“Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother,
and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.” (John 19.25b)

How many times have I heard the words, “It just isn’t supposed to be that way . . . the child shouldn’t die before the parent”? Yet, the number of times I have heard it is in direct correlation to the number of times it has happened: sometimes children die before their parents . . . and a parent’s grief runs deep. How much deeper, then, must Mary’s grief have been as she watched her son die, nails through his feet and hands? How much more profound must that grief have been as Mary’s eyes beheld the life ebbing from his body? How loudly must Mary have cried out to see her first-born son surrounded by such hate and animosity as his life gave way to death? “It just isn’t supposed to be that way . . .” “It just isn’t supposed to be that way . . .”

Did Mary stand there at Golgotha remembering? Remembering an angel coming to her and telling her she was going to birth God’s Son? Was she remembering Joseph telling her how he was just about to leave her when an angel appeared to him and told him it was God’s Son that Mary was carrying?

Was she remembering no room for them in Bethlehem? Or angels singing in the night sky? Or shepherds running into the stable with angelic stories to tell? Or Wise Men coming from the East?

Was she remembering how feared her Child was from the beginning, so much so that she and Joseph and Jesus had to flee to Egypt in the middle of the night to avoid Herod having Jesus killed? Was she remembering the weeping and wailing of other mothers, of Rachel in Ramah, for all of the children who were killed as the soldiers sought to kill her Child? Was she pondering the trail of tears which led from Bethlehem to Golgotha . . . and how it is that the God of all Love could be so despised on this earth?

Was she remembering her Son in the Temple, teaching the teachers there so intently that he forgot to go with his parents when they left to go home? Was she remembering him in the water of the Jordan with his cousin, John, as he was baptized and the Holy Spirit descended upon him as a dove . . . and the resounding voice of his Father as Jesus was named and claimed for the ministry into which he was born?

Was she remembering the life her Son gave to others as the lame walked, the blind were given sight, the lepers were cleansed, the hungry were fed, the thirsty were given drink, the sick were made well, the imprisoned were visited, and the Good News of the coming Kingdom was proclaimed throughout all his journeys? Was she remembering his laughter in a late summer’s evening near the campfire as he spoke with his disciples, teaching them in that quiet voice of his, loving them into new life through faith?

Was she remembering a Child’s tender touch, the connection made between the one birthing new life and the one being birthed? Was she remembering what it was to see the God of all creation nuzzling at her breast and dependent upon her care? Was she remembering holding this child, her child, and wondering what a mother’s love could do to protect her son in times such as these?

Was she remembering or did she just try to shut it all out, unwilling to go back in her memory, afraid of the pain she would find there? Only a mother’s tears and a mother’s broken heart could understand those questions for which there are no real answers . . . and only the Father’s love could see them all the way through the valley of the shadow of death.

Mary had watched her son grow up and she had followed him on the way. She would not, she could not, leave him here in the callous hands of strangers and, not unlike so many times before, the Son of God, her baby Jesus, took the best and worst they had to offer . . . and she would stay to see how God would bring good out of it . . . because this is not how it is meant to be.

“When it was noon, darkness came over the whole land until three in the afternoon. At three o’clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” . . . .

Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.

And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom.”

Mark 15:33-34, 37-38

“It just isn’t supposed to be that way . . . the child shouldn’t die before the parent.”

A parent’s witness . . . a Child’s experience:

God births Easter.