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Paul McCartney wrote the lyrics for "Let It Be". His inspiration for the song came after
a tense session while recording The White Album. That evening, McCartney had a dream
about his mother and it was his mother—who died of cancer when he was fourteen—who
was the inspiration for the "Mother Mary" lyric. McCartney continues, "It was great
to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing
'Let It Be' and that his mother told him "It will be all right, just let it be."
Charles Dickens in his final Christmas novella "The Haunted Man," wrote, "It is an undoubted
fact that all remarkable men have had remarkable mothers..." and this is certainly true of
Mary, the Mother of Jesus. While Jesus is considered by many to be the ultimate revolutionary,
I would contend that His Mother, Mary was actually the first revolutionary of the
New Testament.
Learning about Mary and how she is not the cardboard cut-out that we have been taught
growing up, can help us learn more about Jesus. We can look at her journey and find inspiration
and encouragement for our own journey. For she took the same journey that all of us have
to take: the journey of choosing to follow Jesus, in spite of where we came from or our
original ideas of who He is. Her journey to choose to follow her son is different than
the journey we take but in some ways, it is the same. Let's see what we can learn from
the mother of Jesus about following Him in our lives and being revolutionary in our context,
just as she was in hers.
Most of us are raised with great expectations that are passed to us by our family. We desire
to change the world for the better. As Gandhi tells us "Be the change you wish to see in
the world." We want to do that. While this desire can be a good thing, a spark of God
in us, it often comes with a lot of pressure attached. Pressure brings suffering as well.
Like many revolutionaries, Mary would suffer a lot. That happens at the Temple where Jesus
would be given His name, just eight days after His birth. Mary and Joseph took their son
to the Temple to dedicate Him to God. This was the tradition of the time and one of the
reasons we dedicate children in church ourselves.
At the Temple, an old man named Simeon challenges Mary's expectations for her Son. Mary believed
that Jesus would overthrow Caesar and rule as king, bringing the Jewish people out of
oppression and guiding them in the wisdom of the Torah. By having those expectations
challenged by Simeon, Mary would have to grapple with intense sorrow first hand. Here is the
scene, second chapter of Luke: 28 Simeon was there. He took the child in
his arms and praised God, saying, 29 "Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die
in peace, as you have promised.
30 I have seen your salvation, 31 which you have prepared for all people.
32 He is a light to reveal God to the nations, and he is the glory of your people Israel!"
Simeon waited his whole life to meet the Messiah and when he encountered Jesus, the Holy Spirit
inspired his words. He started with praise and he ended with more clarity about how Jesus
would be received and how it would impact Mary in a way she never expected.
And then he said: 34 "This child is destined to cause many in
Israel to fall, but he will be a joy to many others. He has been sent as a sign from God,
but many will oppose him. 35 As a result, the deepest thoughts of many
hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul."
As the band Switchfoot sings in the title track off their album "Vice Verses": "every
blessing comes with a set of curses." Simeon's words did that: blessing her son as the coming
Messiah but warning that this blessing will also bring plenty of pain.
So while Jesus would come to do what Mary hoped, He would do it in a drastically different
way than she thought. What Simeon meant by the "sword" as Scott McKnight tells us,can
be explained by these sentences: Jesus will be king.
As king, he will judge the nation. But Jesus will be rejected.
Mary will suffer, too. (Pg. 49)
For Jesus will be King but the price He will have to pay will be His earthly life. He shall
face rejection and pain beyond comprehension and seeing all this will rip Mary apart and
challenge her faith in a revolutionary way.
Despite Simeon's prediction which would surely come to pass; Jesus' childhood was pretty
normal. Luke 2:40 tells us that [in Nazareth] "There
the child [Jesus] grew up healthy and strong. He was filled with wisdom, and God's favor
was on him."
Twelve years from that prediction, Mary would again find herself with her husband at that
Temple and this time, Jesus would give them another reason to question her expectations.
It is the event that will shape the next phase of Mary's life when she, as his mother will
learn to become a disciple of her son. (Pg. 59) It is the same journey we must take if
we want to become His disciples.
After the Passover Feast Jesus and his family always attended, we find in Luke chapter 2
that Jesus was twelve at the time; he stayed behind at his Father's house, (which is a
Temple) instead of returning home with his family. When his parents found him three days
later, he was sitting with the religious teachers listening to them and actually answering questions!
This can be seen as Jesus fully realizing who He is and what His Father called Him to
do. The circle Jesus was in at the Temple that day would soon expand into the first
Church. So even at age twelve, Jesus began His preparations for the ministry that would
forever change the world.
Regardless, at that moment, Mary (as Luke tells us) had some stern words for her son:
48 ...."Son," his mother said to him, "why have you done this to us? Your father and
I have been frantic, searching for you everywhere." His answer would be another challenge to her
beliefs. 49 "But why did you need to search?" he asked.
"Didn't you know that I must be in my Father's house?"
At the Temple that day, Jesus challenged the fifth commandment "Honor your Father and Mother"
by asserting to his parents that it was more important for Him to be in His Father's house
than to return home with them. As we just read at the ending of Luke 2, He did go back
with them after making the point which is: that the first commandment (You shall have
no other gods before me) outranked the fifth commandment. So Jesus at a young age showed
respect for both.
Jesus later returned with his parents to Nazareth but what He said made Mary wonder and as the
second chapter of Luke concludes, we find that
52 Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people.
Some twenty years later, at the wedding at Cana, Jesus would again challenge the limits
of the honor your parents command and really flip the meaning of it for Mary on it's head.
This was the event that would usher a very significant turning point for Mary, for she
would have to learn that now, to obey the greatest commandment meant that she would
have to be obedient to her son. I cannot imagine the shock that must have been for her!
Let's take a look at the beginning of John 2:
[While at the wedding at Cana] 3 The wine supply ran out during the festivities,
so Jesus' mother told him, "They have no more wine."
4 "Dear woman, that's not our problem," Jesus replied. "My time has not yet come."
Mary, understandably, expected her son to fulfill this request as a way of honoring
her but by Jesus' response, there were things that Mary did not know but He did about God's
Will. Now it should be noted that back then in the Jewish culture, the term "woman" was
interchangeable with the term "mother" so Jesus' reply to his mother should not be read
with a harsh meaning.
5 But his mother told the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."
By saying this, Mary relented to her son and God used that to allow His son to turn the
water into wine with abundance. But this only happened after Mary directed the servants
to obey her son. This was the first act of surrendering to Jesus that Mary did and although,
it would be understandable to assume that it was challenging for her to do, the end
result is that she did and her son performed the first miracle of His ministry.
Jesus' claim that His hour had not yet come played into Mary embracing that surrender;
as Scott McKnight writes "Mary stood there and listened to her son make the incredible
claim that he alone knew the Father's will and the Father's timing.....For Mary to know
and do God's will, she would have to follow Jesus. Her honor would have to surrender to
his honor. Jesus' words were subtle, and they pierced Mary's heart. She would have to allow
her son to become her Lord. (Pg. 68)
That's exactly what we must do, while we are faced with dozens of different choices everyday,
it is important to remember that with God, His ways for us are always best, even when
to us they make no sense. Each day, He gives us the same choices: try to live our lives
with our expectations or to Trust in Him and let Him lead us to where we need to be, even
if it isn't always where we want to be.
So far, we have read about two instances where Jesus distanced Himself from his mother in
favor of His Heavenly Father: At the Temple when Jesus was twelve and again some twenty
years later at the wedding in Cana. These instances give flesh to Simeon's warning that
a "sword" would pierce Mary's heart. Her beliefs had been challenged many times and through
this, it was made clear to her that the only way to become part of the family of God the
Father was to follow Jesus.
As Jesus continued His ministry, it was often in direct contrast to what the Jewish people
believed the Messiah would do. Some examples are: healing on the Sabbath and dining with
tax collectors and other sinners instead of purging them of their wicked ways. What Mary
envisioned for her son as the Messsiah and what Jesus was doing were at a biblical stand-off
with each other, like two rams battling for the higher ground.
So what does Mary do? She gathers up her family and sought out Jesus in hopes of getting the
family to talk some sense into Him before He was killed. They eventually found Jesus
as described in Mark 3:
31 Then Jesus' mother and brothers came to see him. They stood outside and sent word
for him to come out and talk with them. 32 There was a crowd sitting around Jesus, and
someone said, "Your mother and your brothers are outside asking for you."
33 Jesus replied, "Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?" 34 Then he looked at those around
him and said, "Look, these are my mother and brothers. 35 Anyone who does God's will is
my brother and sister and mother."
Jesus is declaring that He is starting a new family for His Heavenly Father and with that
family comes a whole new order of life. For the third time, Jesus has distanced Himself
from Mary. Not out of spite but of righteousness.
We are not told how Mary or her family reacts to this, but we know that they did not change
His mission. We are not told when but she did join her son in His new family, not as
his mother but as his follower - though she never stopped loving him like a mother. Which
makes the final time she appears in the gospels so much more challenging. The next time we
see Mary, she is at the foot of the cross, watching her son die, the worst possible suffering
a mother could endure.
When I was ten, my grandmother who I still love dearly died of Leukemia and that hit
me very hard, especially since the last day I could really talk to her, I chose to do
something else. That lesson was one of the most painful I have gone through. While I
lost someone great in my life, it is nothing compared to a parent losing a child. For Mary
to actually witness the brutal execution of her son must have been unimaginable and frankly
indescribable.
At the final showdown between Jesus and Sin; John 19:25 tells us that
25 Standing near the cross were Jesus' mother, and his mother's sister, Mary (the wife of
Clopas), and Mary Magdalene.
At this point, we see Mary's faith put to the ultimate trial; Mary was not just a follower
of Jesus, her son and Lord, she followed him to the Cross, watching Him die and not knowing
what the future held for Him or if He would return. Mary was that kind of follower. She
thought that Jesus would overthrow Caesar and rule as Davidic king; bringing the Jewish
people out of oppression and guiding them in the wisdom of the Torah.
What was happening right before her eyes was the exact opposite. It would be understandable
for her or anyone there to wonder if their faith in Jesus had been misplaced. He had
not conquered the opposing forces that they thought He would; it was the other way around!
Of course, we know (and His followers would know a few days later) that Jesus had conquered
a much greater foe than Cesar. He had conquered death and sin with it!
The only male disciple around was John, the beloved. All the rest had fled, either because
their faith in Him was failing at the moment or that they were as much of a threat to the
leaders as Jesus was. We are not told in the Bible the reason and it doesn't matter. For
what the Bible tells us is at the foot of the cross stood the women and John. Jesus
entrusted Mary to John; as the next two verse tell us:
26 When Jesus saw his mother standing there beside the disciple he loved, he said to her,
"Dear woman, here is your son." 27 And he said to this disciple, "Here is
your mother." And from then on this disciple took her into his home.
By doing this, one of His final recorded acts on Earth, he is ensuring that His mother will
be cared for and provided for as a widow in a culture that provided few opportunities
to women without husbands. This is how much He loved her!
There is one more place that Mary shows up in the New Testament (that we are absolutely
positive about) and that is in the first chapter of Acts. She had seen her son die and days
after that has heard of His Resurrection so we find her in the middle of the first church."
14 They [the disciples] all met together and were constantly united in prayer, along with
Mary, the mother of Jesus, several other women, and the brothers of Jesus.
The official story of Mary ends here but to think that the only impact Mary had on the
first church was that first meeting would be foolish.
Her influence in the early church was very significant from the beginning. She was the
only one left living at the time that knew Jesus' early life; so it is safe to assume
that her knowledge shaped the gospels. Some scholars have even suggested that the gospels
can be seen as Mary's memoirs that still pointed directly at her son. She would be a source
of information for the church and because of that, her influence would surely inspire
the disciples and their writings, most notably, John the beloved with whom she lived and James,
her son.
The real Mary, as this message has tried to convey was not the cardboard cut-out of the ideal woman so many of us may have been
taught. Instead, she was what she had been in real life: courageous, dangerous, faithful,
assertive and hopeful for God's Kingdom.
The Mother Mary in "Let it Be" may not the same one we just heard about but the meaning
of the song is still the same. It's about letting God do His work through us.
The real Mary pointed the way in her time and is still pointing to Jesus.