Youth ministry, creativity, faith, and other dollops of life.
Today is Good Friday, a day where millions will be celebrating a day that happened nearly two thousand years ago. And despite it being a day that has given so many cause for celebration, the original day that we remember would have been the hardest day of this woman’s life.
Mary had already been through a lot. Pregnant with an illegitimate child as a teen, whilst betrothed to another man. Gave birth far away from her family out the back of an inn, and then became a refugee in another country, with a newborn, in fear of the life of her child.
Seemingly life plateaued a bit for her after this trauma. For nearly three decades. Her eldest son grew up, learning the family trade, and she had more children, presumably in less stressful and more conventional set ups.
Like any mother, she would have known the aches and pains and deep sense of love and responsibility that she would have had towards all of her children, but carried an extra sense of responsibilityl i t y i n m o t h e r h o o d with her firstborn, knowing that she was both privileged and burdened with a particiularly siginficant chage. A sense of responsibility that no other mother would ever know in quite the same way.
Then one day, having watched her unpredictable son’s incredible actions and words, learning from him, hoping in him, and waiting for his true identity to be fully realised, she saw him unfairly sentenced, tortured, and eventually die a horrific death.
Whilst we celebrate what Jesus did this weekend, let’s also take some time to celebrate and take note of Mary’s sacrifice. A job that someone needed to do, and whilst she celebrated her role and held it as an honour, it was costly. In taking this role she lost her pride, status, and community and security. She went through the pain of childbirth, stress, being wrongly accused and misunderstood, and eventually the pain of great loss.
Michaelangelo’s Pieta, in St Peter’s Cathedral, Vatican City.
Her love was generous. She gave her heart to a son that cost her a lot to mother. And in turn she had the grace to allow him to be all that he needed to. To allow her heart to be broken, for the sake of him achieving all that he needed to for those that he loved, for those who didn’t deserve his sacrifice.
Today I want to learn from Mary. I want the strength to love because that is when I am doing what I am made to do, not because I am trying to earn a return. I want the courage and humility to lay aside my own status in obedience to God and a resolve that he’s the only one worth living to please. And I want to follow Jesus’ movements so closely that I get front row seats in what he’s doing and where he’s surprising us with this ministry of new life.
Then three days after she witnessed the death of her son, according Jewish custom, she went to his tomb. Heavy hearted with grief, her job finally done as her sons completed his, as her final act of mothering, according Jewish custom, to dress his body. And once again, her utterly unpredictable son surprised her… revealing the very reason that motherhood was so exceptionally remarkable for Mary.