Portrait of a Mother and Her Son (continued)
Jesus’s Third Word from the Cross
The next few years passed quickly. The rumor mill churned ceaselessly. “Who is this Jesus from Galilee? Can anything good come from Nazareth? Is he a prophet? Maybe Jeremiah or Elijah? Could he be John the Baptist raised from the dead?”
“And what about his doctrine? He has authority to cast out demons and heal the sick, but our religious leaders say his power comes from the devil? And he constantly rebukes these leaders harshly and publicly, accusing them of greed, of being lovers of money, of lusting after power and position and prestige.”
“He even dared to call King Herod a fox. Which for us Jews means a small fry, a nobody who thinks he’s a somebody.”
“Herod is out to get you, to kill you; you should run and hide,” they warned him.
But Jesus said, “You go tell that fox, that small fry, that little shot acting like a big shot, that I’m busy, I’ve got work to do, healing the sick, casting out demons, and on my way to Jerusalem.”
And so it was, Jesus who refused to let anything keep him from being about his Father’s business, went to Jerusalem, and it was there that things came to a head. Betrayed by one of his inner circle, arrested, condemned by an illegal kangaroo court that broke its own laws and procedures. Lawless religious leaders used their influence and pulled the levers of political power available to them, convincing the Roman Governor Pilate to crucify an innocent man.
Now, as she looks up at her firstborn nailed to a cross, Mary barely recognizes her son. Blood and sweat run down his naked body. But even now, he exudes a strength of spirit, a determined character, and a grace beyond anything she’s ever seen.
He gazes at the religious dignitaries who followed him to Golgotha, eager to watch him suffer, and to watch him die. His eyes look heavenward, and he opens his mouth in prayer - “Father, forgive them,” he prays, “they do not know what they are doing.”
Mary breathes a ragged, tired, sad sigh. The sword that Simeon mentioned so many years ago now pierces to the very core of her being. Yet, even now, she stands in wonder at the unimaginable love and forgiveness that flows together with the blood from her dying son.
Meanwhile, the mocking continues, incessant, cruel. Others join together with their shepherds, even the criminals on either side of Jesus join in the sadistic sport, until suddenly one of them stops. He rebukes his fellow criminal, and in so doing, he rebukes all those there that day mocking what he now knows in his heart is an innocent man. More than that, he now believes this man, who he himself had heard so much about, to be Messiah.
“Lord, remember me,” he pleads. And with a compassionate dignity beyond anything she’d ever seen, Jesus turns to that dying criminal, his eyes once again gazing deeply into the soul of another sinner, like so many with whom over the years he had lived and loved, and he says to the man, “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
That’s when Mary feels an arm around her shoulders. John, the one known as Jesus’s beloved disciple, hugs her, and from the cross, she hears her son as he speaks to her. So many times, with a hint of joyful laughter in his voice he had said to her, “Wonderful woman, dearest lady.” His voice now is hoarse and strained, but his words undeniably clear: her firstborn is fulfilling his responsibility. He is looking after his mother.
All those years that he was gone, never once had he forgotten his Mama. Never once had he abandoned the one he called “Dearest Lady.”
“Here is your son,” he says to her. Then he turns his eyes to John, to the beloved, and says, “Here is your mother.”
Why John? That’s the question many would ask, and Mary knew the answer. Mary understood. All her other sons had rejected him. They never believed in him. Never supported him.
She had her son challenge those who sought to follow him, saying, “Unless you are willing to give up even the closest members of your family to do God’s will, to walk in God’s way, you will never truly fit into God’s family.”
“Family,” he said, “are those who, together, live in the constant light of God’s will and way, of God’s grace and love. Those who live this way will be known as peacemakers. And the peacemakers are God’s children, denying themselves, willing to lose their jobs, their friends, willing to lose it all, as they reject the world’s way and seek first the kingdom of God.”
Mary knew that John, the beloved, the only one of Jesus’s disciples to make to the cross, would care for her, provide for her, be family for her. And so, she looks up at her dying boy, and she nods.
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Jesus has so much to teach us about family, and there is so much we need to learn. One of those things is that family never comes before God and God’s will in our lives.
Don’t think for a minute that it was easy for Jesus to leave his family when he followed his Heavenly Father to Capernaum. He understood what it meant to be the firstborn, but he also understood that he had to place the life that God called him to above everything else.
And don’t imagine that Jesus didn’t want, like all the other young men in his day, to find a wife, marry, and have a family. We commit the error of docetism when we make Jesus less than a human being. He was like us in every way, the scripture says, except without sin.
When Jesus challenges you and me to give up our lives, our families, our dreams, and our plans for his kingdom, he is not asking you or me to do anything less than he did.
Jesus could talk the talk because he walked the walk.
Let me make you a promise. A promise based on my personal experience. Whatever it is that Jesus is putting his finger on in your life right now, whatever the Spirit is saying, Don’t shrink back. Regardless of what you are afraid you will lose, I promise you it will all come back to you beyond anything you can imagine. (Luke 14:25-27)
Sometimes, we have to leave family to find family, to find a place where we are loved and accepted as we are and for who we are. But on the way, we will feel the sting of those who don’t, who won’t, and who can’t understand. Nevertheless, we pick up our cross and follow.
In Christ,
Dan