Portrait of a Mother and Her Son
Jesus’s Third Word from the Cross
Her name was Mary. She was a young girl. No, she was a young woman, old enough, now, to be married, and a marriage had been arranged for her. She was to marry a man in her little village of Nazareth, a village of about four hundred people, where everyone knew everyone else.
It was there that livestock farmers with sheep and goats and cattle and chickens scratched out a living. There were also tradesmen, builders who worked mostly in the nearby town of Sepphoris, about an hour’s walk away.
Joseph was the name of the man to whom Mary’s marriage was arranged. He was a builder by trade, working with both wood and stone, as he made plows and yokes for the farmers, as well as bricks, to build houses and other buildings used by Jews and Gentiles alike in Sepphoris.
It was sometime after the pledge of marriage took place and the one-year betrothal began that Mary encountered what can only be described as a life-changing experience. One that she could never fully explain to anyone else. How does one explain an angelic visitation? Especially when the angel is none other than the mighty Gabriel, guardian and protector of God’s people, Israel.
Mary had heard the stories about Gabriel. Her favorite was the one about his appearance to the prophet, Daniel, who fell on his face at the sight of this mighty angelic being. Now, suddenly, that same Gabriel stood before her, speaking the very words he had spoken to the prophet, “Fear not, Mary.” That is when Mary learned that she would miraculously conceive in her virgin womb the promised Messiah, the anointed one, King of Israel.
“May it be done unto me according to your word,” she told Gabriel. Shortly afterward, she packed a small bag and, accompanied by one of her brothers, journeyed to the hill country of Judea to spend some time with her favorite aunt, Elizabeth, wife of the priest Zechariah.
Elizabeth was also pregnant, and the child in her womb leaped as Mary entered her home. Three months she spent with Elizabeth, as together, they shared the stories of their miraculous pregnancies.
When it was time for Elizabeth to give birth, and with the signs of her own pregnancy beginning to show, Mary returned to Nazareth and remained secluded while the village rumor mill churned. Had it not been for another angelic visitation, this time to her betrothed, Joseph, in a dream, no less, the marriage would have been annulled, and Mary would have been stoned or at best, expelled from the synagogue and the village. But Joseph took Mary to be his wife, and when Caesar Augustus decreed that all Jews be registered for taxes, Joseph refused to leave his very pregnant wife alone in Nazareth, taking her with him to Bethlehem, where his family was to be registered.
It was in Bethlehem that Mary gave birth to her miracle child, the Promised One, in a stable, no less, laying him in a feed trough filled with hay, while lowly shepherds came and bowed down, telling stories of angels filling the heavens in the fields outside of Bethlehem.
Forty days later, Mary, together with Joseph, took her son, little Jesus, to the temple. It was time for her to undergo the ceremony of purification and for baby Jesus to receive the blessing ritual redemption of the firstborn son. And it was there, that day, with her boy just a little over a month old, that Mary would hear the prophetic words of a godly old man by the name of Simeon.
Taking little Jesus in his arms, Simeon praised God for the blessing of seeing the Promised One before his death. Then he turned to Mary, and with the penetrating eyes of the prophet, spoke these words - “This child,” he said, “is destined to cause the falling and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign to be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed.”
Simeon’s next words caused Mary to shudder in the deepest places of her heart. “And a sword shall pierce your own soul,” he said.
It wasn’t two years later when the family fled to Egypt. Gabriel, appearing once again in a dream to Joseph, warned him, “King Herod seeks to kill the boy.” After three years, Herod died, and Joseph, together with Mary and Jesus, returned to their homeland, settling, once again, in Nazareth.
About that same time, the Roman armory in Sepphoris was robbed. In retaliation, the Romans razed the city to the ground, sending the people of the city into exile and slavery and crucifying some two thousand Jewish men. Crucifixion. The Roman way of discouraging non-compliance and rebellion.
For days on end, the roads in and out of Sepphoris were lined with the crosses of dying Jews, their cries filling the air, day and night. Mary tried her best to shield the eyes and ears of Jesus from the horror of it all, but seeing and hearing death was inevitable for her five-year-old. Especially, this death with its slow, agonizing exposure to the sun, to the heat and cold, and to the scavenger birds landing on the victims for a pre-death feast.
Time passed. Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, rebuilt Sepphoris, and it became known as the ornament of Galilee. Joseph, together with Jesus and his brothers, helped in the rebuilding. It helped put food on the table in these difficult days. And these were difficult days. Drought had settled on the land. Streams, wells, and cisterns ran dry. Many believed the drought was the sign of a lack of God’s Word. Four hundred years had passed since the last prophet of Israel, Malachi, had spoken.
It was during this time that the newly appointed Roman Governor, Pilate, marched with his army down the dusty roads and into the Holy City, Jerusalem. Pilate carried with him into Jerusalem what, for Jews, was unthinkable. Images of the new Caesar, Tiberius, were on full display.
Large numbers of Jewish men from all over the countryside flocked angrily to Jerusalem, demanding that Pilate remove the blasphemous images. Pilate refused. After several days, the Governor surrounded the protesters with his elite Roman troops, ordering them to disband or die. Falling to the ground and stretching out their necks to make it easy for the soldiers, these defiant Jews refused to leave. It was a peaceful rebellion, and it worked. Pilate backed down and removed the objectionable images from the city.
All the while, the boy, Jesus, was growing into manhood. At thirteen years of age, he became a bar mitzvah, a son of the commandment, and soon afterward he joined Joseph in his work. Chiseling stone from the local quarry and carving handles for the yokes and plows, Jesus often thought back to the stories his mother had told him as a boy. Stories of shepherds and angels, of Persian Wise Men, Gentiles of another religion and culture, who traveled a long way to present gifts to him of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. His mother kept those gifts and treasured them. They were visible promises and prayers.
Mary knew her son, and like him, she knew loneliness. She knew what it was like to be different, to be alone, to feel alone. Even in a crowd. She had watched her boy as he grew up, attending school at the local synagogue and playing with the other boys in the village. He did well, made friends, and, in fact, was in many ways, a leader. But he was different. He knew it, his friends knew it, and Mary knew it.
Mary stood by him when his brothers and others in their little village questioned him relentlessly - “When are you going to get married? What is wrong with you? You’re thirty years old and still you haven’t taken a wife.”
When he moved to Capernaum, a fishing town on the shores of the Galilean lake twenty miles away, Jesus was once again questioned by family and villagers alike, scorned even. “You are shirking your responsibility as the firstborn son. You have work here. You have a family.”
But Jesus resolutely left his village and his family, as he moved to this town of a thousand, located on a major trade route where large numbers of people from the north and south and east and west passed through on their way to destinations throughout the empire.
There was a reason he went to Capernaum. One that only he knew, but one he shared with his mother. The words of the prophet Isaias had spoken to him deeply and personally.
He will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan - The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.
“Don’t you remember, Mama?” he had said to Mary. “I told you years ago in Jerusalem, I must be about my Father’s business.” Mary, with a sad smile, nodded her approval.
“And so it begins,” she thought to herself.
(To be continued)
Thanks for reading!
In Christ,
Dan