“Woman, Behold Your Son…. Son, Behold Your Mother…..Lent III March 11, 2007

John 19: 23-27, Luke 2: 27-35, Mark 3: 20-21, 31-35

The Seven Last Words – Jesus’ last sayings from the cross – are the focal point of my preaching as we make our way through Lent, and have been a source of spiritual guidance for Christians over the centuries. The words illuminate our understanding of Jesus’ life and death, and as we follow them in the traditional order they seem to retrace the descending-ascending pattern of Christ, the savior who was from the beginning with God above; who came to earth to share life and death with us, and who then re-ascended to heaven to be with God.

Let me explain what I mean about that descending-ascending pattern: The first two words from the cross are “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do,” and “Truly I say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise” In such words it’s easy to see the divinity of Jesus. He sounds more like a God than a man, but in the next three sayings we see his humanity clearly expressed. He looks at his mother with concern, commending her into the care of a beloved disciple…… He calls out “I thirst…….” And then comes the most bleak word from the cross, or perhaps in human experience: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” These are very human expressions, for any one of us could utter such words, especially the last two – the words of thirst and the despair. But then with the sixth and seventh words there is the beginning of an ascent – a returning sense of the divinity - and in my Easter sermon I want to speak about the victory implicit in “It is finished,” and “Father into thy hands I commend my spirit…..”

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Some Bible passages call for an explanation: The preacher should say “This is what it means and this is God’s intention and pattern for life…….” Some passages have an obvious moral teaching and the sermon has to eventually get to the point of saying “So this is what you ought to do…….” But I think that for some passages, including the words from the cross we are considering today, the most appropriate response is to listen, imagine and feel. The goal of preaching is to open a place in our hearts where we can understand something of the work of God in our lives, not just with the rational mind but with our deepest emotions. What took place on the cross was costly. It was costly to God, and to Jesus, and it was also costly to those who loved him. So, listen to Jesus’ words again. Let the story build on what you know about being a parent or being a child, and perhaps it will move you to a new depth of understanding of the depth and breadth of love out of which God has fashioned our salvation.

In the midst of John’s account of the crucifixion we find these words:

When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, "Dear woman, here is your son," and to the disciple, "Here is your mother." From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19: 26-27, New International Version)

It had never been easy being the mother of Jesus. Standing in the hot sun, her faced lined with sweat and tears, hemmed in by a loud and foul crowd of soldiers and citizens, Mary stood near the cross. Looking upwards it was not the Son of God or the Savior of the World that she saw. See didn’t see “the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world,” nor “Christus Victor,” Christ the victorious king. All she could see, at least in that moment was her son, her Jesus, and as he suffered the cruelest death that anyone can imagine she also suffered.

Perhaps in that moment her mind fluttered back thirty years or more to that time when she and Joseph had taken their newborn to the temple to be presented to the Lord. How happy they were, and proud, as they dedicated their son to God and dreamed about what the future might be. How thrilling it was when Simeon, and old and God-fearing man, came to them saying that he had been waiting all his life for the arrival of God’s Messiah. He took their baby in his arms as he said to God, “Now let your servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation, a light to lighten the Gentiles and the glory of thy people Israel……” But then, Mary recalled with a shudder, Simeon handed Jesus back to her with these cryptic words: “This child is chosen by God for the destruction and salvation of many in Israel. He will be a sign from God which many people will speak against, and so reveal their secret thoughts. And sorrow, like a sharp sword, will pierce your own heart.”

“Sorrow like a sword will pierce your heart….” There had been some hard times along the way, times when Mary had thought “Oh, this must be the sword of which Simeon spoke,” but never in her worst nightmares had she imagined this. Standing by the cross her heart was pierced with unbearable pain.

Jesus had always been a mystery – a joy, a puzzle, a blessing, a quandary – ever since that shining but frightening moment when the angel Gabriel had told her of her special favor in God’s eyes and special destiny. Joseph had been troubled, yet so kind, as he tried to understand and accept the unbelievable news of her pregnancy. Mary smiled a bit as she remembered Joseph. It had been many years since his death, but he had been such a good man.

Jesus’ birth had been a struggle too – far from home, and not even a room but only a stable for his birthplace and shelter. Mary recalled the excited shepherds who had come, telling of heavenly choirs announcing a Messiah’s birth, and the Magi from the East who had come, later, with their gifts and in search of a king. But even then there had been trouble and fear, Mary thought. Running to Egypt by night, a homeless refugee seeking safety from the tyrant Herod – this was Jesus’ childhood fate.

The years flew by in a panorama as Mary stood by the cross, lost in thought. There had been much happiness, much blessing, and she thought of Jesus playing with his brothers and sisters; of Jesus helping Joseph in the carpentry shop; of Jesus learning the scriptures with the other boys at the feet of the village rabbi. There had been times when Mary could almost forget that her boy was anything but the son of Joseph the carpenter. He was a good boy, a happy light in their lives.

But now and then a shadow would hover, reminding them that he was not theirs alone. There was that time when he was twelve, when they had gone on the great pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and on the way home they had just assumed that he was somewhere in the crowd with their friends and relatives. Three days later, after much frantic searching, they found him – sitting amidst the learned teachers at the temple and astounding them with his wisdom. And when Mary had tried to say “Jesus, we’ve been frightened! Where have you been?” he calmly replied “Didn’t you know that I must be about my Father’s business?” His Father’s business? Already he knew that he was more than a carpenter’s son.

And yet Jesus had been so good to Mary. When Joseph died he took over the carpentry shop and supported the family until his brothers were old enough to do so. “What would I have done without him all those years,” thought Mary, “with children to raise and no husband?”

It was just in the last few years that life began unraveling. With the younger children grown and self-sufficient, Jesus left home, inspired perhaps by his cousin John the Baptist and he became a wandering teacher, known through all of Galilee. Crowds assembled to hear him preach and to experience his healing power, and some people – both men and women – began following him. Some began to say “This is the One we have been waiting for. This is God’s Messiah, the one who will bring God’s Kingdom!” But there were others who questioned him from the outset. He was often so rebellious, so contrary to the traditions, so willing to question and challenge the teachers and the elders, so prone to associating with the sinners and the losers. Controversy followed him everywhere, and Mary often thought, “Oh Jesus, why do you have to take such a hard path?”

Once Mary and her sons had tried to bring Jesus home. Their friends were saying “He’s beside himself; he’s going mad….. Bring him home to the carpentry shop and try to stop his headlong plunging into trouble. Don’t let him attempt to be the savior; just bring him home where he can calm down, and then maybe he’ll forget about his dreams and visions and just have a safe life. Bring him back to Nazareth where he can be safe……” Mary and her sons tried. They went to where he was teaching, hoping to make such an appeal, but Jesus barely acknowledged her. When someone said “Your mother and brothers are here,” Jesus answered “Who is my mother? Who is my brother?” Gesturing to the crowd he said “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my mother, my sister, my brother……:”

“That’s when I lost him,” thought Mary, leaving her reverie and in spite of herself looking up at the form of the crucified Jesus. “He was never totally mine to begin with, and at last I lost him…”

“What a struggle these years have been,” she thought. “I wanted to believe in what God had promised, to have faith that in this birth and life would come the salvation of our people. I saw him heal the sick; I saw him bring hope to the hopeless, and I knew that God was at work in him. I knew I was losing him as a son, but I was willing to share him with the world – but I never imagined this!” She looked at the cross again and shuddered, remembering, “Sorrow like a sword will pierce your heart.”

And now let’s draw the curtain across this scene for a moment as we reflect. The stories are straight from the Bible, with a few elaborations on my part, but Mary’s feelings are just my guess, a guess informed by what I know about life and about being a parent, and my feelings about my children’s successes and failures, affirmations and rebellions.

Being a parent is never easy, but especially to an unusual or gifted child. The parents of Florence Nightengale once wrote “We feel like ducks who raised a swan…..” The father of Francis of Assisi raised his son to be a good merchant and to take over the family fortune, so it must have been quite a shock to see him renounce everything and take the life of a wandering beggar and teacher….. It’s also very hard to watch your children suffer, whether they are paying the price for their own mistakes, or being victimized by injustice, or simply suffering for reasons that have no explanation. Any of who are parents can imagine, in part, the pain of Mary who watches her son die.

With Mary at the cross perhaps we can identify with her feelings of abandonment, and the realizations that the bargains and tacit contracts ppeople make with God don’t always work. We may think it’s safe to say “I’ll be good, and God won’t let anything bad happen to me,” but with Mary at the cross we have to admit that life takes turns we would never have chosen. The death of Jesus was a part of God’s saving work, but it had a deep human cost as well.

Mary suffered….. but even at the cross there is one moment of peace, one expression of love in the midst of all this hate, one simple consolation. From the cross comes a voice, the voice not only of the savior but of her son.

“Woman,” he says to her, indicating the disciple standing near her, “Behold your son.” And to the disciple, not named but believed to be John, he says “Son, behold your mother.”

Though in agony he had not forgotten her. Though he had to play a role in the great saving work of love for all the world, he had not forgotten how to love an individual, his mother. He knows that in his absence she will need support and love from others, so from the cross he utters this word of love: “Woman, behold your son….. Son, behold your mother.”

What Mary felt as the day went on, and what pain went through her as Jesus died, we can only imagine. The bitterness and emptiness of that bleak Saturday, and the fearful hope of Easter morning – these too we can only imagine, for the scriptures don’t tell us her feelings. But I suspect that there was a healing salve as she remembered Jesus’ loving words, and in the acts of love the disciple gave her as a surrogate son, a salve for the deep wounds of our sword-pierced heart.

After the gospels there is only one more Biblical reference to Mary, and it shows her not as a bitter, broken woman, nor (on the other hand) as a vain woman who claims a special honor as the mother of Jesus. We find her simply as a woman of faith. Acts 1:14 says that after the resurrection the disciples continued to meet for prayer “together with the women, and with Mary the mother of Jesus.” She’s there – having been faithful in his life, having endured his dying, and now sharing in the glory of his resurrection. She gave him to the world, she relinquished her son so that the world might know God’s son; she may have felt abandoned by God and by Jesus; she surely knew pain. But sustained by his love, expressed in the midst of mortal agony - his and hers as well – she remained a faithful woman of God, and a faithful disciple of the one who was both her son and her Lord.

“Woman, behold your son.” The word from the cross is a word of love that rises above despair, a love that continues despite human pain, a human love that points us to the depths of love that can be found in God.