Sorry this blog is late today — all I can say is we thirteen women have been living the Story of this blog so intensely there has not been time to write. Since you aren’t here to share this glory, I’ll share a bit of our thinking on hope:
Read John 19.
For much of John 19, which describes the final days of Jesus’ life, Mary goes unmentioned. With my mothering heart, I imagine that she was following Jesus through the final days of abuse and mockery, remembering Gabriel’s announcement, remembering Simeon’s words, “and a sword shall pierce your soul,” remembering her son’s first steps and his first words, remembering moments of joy and moments of despair. N.T. Wright says,
But we mustn’t imagine that Mary was a heroine, an Annie-get-your-gun type, grasping the promise of God and riding off with it through all the problems to emerge in triumph at the end. As we saw in an earlier chapter, she must lose her dream before she realizes it. She must watch her Son, whom she thought was to be the Messiah, taking up with the shabby crowd down at the pub. She must watch him being fawned over by the girls of the street, not seeming to mind…When God calls a woman, he bids her come and die – die to the hope she cherished, the hope she suckled, the hope born from her own womb and heart.” (The Crown and the Fire, )
Mary’s story began bursting with hope, bolstered by remembrance of the mighty works God has done. And yet, over the years, the “hope and consolation of Israel” has brought as much confusion as consolation, as much heartache as hope. And now, as he dies on the cross, what is she to do?
In this moment, Mary has no words. Hopelessness can be like that. Into her silence, out of his own suffering, Jesus speaks. He looks at her and says four simple words, “Woman, behold your son,” clearly referring not to himself, but to the beloved disciple, John. He then looks at John and says, “Behold, your mother!” Not many words, but paragraphs of meaning.
All of her life, Mary has struggled with seeing Jesus as Lord, because he is her son. She has wanted things from him that he could not and should not provide, and again and again he has resisted yielding to her selfish demand. Always, he has loved her well by providing for her deeper needs, the need for a Savior, the need for true Hope and Consolation.
In this moment, he does it again. The odd thing about this story is that Mary already has sons who will support her when her eldest dies. She does not need a son. So why does Jesus give John to her as a son? Of course I don’t know, but my guess is that he is saying something like this: “I know you, Woman. I do know you, I know your heart and its struggles, and in the coming days, it will be harder than ever to understand this story. And because I love you and care for you, I am entrusting you to my very best friend, not just because I know he will care for you, but because I know he he will know how to help you hope when it appears that all is lost. All will be well.”
Mary’s story offers no clear formula for how to hope in the face of loss, but it also invites us to hope by honestly expressing our doubts and confusion. In the suffering of hope, Jesus meets us. He meets us in the Cross, and he meets us in the Resurrection. Most of all, he meets us in the Consummation, the coming day when he will finally finish making all things new.
Mary’s story also shows that while there is no formula for hope, there is reason for hope. We DO KNOW the end of the story, and it really is a “happy” ending, in all of the best possible senses of the word. To hope in painful moments of our story or another’s story is to remember the past: God has rescued before, and He will finish the work He has begun. To hope is to wrestle well with the question that Mary, the mother of Jesus, had to sort through her entire life, “Who do you say that I am?” To hope is to finally rest in the answer that Mary came to more fully after Jesus’ death and resurrection, “You are Lord of my life.” Like Mary, we must ultimately surrender in trust that God knows what He’s doing, and in doing so, we suffer hope in seasons of lost shalom.
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