In our Bible reading today,
Mary is near the cross. Jesus is on
it. He’s dying. Mary knows he’s dying. She’s watching him die. And she knows there is absolutely nothing
that she can do about it.
We don’t know how she came to be there. This, after all, did not take place in
Nazareth, where Mary lived. This was in
Jerusalem, about a hundred twenty miles away. Mary could not have been there
because of Jesus’ arrest. Even if word
got to Nazareth, she’d never have had time to get there.
A guess is that she went to Jerusalem for the
Passover. She and Joseph had gone there
before for that reason. She was there,
and Jesus was there. We don’t know
whether they met before his arrest, but if they did, the Bible does not tell us
so.
Was she in the crowd when the chief priests were stirring
the people up against Jesus? Was she
there when the crowd was shouting “Crucify!
Crucify!”? Was she watching when
Jesus, having been beaten and whipped, was trying to carry his cross and could
not make it? Did she see Simon of Cyrene
forced to carry Jesus’ cross for him?
In some ways, this was probably harder on Mary than it
was on Jesus. What I mean is that Jesus,
of course, knew he was going to die. He
had known for some time. He knew he was
going to die, and he knew how he was going to die. He tried to tell the disciples about it, but
they did not understand and did not want to believe it if they did understand.
Do you suppose he ever told his mother? Did Jesus ever tell Mary what was going to
happen to him? Did he tell Mary that he
was going to be killed on a cross, but that he was going to rise again on the
third day? And if he did, did she
understand it? Did she believe it?
I mean, none of this was not part of what the angel
Gabriel had told Mary. Remember how that
went? Gabriel said about Jesus that “He
will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his
father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom
will never end.”
He will reign forever.
His kingdom will never end. And
now, here he is, hanging on a cross, dying.
This was not what Gabriel had told her. This was not part of the plan at all. Mary had been promised, by an angel, no less,
that it was not going to be this way.
Jesus was supposed to be the king forever, a kingdom without end. And now, this. To see her son beaten and whipped, treated
like a common criminal. In fact, treated
worse than a common criminal, treated like the worst of the criminals. To see him taken to the cross, taken to
die. To watch him dying. In addition to everything else Mary felt, she
must have been incredibly confused. She
also must have felt like she'd been betrayed.
She must have been so angry, and so sad, and so confused. Can any of us imagine how she must have felt?
Well, yes, some of you probably can. Because I know there are people in each of
the congregations of this parish who have lost a child. And you know exactly how Mary felt, because
you’ve felt it yourself. To one extent
or another, you probably still do.
And it’s tempting to just end the message there. Because, to be honest, there’s nothing I can
say to you about this. I’ve never gone
through what you’ve been through. I’ve
never felt what you’ve felt and still feel.
I could give you all the pat answers, and I could tell you what the
experts say. And some of it may even be
true. But none of it can change
things. None of it can give you your son
or daughter back. And nothing could give
Mary her son back, either.
But here’s what I want to say about it. Jesus, on the cross, saw Mary there. Standing next to her is someone who is
identified as “the disciple whom he loved”.
That’s usually considered to be John himself, although the Bible does
not make that clear and there are other theories. But the two of them are standing there
together. And Jesus sees them. And Jesus says to Mary, “Woman, here is your
son.” And he says to the disciple, “Here
is your mother.” And then, we’re told
“From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.”
Jesus knew how Mary was feeling. And he knew there was nothing he could do
about it. Except. Except, there was this one thing Jesus could
do. He could make sure Mary was not left
alone. He could make sure that Mary did
not have to go through her grief and her pain and her sadness by herself. He could make sure someone was there for her. The disciple could not make Mary stop feeling
what she was feeling. It would’ve been
foolish to try. But the disciple could
be there for her. The disciple could
support her. The disciple could
encourage her. The disciple could love
her. The disciple could make sure Mary
knew that she did not have to face things by herself.
See, when these things happen, our instinct is to always
ask the why question. Why did this
happen? It’s okay to ask, but we’re not
likely to get an answer. And the fact
is, in a situation like this, even if we did know the answer, it would not
satisfy us. It would not have satisfied
Mary. If the angel Gabriel had appeared
to her at that time and explained to her that Jesus had to die so that the sins
of humanity could be forgiven, that it was all right because it was all part of
God’s plan, I suspect Mary would still not have accepted it. I think she might’ve said, “Do you mean to
tell me that the almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing God could not come up with
a better plan that that? A plan that
requires my son, my wonderful, innocent, perfect son, to be killed on a cross? That’s the best plan God could come up with? What kind of stupid plan is that, anyway?”
There is no answer to “why” that would satisfy us when
someone we love that much dies. Maybe
that’s why, on the cross, Jesus did not try to answer “why”. Instead, Jesus answered a different
question. Jesus answered “what”. As in, “What can I do to help?”
Jesus did the one thing he could do to help. He made sure that Mary did not have to face
this situation alone. And maybe that’s a
lesson you and I need to take out of this.
When we see someone hurting, and it seems like there’s nothing we can do
to take away the hurt, we can still make sure that person does not have to face
the situation alone. We can be there for
them. We cannot stop them from feeling
what they’re feeling. It would probably
be foolish to try. But we can still be
there for them. We can still support
them. We can still encourage them. We can still love them. We can make sure that they know they do not
have to face things by themselves.
That’s why we have the prayer emphasis for people who
feel alone. Because every one of us
knows someone who is going through something really difficult right now. And in fact, the chances are that there is
someone right here today who’s going through something really difficult. Maybe we know about it, or maybe we
don’t. But they’re still going through
it. And that’s why we need to keep
making an effort all the time to be there for each other and support each other
and help each other and encourage each other.
That’s not easy. I
know it’s not. I certainly don’t always
do it. I miss chances all the time to be
there for people. We all do. It’s not because we mean to miss
chances. It’s just that we get wrapped
up in our own stuff. And the stuff we
get wrapped up in is not bad stuff. It’s
good stuff. But sometimes, we get so
wrapped up in it that we don’t see the hurts of the people around us. We don’t notice that there are people all
around us who need us to be there for them.
And a lot of times, those people won’t come right out and tell us that
they need us. In fact, they may try to
hide the fact that they need us. But
they still do. And we need to be there
for them. And sometimes, we need them to
be there for us.
It’s not easy. And
I think the key to it is prayer. We need
to pray that God will open our hearts as well as opening our eyes. We need to pray that God will give us the
desire and the determination to see the hurting people around us and to do
whatever we can to help. We need to pray
that God will put God’s Spirit into our hearts, no matter how much we try to
resist it. And we need to keep praying
this over and over and over again.
Because even if we start doing this, we’ll always be tempted to start
sliding back.
It’s not easy. But
we can do it. Jesus did it, even while
he was hanging on a cross. You and I can
do it, too. None of us can do
everything, but each of us can do something.
And we can all be there for each other.
If each of us does what we can do, there will be no one who has to face
the hardships of life alone. And then,
we’ll be the loving, caring people God wants us to be.
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