9th of August
Mary Sumner … Thank You!
Yippee! In our Anglican calendar, it is Mary Sumner Day. This year it happens to fall on a Sunday, so we’re making a bit of fuss.
Mary Sumner was the founder of Mothers Union. This parish is gorgeously blessed because it has such a healthy, vibrant and laughter-filled group of people who are members of our Mothers Union. In fact, it is probably one of the strongest Mothers Union groups in the diocese and, numbers-wise, it is certainly the strongest organisation in our parish.
Mothers Union is especially concerned with family life and therein lies the rub. Full disclosure and confession, I should quickly point out that the Diocesan Mothers Union Chaplain, who also happens to be your vicar, comes from a family where his parents were divorced and each went on to remarry. Does this disqualify me from this wonderful and undeserved role? Perhaps my qualifications and heritage are besmirched.
Perhaps I am not in good standing to be the MU chaplain or even a Mothers Union member. When my parents were going through the throes of divorce in 1977, this may well have been the thinking. There are people still alive today who can tell you with hand on heart that they were asked not to attend MU because of their marital status.
Perhaps it might help if I let you know that while the nastiness of the separation and divorce was exploding around me, there were a couple of priestly people and one Bishop who were exceptionally kind and compassionate. I came out the other side aspiring to pass on that same pastoral care. I have no idea if these clerics were members of Mothers' Union, but they did show forth inclusion, welcome and support of me and my family, even though and perhaps especially because my family was in tatters.
We have come a long way in our thinking since I was a gawky, pimply 17-year-old. All sorts of ragamuffins and recalcitrants are not only welcomed into Mothers Union, but they are rejoiced in, and they minister to us. We actively seek them out and encourage them because they are authentically human with no pretence or dressing up. Life in the raw, to be loved, redeemed and rejoiced in. They have much to teach us and we as Mothers Union and a parish are all the more colourful and accessible for what they bring to us. Mary Sumner, … Thank you.
And that, for me at least, is the beauty of Mothers Union and Mary Sumner. That the healing begins with the acceptance of everyone. Mary Sumner, being married to a vicar, would not have always found it easy. Toss in the pressures of being a mum, and there must have been days. The organisation she started would have been a challenge for her, but it would also have been a source of blessing and encouragement.
Mothers Union sets the bar high, for we all need principles to strive for, but it is also the first to be there in the grit and gravel, when love is shredded as sometimes it is.
And when this happens, we turn and have a good long hard look at our warts and realise that none of us is perfect and far from tut tutting, we open wide the arms of welcome to those who seek us out and say to them…
‘Welcome friend; I’m just like you. We’re all a bit grubby around the edges; we all have gashes that we hide away from others. Love has unravelled for me sometimes, and there are many weeks when I am just holding it together.’
And we can say this and live this when we have reflected on the words of the gospel.
‘You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last.’
It seems to be that the Master knows that those who are wild and woolly like a scarecrow are the most fun and the most fruitful.
So today we gather and give thanks for Mary Sumner who could not have foreseen the fruitful organisation that would still all be happening in Western Victoria in 2026. Today we give thanks for the Mothers' Union, in this parish, throughout our diocese and throughout the world.
And today, as a begrimed Mothers Union chaplain, I say with a big cheesy grin and a twinkle in my eye, “Mary Sumner …Thank you!”