Saying "Yes" to God during Lent
“Woman, here is your son . . . Here is your mother.”
Each of Jesus’ sayings from the cross is powerful in its own
way. Today’s saying is powerful because
it is so personal. Here Jesus’ own
mother is close enough to hear him speak to her. She does not speak here, which is part of the
power. So we are left wondering,
imagining, what it must have been like for her.
What would it have been like for Mary to have her life at 13
or 14 swept into such a breath-taking drama of God’s plans for the world? What was it like to raise Jesus along with
his siblings in an observant Jewish home in Nazareth for all those years? What was it like for her when he left their home
place for good at 30, for baptism in the Jordan and an itinerant life of
teaching and healing? And what was it
like when finally both the Jewish authorities and the Romans grew tired of the
trouble he was causing and had him arrested, tried, and sentenced to die?
Mary plays an important role in John’s gospel, though it is
a different role than she plays in Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John places Mary as a witness to the crucifixion. The other gospels make no mention of her
there. The other three gospels do
mention a group of women who witnessed the resurrection. They list a group of women who were from
Galilee and had followed and supported Jesus.
They also mention women from Jerusalem.
They mention Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James and
Joseph. But none of them mention Mary,
the mother of Jesus as one of the bystanders.
And they picture the women standing far off, watching from a distance. None imagines any of the women close enough
to the dying Jesus to hear him speak.
Matthew and Luke introduce us to Mary primarily in the
prologues to their gospels. But John’s
gospel does not include a birth narrative with Joseph and Mary visited by
angels and bearing the infant Messiah.
Only Matthew and Luke tell include that part of Mary’s story. But John places Mary here at the cross.
Many of you know that John’s gospel is a gospel of
“signs.” Jesus performs seven miraculous
“signs” that are meant to call forth belief in God. I say seven only because that’s the usual
assumption. The turning of water into
wine is the first “sign,” and the raising of Lazarus from the dead is the
seventh and final “sign.”
But some bible scholars are questioning that way of
thinking. Maybe the raising of Lazarus
is NOT the final “sign.” Maybe the death
of Jesus on the cross is the last, and ultimate “sign” in John’s gospel. And if that’s an appropriate way to read the
gospel, then John has given Mary a central role in both the first sign – the
wedding at Cana – and the last sign – the crucifixion of Jesus.
So when Jesus says from the cross, “Woman, here is your son”
(referring to the disciple John), and to the disciple, “Here is your mother,”
there is something more going on than a simple reference to what Mary’s living
arrangements will be. John’s gospel, through
the words of Jesus on the cross, invites us to imagine our own pilgrimage
through the eyes of his mother. Mary
becomes for us a pattern of what it means to follow, and to love, this one who
is crucified.
I want to break here for a minute to bring into this
conversation the work of a German Jesuit theologian named Karl Rahner. My professional training is theology, and I
have spent an embarrassing amount of my life reading really big, thick, dense
books by all sorts of crusty old fellows of every stripe (and some women
too!). And I can say that of all the theologians
I’ve read, Karl Rahner is one of the three or four that has made the most
lasting impact on my own life and faith.
I will share with you just one piece of his theological
work. He pictures the goal of human life
as saying “yes” to God. He is not
thinking of a tent revival, where there’s a preacher making an altar call, and
everyone is swaying to “I have decided to follow Jesus,” and you walk forward
for baptism in the river. According to
Rahner, your entire life, in its total arc from birth to death, is itself a way
of saying “Yes” to God. In fact, Rahner
argues that every life, in its completeness, is either a “Yes” or a “No” spoken
in response to the grace of God.
He doesn’t mean that at the very end of your life, on your
death bed, your heart either softens into receiving God or hardens against
God. He means that during the ordinary,
daily, course of every person's life, while we’re doing laundry or running
errands or raking leaves, we are learning to say either “Yes” or “No” to the
grace of God.
You might think about it in terms of a writer editing a
rough draft. What begins as an unwieldy,
overgrown sprouting of wordiness begins, over time, to be carved down into only
those precise words that absolutely have to be said. And at the end, the writer can say, “Now
that’s what I wanted to say.”
Rahner imagines our lives like that. Our lives are full of all kinds of words and
actions and thoughts. But the goal of a
life is to edit out all that’s un-needed until you’ve finally said only what
you want most to say. And by God’s
grace, at the end of our lives we will have wadded up a thousand rough drafts,
left only with one word, one prayer, “Yes.”
Mary, the mother of Jesus, holds out for us this possibility
of a life that has become, in the end, a “Yes” to the grace of God. In Luke’s birth narrative, Mary responds to
the angelic visit with these words, “May it be to me according to your
word.” She used nine words. But underneath those nine words lie the one
word, “Yes.”
John’s gospel pictures Mary many years later, facing the
worst that a hateful, violent world can do to a person. And she’s still saying, “Yes.”
O God, who lives
gloriously as Father, Son, and Spirit,
Grant us your
enlivening grace in the depths of our lives, new each day.
And come into us,
among us and between us with the gentle power of your Spirit,
And enable us to give
voice to that utterly unchanging “Yes” that is the only proper response to your
love. Amen.
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