I Sam. 1:20-28
John 19:25-27
Lord, open your Word to our hearts and transform them,
and our hearts to your Word to receive you. AMEN.
‘How did it come to this?’ Mary, in those interminable hours standing at the foot of the Cross, must have asked herself, ‘How on earth or in heaven did it come to this?
‘Only thirty-three or so years ago – and how those years have flown by – in the home of my loving parents, Anna and Joachim, as they came to be known, I remember the mysterious visitor who came to me as a teenager, just about the time I was due to get married to Joseph the carpenter. ‘You have found favour with God’, he said. ‘You will have a child, and call him Jesus’, he said. Mysterious, puzzling words, I couldn’t understand. ‘That can’t be true’, I argued, ‘For I am still a Virgin’. But, I knew it was, I could feel it inside myself, I knew God’s love and power. ‘Let it be to me according to your word’, I said – and I meant it.
‘That was a difficult time, a complicated time. Joseph couldn’t understand what was happening, but God came to him in a dream, and he also knew it to be true.
I went to stay with my older relative, Elizabeth – it was a way of escaping the gossip in the village – and I was amazed to find that she also was pregnant, and at such an old age. My heart was filled with joy and love, and, just as it did with Hannah in the Book of Samuel, it overflowed from me: ‘My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Saviour’.
‘Things were a bit of a blur after that – the journey to Bethlehem, the stable, shepherds, the Circumcision – a sign of the Covenant with God, and a foretaste of sufferings to come – the strange visit of the Wise Men and their oddly unpractical, but deeply symbolic, gifts, and the equally strange experience of meeting the old people, Anna and Simeon, in the Temple on the fortieth day, when Jesus was presented to the Lord. ‘My eyes have seen your salvation’, Simeon prayed; and he called Jesus, ‘A light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel’.
‘I pondered all those things in my heart, and stored them all up in my memory, as we returned to our life in Nazareth, living by the side of Joseph’s carpentry shop. Joy and pain, love and fear, trust and hope, all mingled together over the years. And Simeon’s words, ‘A sword will pierce your own soul, too’. Is this what mothering, what parenting is like? Is this how the Father and Mother God feels about the world he has created and loves?
‘There was that awful time when Jesus was twelve and we’d been on our annual visit to the wonderful Feast of the Passover. Family and friends all travelled together, all the children played together on the long journey. And then, at the end of the first day of the journey home, we couldn’t find him. We went frantic – he was nowhere to be seen, no one could remember when they’d last seen him, and so we had no option but to return to Jerusalem, and search there.
‘It was so odd, after all that frantic searching, to find him sitting untroubled in the outer court of the Temple, in deep discussion with the teachers of the law, who were all amazed at his understanding and his answers. They were all men of course, so none of them had thought to ask him whether his parents knew where he was!
‘Maddeningly, when I asked him, ‘Child, why have you treated us like this?’, he looked up, untroubled, calmly, and said, ‘Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?’ I suppose I knew then that I would lose him one day.
‘The next years were quiet ones, growing up, working in the carpentry business, Joseph’s early death, Jesus becoming a man – living at home, living an ordinary life, but never really living an ordinary life. His mind was always on higher things, listening, learning, thinking, praying, even whilst he was working, caring, being a part of the family with his brothers and sisters.
‘We went to the synagogue each Saturday, and one time – it was just after he’d been baptized by his cousin, John, and spent some time on his own in the wilderness, down by the Jordan – one time, he picked up the scroll of Isaiah to read: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour’. When he sat down, everyone was looking at him, expectantly. Something was different. And then, he said, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing’ – and I knew: his time had come, all those things which I’d treasured in my heart were preparing him for this point in his life. Now had come the time which comes in every parent’s life – the time for letting go; the time for which all of my love and care had prepared him.
‘We still had fun, though. Once we went to a Wedding in Cana, in Galilee, Jesus and his Disciples came with me, and, really embarrassingly, the wine ran out half-way through the feast. I said to Jesus, ‘They have no wine’, and he replied, ‘That’s not really our problem’. Well, I gave him a look, and he gave me a look – I was still his mother, after all! And I told the servants to do whatever he asked them, and they did. They filled the big stone jars with water, and took some to the steward of the feast – and he said, ‘You’ve kept the best wine until last’. That was the first of the signs he did, and it was like a foretaste of the banquet in heaven at the end of time.
‘Some times were hard, though. He was often away from home for long periods. Once, he was teaching in a house, and the family and I were all waiting outside for ages to see him. Eventually someone squeezed their way in and said, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you’.
‘‘Who is my mother’, he said, ‘Or my brothers and sisters? Everyone who does the will of my Father is my brother and sister and mother’. It was hard to hear that, but we knew what he meant. Mothering and fathering are full of pain as well as joy.
And then, just recently, I felt that everything had changed. When I heard he was on his way to Jerusalem, I knew I had to be there, too. Once again, I set off, this time full of dread, for the Passover Festival. On Sunday, he’d ridden into Jerusalem on a donkey, and caused a stir in the Temple by overturning the tables of the sellers and the money changers. During the week, he’d been teaching anyone who would listen about the Kingdom of God. Just yesterday, the first day of the Passover, he’d had a meal with his Disciples, and then they went out into the Garden across the valley to pray.
‘Suddenly, the news came that he’d been arrested, and, very irregularly, tried during the night, taken to Pilate, and eventually, brought here to be crucified – the worst possible thing for a parent to see. The unbearable pain of seeing a child suffering.
‘And yet, here I am, standing at the Foot of the Cross. How did it come to this? How on earth or in heaven did it come to this?
‘Suddenly, in the midst of all his pain, he points to John, and says to me, ‘Here is your son’; and to John, ‘Here is your mother’. And in that moment, I knew – I knew that his whole life was moving to this point, and that in this darkest moment, his love for me was as utter as his knowledge of God’s love for him had been throughout his life.
‘And I realized that the joys and the sorrows of being a mother, of being a parent, are two sides of the same coin – they are inextricably linked in the unconditional love which parents feel for their children – our human love is the gift God gives us from his divine love. Love is always freely given, love makes us vulnerable to pain – many years from now a famous songwriter will say, ‘If I never loved, I never would have cried’.
‘And love, and families, come in many different forms. John, the Beloved Disciple, is now my son. I know he will love me as he loves his own mother. We are a new family – there is always enough love to go around, there is always room for more. Love is one of the few things which increases the more it is shared.
‘Until the end of my life, I shall ‘treasure all these words and ponder them in my heart’’. For ‘Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love’. AMEN.
