My Name Is Mary

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

My Name is Mary, Good Friday, Apr. 22, 2011

My name is Mary.  I am his mother.  You call this Good Friday.  I call it Bad Friday.  This is the day they killed him.  I was there.  So many others had left. 

I never refused God anything He asked.  When the angel came with his announcement I said yes without hesitating.  And my life was never the same again.  Child-bearing and child-rearing will do that to a woman.  There was tremendous joy and tremendous mystery and tremendous fear.  People in power were out to kill Him from the beginning.

Oh, I had plenty of warnings.  Gabriel told me.  Elizabeth and young John in her womb lifted my soul.   The shepherds and those astrologers from Persia all brought messages.  Old Simeon in the temple told me a sword would pierce my soul.

Mostly, though, we had a normal family life.  He didn’t call attention to himself in our hometown.  There was only that time when he really frightened us by staying in Jerusalem in the temple.

And He let us know He didn’t totally belong to us.

Like I said, I never refused God anything.  But have I had regrets?  I certainly did that first Bad Friday when I saw what it came to.  One could ask “Is this what it means to be favored by God?”

It all made sense when He rose from the dead.  I then realized more fully how God uses apparent defeat to bring about victory, how He uses us small, insignificant ones to build his kingdom and to confound the powerful.

My Son rose to glory, but He did not leave me alone.  He left me in the care of the other John, the beloved one.   His death resulted in the birth of a huge new family.  Brotherhood with Him means you are all my daughters and sons.