in 76.76 metre, try “Salley Gardens” for example.
If I may comment on this hymn and “God of Eve and God of Mary” together …
The Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, said a while ago that she tried never to use the pronoun “he” when talking of God, lest it give the impression that God was male rather than female – and I was asked what I thought (because I run a “questions to the clergy” slot in the church magazine). And my reply was that I think that, in talking about God, it is more important to make it clear that God is personal than that God is not male – so I preferred the personal pronoun “he” to the impersonal “it”. I suppose the Eucharistic Prayer’s response “It is right to give thanks and praise” (CW) rather than “It is right to give him thanks and praise” (ASB) is a case in point – in avoiding the pronoun, isn’t it also the case that the new response has avoided expressing the thanks TO GOD at all, and instead made the thanks directionless? Haven’t we lost more than we have gained? I try not to be over-male in my approach, but (about Fred Kaan’s hymn) I ask myself whether I would ever naturally call God “God of Adam and of Joseph” – and if the answer is “no” (and it is), then how could I justify calling God “God of Eve and God of Mary”? Whereas Jesus did use the words “Father, in heaven” (in, for example, the Lord’s Prayer in Matthew 6:9). The word “Father” is only a figure of speech, but for a variety of cultural reasons it is a biblical figure of speech.
The question of how to give thanks for good family life, whilst catering for those whose experience of family has been very negative, is of course one of the fundamental dilemmas of Mothering Sunday, and it makes hymnody a minefield! Even a line like “who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way” (from “Now thank we all our God”) can be an unexploded disaster for some.
I agreed with Stephen’s comment (yesterday) that Fred Kaan had tried to pack too many images into too small a space in his hymn, and when I tried singing it I began to wonder if it was to some extent an exercise in political correctness. I was much happier with the general atmosphere of Timothy Dudley-Smith’s today. On a glib level, I am thankful to God for both of my parents, and I don’t think it belittles my appreciation of my mum to think of my dad at the same time.
Sadly, neither hymn actually says “Thank you, God, for my mum” in so many words, which is what I want to say on Mothering Sunday – although they both say “thank you for mums” in general (at the end of v1 of each). I suppose I am still looking for the perfect Mothering Sunday hymn.