25 Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his
mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.26 When
Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing near by, he
said to her,‘Woman,[b] here is your son,’ 27 and
to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ From that time on, this
disciple took her into his home.
28 Later, knowing that everything had now been
finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said,‘I am thirsty.’ 29 A
jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on
a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips. 30 When
he had received the drink, Jesus said, ‘It is finished.’ With that, he bowed his head
and gave up his spirit.
John 19: 25-30 (NIV-UK)
I was there… with the other women… I had been there at the
beginning… I was going to stay right to the end… I had given birth to the
eternal son of God… So it was no stranger to watch that same eternal son of God
die…
But while I thought nothing could be as painful as the birth of
my firstborn, absolutely nothing could compare with the pain of watching him
die… No child should die before their mother… It seems to be against the
natural order of things… But even more so when the natural order has been overturned
in the first place… Why was he born if it was only to die? Would I have said
“Yes” in the beginning, if I had known how it would end? I don’t know… Did I
have a choice? Did God have a choice? I didn’t understand why it had to be that
way… If he had listened to me it mightn’t have ended like that… But he didn’t…
and it did…
When I think back, I cannot believe that when I learned I was
pregnant I sang that all generations would call me blessed… Of course I had
been blessed, but standing by that cross I felt the curse of God fall on me as
scripture tells me it fell on him and all those who die on a tree…
I cried with him, “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Old Simeon in the Temple could see things much clearer than I could in my
childish naivety when he told me at the time of my son’s circumcision that a
sword would pierce my soul… Maybe not a sword, but a spear… My son didn’t feel
it… He was beyond feeling by then… But I felt every inch of that spear as the
soldier probed his side and my soul… And as the water and the blood poured from
his side… Finally the dam burst and I cried for the first time that day… But I
made up for lost time… I cried as if I would never stop…
John, my cousin’s son, steered me away… He had had his arm
around me the whole time… My son had seen that and he asked us to look after
each other as mother and son… Typical of him to think about others while
breathing his last… I know that John will do his best for me… and I will try to
do my best for him. But it’s not the same… It will never, ever be the same… As
he said, “It is finished…”
Prayer
Father God
On this day when the Mother of your Son Jesus,
watched her own flesh and blood
tormented on a mockery of a tree
for the whole world to see,
Our heart goes out to countless other Mothers
whose hearts are breaking
because of their children...
Lives cut short by
acts of violence,
by the actions of unjust governments,
by wrong choices that
those children have made for themselves
no matter how much their mothers and
fathers and others urged them not to…
those whose lives have been cut short by
disaster, or disease or tragic accident…
But we thank you that because of the life and death of Mary's son
No son or daughter's death need be the end...
You have not forsaken us...
Christ’s work is not yet finished in us...
The Holy Spirit is there to breath into us anew
Love into loneliness
Hope into despair
Life into Death.
Amen
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