As we begin to look at the 4th Station of the
Cross today, Jesus meets His mother, I want us to look at a poem that I found
called “The Sacrament of Letting Go” by Macrina Wiederkehr. Parenting is
the long and arduous task of letting go and I think in Mary’s case she had a
keen sense of this from the beginning of the journey.
Slowly
She celebrated the sacrament of Letting Go…
First she surrendered her Green
Then the Orange,
Yellow, and Red…
Finally she let go of her Brown…
Shedding her last leaf
She stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the sky
She began her vigil of trust…
Shedding her last leaf
She watched its journey to the ground…
She stood in silence,
Wearing the color of emptiness
Her branches wondering:
How do you give shade, with so much gone?
And then, the sacrament of Waiting began
The sunrise and sunset watched with
Tenderness, clothing her with silhouettes
They kept her hope alive.
They helped her understand that
her vulnerability
her dependence and need
her emptiness
her readiness to receive
were giving her a new kind of beauty.
Every morning and every evening she stood in silence and
celebrated
the sacrament of Waiting.
I have two beautiful children who
love to read! We have been reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy (we are on
book 2) and they have read all the Percy Jackson books and some of the Harry
Potter series. Recently, we have been watching the Avatar, the Last Airbender
and the Legend of Korra TV series. All
of these stories are stories of adventure and quests and heroes and magic.
People with gifts and powers willing to fight evil and the powers of darkness!
Exciting stuff. Inspiring.
Keep those things in the back of
your mind as we look at Mary today.
From the very beginning, Mary knew
what she signed up for. She knew it would not be easy. We see her willingness in
her response to the angel:
Luke 1:38
NASB
“Behold,
the bond slave of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word”
the Message
“Yes, I see it all now: I’m the
Lord’s maid, ready to serve. Let it be with me
just as you say.”
Phillips
“I belong
to the Lord, body and soul,” replied Mary, “let it happen as you say.”
In her
song that she sings to Elizabeth,
we hear echoes of a song from another mother from ages past, Hannah, a mother
who gave her son to God.
When she
presents Jesus at the temple, Simeon tells her “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of
many in Israel,
and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so
that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your
own soul too.”
When
Jesus is missing for three days at age 12, there was a foretaste of agony for
Mary. “Your father and I have been anxiously
looking for You [distressed and tormented]”
I wonder
if Mary prayed “when I agreed to this, I didn’t know it would be so hard”
Did she
study the Scriptures about the Messiah, pouring over any passage that mentioned
His coming, His purpose, the deliverance of the Jews. Looking for some clue,
some indication that she had indeed heard from God. Or did she let go of having
to know? Surrendering over and over to what God was doing. “let it happen as you say.”
Did knowing that Jesus was special
change the day-in day-out of the 30 years He lived in Nazareth? As year after year went by, did
people start to doubt Mary’s story? Did Mary? First she surrendered her
Green
Then the Orange,
Yellow, and Red…
The
sacrament of Waiting.
The
sacrament of Letting Go
Mostly, it seems as if Mary was able to let go of her own
agenda. But we see some glimpses in scripture of her efforts to influence
Jesus’ ministry. The wedding at Cana shows the
relationship between mother and son in an interesting light. Mary seems to know
that Jesus is capable of fixing the problem and she also seems to be giving him
a little push into His calling. He tells her His time has not come; she tells
the servants, “Do whatever He tells you” – she is ready to get the show on the
road.
The next time we see Mary and Jesus together, she is looking
for Him – and Jesus seemingly does not go to her, instead He says “Who are my
mother and my brothers? … Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever
does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” Separating Himself from
physical bonds and reinforcing spiritual ones.
Finally she let go of her Brown…
Shedding her last leaf
She stood empty and silent, stripped bare
Leaning against the sky
She began her vigil of trust…
It is not surprising that she is in Jerusalem for the Passover – we know that it
was her custom to go every year. But this year when she is there, she
encounters her son in the midst of a protest rally. He is beaten, bloody,
carrying the cross to the place of His public execution. Jesus meets His
mother.
She stood in silence,
Wearing the color of emptiness
Her branches wondering:
How do you give shade, with so much gone?
This encounter seems to say “I don’t know what is going on,
but I am all in. Where else could I go? You alone have the words of eternal
life.”
All logical sense is now gone. The “immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine” is about to
happen. The redemption of the world is about to be accomplished but it will
cost Mary the life of her son. God so loved the world that He gave His son –
but He asked Mary to give her son, too.
He needed a human collaborator
to accomplish His purposes as He STILL DOES TODAY!
Mary didn’t have magical powers or a lightning scar. She
didn’t airbend nor was she the daughter of a Greek god. She was just an
ordinary person willing to be used by God.
And when God asked her, she said, “Yes!”
She said, “Yes” over and over. “Yes” to humiliation and
misunderstanding. “Yes” when Simeon said
a sword would pierce her heart. She said, “Yes” when Jesus was missing for
three days. “Yes” when Jesus was making trouble with the local synagogue. She
said, “Yes” when He was hanging out with “sinners” Yes and Yes and Yes!
And she said, “Yes” when He was on His way to the cross.
What are you saying to God today? When He asks you to follow
Him? When He asks you to sacrifice? to suffer?
Desmond Tutu says this about suffering: “we can transform
our suffering into a spirituality of transformation by understanding that we
have a role in God’s transformation of the world.”
Often we are hesitant to say Yes to God because we know what it will cost us. Teresa of
Avila said to God, “If this is how you treat Your friends, no wonder you have
so few!” – but the fear of suffering is much more damaging than the suffering
itself.
Father Jacques Philippe from the Community of the Beatitudes
writes in his book Interior Freedom,
“What really hurts is not so much suffering itself as the
fear of suffering. If welcomed trustingly and peacefully, suffering makes us
grow. It matures and trains us, purifies us, teaches us to love unselfishly,
makes us poor in heart, humble, gentle, and compassionate toward our neighbor.
Fear of suffering, on the other hand, hardens us in self-protective, defensive
attitudes, and often leads us to make irrational choices with disastrous
consequences.”
The very thing we are trying to avoid is what we are
inviting into our lives.
God designed us for adventure; we are inspired as we watch
movies of superheroes and magical beings. We walk alongside Frodo on the way to
Mordor and fight alongside Harry Potter against the powers of darkness. Our
hearts are stirred and we long to be a part of something bigger than ourselves
and our ordinary lives.
Jesus said “If anyone would come after me, let him deny
himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his
life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
Jesus barges into on our cozy hobbit-hole lives and bids us
to come and “follow him” - a robust call to a life of adventure.
I invite you today to look into the eyes of your Savior.
Battered and bloody on the way to the cross. Look at Him through the eyes of
Mary, with unspeakable suffering, with ultimate sacrifice.
Look at Him with vulnerability
Look at Him with dependence and need
Look at Him with emptiness
Look at Him with readiness to receive
Say Yes to Him today.
