Woman behold thy son

Woman behold thy son. Son behold thy mother.

Mary, standing at the cross watching her son die, is faced with letting go of the Jesus who is her son and, by faith, embracing the Jesus who is her savior, her God.
Mary, the Mary of the magnificat, "my soul magnifies the Lord he has done great things for me." These were Mary's words at the beginning of her amazing journey into the motherhood of Jesus. Mary was the first to know Jesus as a human. Before he moved in her womb she knew that he was there. Mary held tight to him in the stable. The mother who took him to be blessed by Simeon. Who frantically searched for her lost 12 year old, for three days, while her wonderkind son sat in the temple, amazing the teachers. Mary, who witnessed his first miracle of turning the water into wine; she must have know of all of the healings and miracles, the raising of Lazarus. Mary was there to see even his triumphant entry into Jerusalem. Her son heralded as the king, the savior of her people, the Jews. What mother wouldn't blush with pride? Her beautiful boy fulfilling every great and wonderful prophesy. Not just loved by his mother but loved by many.
Through all of these moments in Jesus' life Mary, like all mothers, was in the process of letting go of her son. Slowly he grew in stature and wisdom and he grew beyond his mother. She was there to see him from afar but he had become his own man, God's own man.
We mother's the world over feel that appropriate but searing pulling away of our sons. They leave so quickly. Every mother has to let go of her son, that is the right way to raise a son. Slowly they break away they leave you. First to kindergarten then to middle school before you know it they are leaving for college and then for a wife or a career or a calling or maybe all three. The leaving, the breaking away is sometimes fast but often slow. It is the right thing but that doesn't mean it is the easy thing. Saying farewell to being the most important person to your son is difficult. Oh, our hearts cry out "Let me hold him like in the stable, let me keep those mean boys away, those terrible soldiers”.
But we can't do that. We, like Mary, have to allow God's plan to play out. Often a plan we can't imagine; a plan that seems ill considered. Mary must stand at the cross and decide does she believe God's plan is being brought forth or is this all a terrible mistake, a mistake that is costing her, her son?
At the cross, Jesus essentially hands his mother over to his beloved disciple. “Woman, behold thy son. Son behold thy mother”. He is saying his final good-bye to Mary as his human mother. His words tell her that he will not be her earthly son any longer. It is his final good bye to the mother/son relationship they have known. While dying and in agony, he demonstrates his tender care for her by making some final and practical arrangements for the care of his mother. A good son. Mary will go with John. John will take care of her and she will mother the grown John. The message is clear, Jesus isn’t coming down off that cross alive, this terrible event is not going to stop. It is continuing and Mary can’t see the end; how this can work out.
Now Mary is at a pivotal moment, can she say good bye to her beloved son and in that moment, in faith, embrace him as her savior, her Lord? Embrace him as the savior who loves all humanity as he had once loved her perhaps even more than he had loved her. Trusting God's plan, moving forward in faith and in hope. In the midst of this terrible occasion, with the celebrations only a memory Mary has the choice of trusting God or turning inward with her pain.
Isn't that where we stand? At the cross with a decision to make. Will we allow the love that transcends human love to open our eyes through faith? Will we accept God's plan for our lives knowing it is a lovingly wrought plan even when we don't understand the elements of that plan or how it could possibly work out for good? Through the web of pain that comes with being human we must find the thread of faith and hope as Mary did and embrace a loving and present Christ.
Mary didn't run from the face of adversity neither when she found herself pregnant and unmarried nor when they killed her son. Neither when she was given that son nor when he was taken away. As the horror of losing her son unfolded before her she stood in faith and in hope. Mary didn’t know what was to come next. It appears that she accepted her loss and within that loss found, three days later, that she gained a risen Lord.
We are called to stand before the cross with faith, faith in God’s enduring love, faith and hope that the resurrection will bring the all encompassing love of God and the peace that is beyond understanding even in the midst of our greatest losses even when we don’t know the end of the story, embracing that faith and hope as God moves us through the journey that is this life.

Amen