Mary at the Cross - the love of parent and child

 Lent 4 Mothering Sunday Year A

(Exodus 2.1-10; John 19.25b-27) 

Jesus’ words from the Cross - which we’ve just heard in our Gospel reading:

‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’

Jesus is speaking from the Cross, first to Mary: “here is your son.” He’s referring to John, the beloved disciple, who stands with Mary at the Cross. From now on this disciple is to be a son for Mary, so that he can receive of her love, so that he can give Mary the care deserving of a mother. But as I read or hear those words: “Woman, here is your son,” I can’t help but feel that there’s a reference to himself as well. “Here is your son.” Jesus, speaking from the Cross to the woman who has carried him in her womb, who has nurtured and cared for him, who has known the frustrations of motherhood, but who has stuck with him through a perplexing change of career from the security of the carpenter’s workshop to his three years on the road - and now this, his death on the Cross. She looks at Jesus and sees the son she has loved so faithfully. He looks on her to whom he owes everything of his human being. But all they can do is look. The nails hold Jesus to the Cross. They can’t reach out and hold each other.

Mary is the prime example in the Bible of what it is to be a mother. Motherhood comes to her unasked and dangerously. She is already engaged to be married to Joseph, but in the midst of her preparations she is found to be pregnant - and Joseph is not the father. “How can this be?” she asks. Then there’s the recognition of what God’s will entails for her, her “Yes” to God. Not only is her conception unexpected; she gives birth in a way she could not have wanted - away from home and family without the preparations she would have wanted in place, nor the people she would have wanted to be there. Then there are the years when they live as a refugee family, escaping the capricious king, Herod, for life in a foreign land. Even when they have found a settled home in Nazareth there are episodes which must have been disturbing - the time visiting Jerusalem when Jesus gets lost for three days; when they find him in the Temple he is quite nonplussed - and his response, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house,” must have been so hurtful to Mary and Joseph who have provided everything for him in his home. “A sword will pierce your soul,” Simeon had prophesied to Mary and Joseph when they had taken Jesus to the Temple as a baby. How true those words are as Mary stands by the Cross - so near, yet unable to reach out to her Son, nor him to her.

“A sword will pierce your soul…”  Simeon says this to Mary, but they are words which might ring true in so many relationships of mother and child - of parent and child. Facebook offers me what it calls “memories,” photographs which it shows to remind me what I was doing in past years on that particular date. A few days ago, the photo was a picture of my mother. I realised it had been a Mothering Sunday visit to her at her Care Home. But it was taken in 2021 during the third Lockdown. My mother is in the picture, but we’re separated by glass. She is sitting in her room with a mobile phone in her hand. I’m outside on the other side of the window, speaking into my phone. We’re a mother and her son, but that’s as near as we can get to each other. And it makes me think of Mary at the Cross - reaching out to Jesus as my mother would gesture and wave to me, but the two of them unable to hold each other. 

This isn’t just my story and experience. So many people were separated from those dearest to them. The other day the Facebook memory was the notice I had had to send out three years ago at this time, saying that public worship in our churches was no longer permitted because of the spread of the Coronavirus. Mothering Sunday 2020 was the first Sunday when we could no longer meet together for the Eucharist. I celebrated the Eucharist alone that morning in the Lady Chapel of St. Cuthbert’s Church. By the end of that week even clergy had been told they were not to go into their churches to pray.

It's one of those strange things that at this time of year if you use email you might find yourself receiving messages from supermarkets or Hotel Chocolat or other retailers asking if you would like to opt out of receiving messages that mention “Mother’s Day.” It’s their way of acknowledging that for some people this is a painful time - and that can be for a variety of reasons. There may have been difficult relationships, domestic abuse, breakdowns in communications. For everyone there will be the time of loss. We tend to think of that loss as the time when a child loses his or her mother. It can be that dreadful occurrence when parents lose a child. However much pain we might feel, loss and separation are things we encounter and need to deal with.

And we can best come to terms with that loss by gratitude, love and care. That’s what today’s Bible readings and today’s service are about. The mother of the child who will be named Moses finds herself in the grip of desperation as she realises that she can no longer keep her son at home. But even as she lets him go, his sister is there to keep watch. Pharaoh’s daughter is moved to pity and care, and the sister of Moses is canny enough to bring the real mother back into the picture so that she can return to her true role of mothering her son. At the Cross, as Jesus dies, his Mother is there, faithful to the end - and she has others to stand with her, including the man known as the disciple Jesus loved. They need each other. The love which Jesus can no longer give in his mortal body he asks his disciple to give, to take Mary as his mother. And Mary is asked to show that mother’s love to that disciple in turn.

Today is a time to recognise the love we have found through our relationships which brings us to this point where we are. Not necessarily by a straightforward route, but seeing how we have got here and where we can go from here. Who has helped us to arrive in the place we inhabit now? Who will give us the care we need now? And how can we put our love into practice by care and provision for others?