‘Woman, behold your son… Behold your mother.’

I have just returned from visiting my family in Hong Kong. Somehow it felt harder to say goodbye this time. Perhaps it’s because I don’t know when we will be together again. Or perhaps it’s a heightened awareness of the inevitable implications of my parents’ advancing age, after conversations with friends who recounted their parents’ health problems.

Filial piety (孝) is a big thing in traditional Chinese culture; indeed, it ‘ranks first among all virtues’ as one saying goes. Its practical manifestations can be complex – for some it is a privilege and a loving ‘being with’, for others it can entail oppressive obedience and onerous obligations.

The Gospels only give us glimpses into the relationship between Jesus and his mother: the remarkable encounters surrounding Jesus’ birth; teenage Jesus going AWOL then expressing surprise and perhaps frustration that Mary was searching for him; Mary asking Jesus to perform a wine miracle at the wedding at Cana; Jesus responding to his mother and brothers waiting outside to speak to him when he was teaching by saying that ‘whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother’; and finally Jesus, hanging on the cross, entrusting his mother and his beloved disciple to one another, likely prompting Mary to recall Simeon’s warning that ‘a sword shall pierce your own soul too’. I find the interactions between Jesus and Mary very human – I can hear the ups and downs of ‘being with’ in their exchanges.

Yet I am also struck by Jesus’ expansion of familial ties, calling us to widen our imagination of who we are called to ‘be with’. Close to death, he binds his loved ones together so that none of them must face the future alone. This seems to chime with the concept of ‘chosen family’ that LGBTQIA+ people often speak of: friendships and communities that hold, care and bless when biological families cannot or would not.

For many, Mothering Sunday will be an occasion for gratitude and celebration. For others, it may be weighed down by grief, regret, anger, or other complex emotions. I wonder what it means to be a child of God. I wonder what it means for the church to live as the ‘household of God’. I wonder who we are called to behold, and be with.

Ivan Yuen