The Last Seven Words of Christ – 3rd Word

 

 

With the quick winter snap this week, gardening experts were in full force with the duck-and-cover tactics for tending to those freshly-sprouted spring plants.  Buds just opened last week!  Pounding rain had turned things bright green and air temperatures had warmed enough to push the tiny bit out of the seed.  Life is re-starting, all is spring … and then a little cold snap hits and everything has to be reconsidered.

 

The caretaker lovingly tends each flower and protects it from harm.  How much greater, then, do we imagine the care we might offer each other?  The relationship between parents and children, for example, is beyond measure. 

 

It’s why we rage at stories of abuse, neglect, abandonment.  It’s why our hearts break when those who want children can’t have them … when those who have children must part with them … when relationships are damaged there is pain all around.

 

There is a wonderful sculpture by Michelangelo known as the Pieta.  This Pieta suspends in marble the essence of the connection between mother and child.  It depicts a scene that we do not have recorded in scripture, but which many suspect may have taken place. 

 

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is seated, and in her lap we see her son.  But he is not the cherub-faced, babe-in-swaddling-clothes we usually imagine cradled in her arms.  He is not even the tall and broad-shouldered, tanned man of the desert, depicted with smooth beard neatly trimmed and blue eyes focused in our direction. 

 

Here, he is a man, nearly naked, just taken from the cross itself, and ready for burial.  The weight of his body is almost too great for her to bear comfortably.  His arms and legs extend over hers.  The marks of the nails are clear, the scar in his side not hidden.  These wounds do not mar the appearance of the work. 

 

His head is dropped back, expression frozen in death’s grasp.  Mary’s head is bowed.  Is she taking a last look at this amazing child?  Is she praying for him as he’s taken from her?  Mary’s right arm is under his back.  She is able to hold him at least a little while.  Her left hand reaches up just slightly.  In question?  Trying to find meaning?  Reaching to the others there with her?  Is there purpose to all that has happened?  The Pieta.  Titled in Italian (meaning ‘pity’) it is universal in its expression and appeal.

 

Mary had to have known it would eventually come to this.  Theirs was hardly an ordinary connection.  He was hardly an ordinary child.  All his life, this son holds his mother in high regard.  His first miracle, at a wedding in Cana, comes because his mother’s trust – and her motherly insistence – were so very great. 

 

We do not know, but we must imagine, that she cared for and nurtured him throughout his ministry – asking him questions, listening to his words.  She must have been amazed, like everyone else.  But somehow she was filled to a deeper level, for this one who spoke to the crowds, healed the sick, and raised the dead, was none other than her own son.

 

She followed him throughout his ministry and all the way to his cross, on that day she must have know would eventually come.  She watched him die, watched him breathe his last.  As artists like Michelangelo suggest, she cradled his lifeless body as she had cradled his infant weight years before.  The Pieta.  Pity.  Whom did she pity more?  Him, for suffering as he did?  Those at whose hand he suffered?  Herself, reaching to find comfort in a moment like this?

 

Mary’s story to this point is a wonderful and touching one.  Faithful in a way few of us could imagine.  Pieta means pity, but also ‘compassion.’  For all that she has already seen and done, I imagine that it is here, in these moments at the cross, that Mary’s compassion is at its peak, giving up her son for the sake of the world.

 

Though she says nothing aloud, her son hears her heart’s cry.  Somewhere in his anguished mind, there on the cross, he hears her.  As he is on the cross, he reaches to her with his voice, the only way he can.  He entrusts her care and well-being to his friend and beloved disciple.  He tells these two that now they are to cherish and strengthen each other with the same devotion they have shown him these many years.  He offers them the greatest blessing he can, telling them that their common love for him must now become an even greater love for one another.  Woman, behold your son.  Behold, your mother.

 

We have sinned, and fall short.  In our hearts, we do the same thing we see Mary doing in the Pieta.  We hold Jesus with one hand.  Yet we know we can’t quite handle the whole life of faith ourselves.  So we extend our other hand and try to find some reassurance.  We’re not where we could be, where we would like to be, where the gift and life of Christ demands we must be.

 

But one has died in our place, that we might live our lives full and hope-filled.  We die to our old ways, rising to the possibility of compassion that fulfills Christ’s hope for us.  The weight of such a love, the gift of such grace, is almost more than we can bear alone.  Our Savior’s love is extended to all of us.  And we see that love is somewhat scarred and bruised from the years of wear and tear as it has tried to draw us near.  We look at that love and we bow our heads. 

We have followed Jesus to this point, this Friday filled with pity.  And we have met someone here:  his mother, Mary.  We imagine her anguish, and we are awed by her compassion.  She does not cry out, but offers him up.  We hear her son’s words of comfort and blessing.  We may not have been there, at that cross, but we are here, today.   Woman, behold your son.  Behold, your mother.

 

Mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters united in the forgiving love of Christ.  Knowing that we are imperfect, that we are in need, our Savior meets us here, at the wondrous cross.  In the shadow of this cross, our Savior cares for us so greatly that he not only gives us himself, he gives us one another.