Her Service
There were some things Mary was not able to give her Son. She could not surround Him with wealth. When she presented the divine Infant in the Temple all she could offer as a gift was a pair of pigeons—the offering of the very poor. But little is much if God is in it! Then she could not introduce Jesus to the culture of the age. Being poor, and enduring an enforced exile in Egypt, she had little of the acquired education of one like Luke who recorded her story. But she gave her Saviour-Son gifts of infinitely more value than secular and material advantages. What did she give Him?
First of all, from the human angle, she gave Him life, and He became bone of her bone, flesh of her flesh, and, until He was weaned, her warm milk nourished Him.
Then, along with Joseph, she gave Jesus a home, which although it was most unpretentious, was yet the only home He knew in the days of His flesh. Because of the character of Mary, we feel that her home was permeated with mutual trust and love and sympatheic understanding.
Purity of heart was among the flowers of character Mary cultivated in the home in which Jesus—and the other children—grew up. Can it be that when Jesus left home to become a preacher, He had His pious mother in mind when He said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”? Christ’s holiness was a part of His divine nature, but it was also a part of His humanity received from His mother who thought of herself as “the handmaid of the Lord.”
Another quality Jesus grew to appreciate in His mother was the sense of the presence of God. Gabriel said to Mary, “The Lord is with thee” and this divine awareness surrounded the holy Child Jesus. To Mary, God was not a being afar off, uninterested in her life or in the world. He had created but One who was so near and real. Why, because her Son was “very God of very God,” Mary was ever in the divine presence, and must have realized it.
Obedience, a trait prominent in Mary’s own life, was another quality in which she trained her Son. There is an old saying to the effect that a child who is not taught to obey his parents will not obey God. Mary submitted to the Father’s will as the channel of the Incarnation, and her holy Child grew up not only obedient to Mary and Joseph but also to His heavenly Father whose will was His delight.
Further, the one book in that Nazareth home was the Old Testament. That Mary’s mind was saturated with its promises and prophecies is evident from her song of praise. Like Timothy, Jesus, from a child, was familiar with the Holy Scriptures (2 Timothy 3:15). As His mother read to Him the records of the saints and prophets, how interested He must have been. Then there came the time when He knew that the Scripture testified of Him; that He came to be the Living Word.
Her Sorrow
When Mary brought her infant Son to be dedicated in the Temple, the aged, godly Simeon, taking the Babe in his arms and blessing Him, said to His mother, “A sword shall pierce through thy own soul also.” Mary was to experience darkness, as well as delight, as her “first-born” went out to fulfill His mission in the world. She would see Him as the “sign spoken against.” Manifold sword piercings were to be hers as the mother of the Lord. We cannot imagine the bitter trials of the years of her Son’s sojourn on the earth, particularly His last three and a half years ending in His death. Mary had listened to those angel voices rending the air as they hailed her new-born Baby as the Saviour of mankind, and heard the shepherds as they recounted the vision they had seen. She had witnessed the worship and homage of the wise men when, guided by a star, they came to the feet of her Child; and “she kept all these in her heart.” Whether she recounted these things to her growing Child we are not told. Personally, we believe that born the Son of God, Jesus had an inner awareness of who He was, from whence He came, and what His mission in the world was to be, from His earliest conscious years. During the years that Jesus was at home, Mary must have had many an inner pang, but by divine grace both then and after, she remained silently submissive, patient and trustful, knowing that the sword, piercing her heart from time to time, was in her heavenly Father’s hand.
Following the records of the gospels concerning the conversations between and about Jesus and Mary, the first event we notice took place in Jerusalem where Mary and her husband, Joseph, and Jesus had gone for the annual Feast of Passover. When the ceremonies were over Joseph and Mary, with their relatives, left for home, lost in animated gossip about each other’s affairs. Mary suddenly realized that Jesus, now twelve years of age, was not near her, and searching for Him among her kinsfolk and acquaintances could not find Him. Retracing her steps to the Temple she found Jesus where He had been left, and came upon Him in conversation with the fathers of the sanctuary. Remonstrating with her Son, Mary said, “Thy father and I have sought thee.”
Christ’s reply was like a sword piercing her heart: “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” He had no earthly father for He came as the only babe to enter the world without any earthly father. He was born of a woman, but not of a woman and a man. Young though He was, He knew of His divine parentage that separated Him from others, and He expected His mother to realize what such a gulf meant. Perhaps now, for the first time, Mary understood that her Son knew God to be, in a special sense, His only Father. There in the Temple, Nazareth faded from the mind of Jesus and earthy ties receded into the distance. He felt only one presence—the Father above in whose bosom He had dwelt from the dateless past. Mary had left her Son behind—behind with God. Her divine, “lost” Boy was to be God’s only hope for a “lost” world.
The mixed feelings in the mother’s heart, and her almost reproachful language as she sought to charge Jesus with having disregarded His mother’s natural feelings, must have been checked by a sort of awe as she looked at Him in the Temple with rapt countenance and then heard Him say that His place was in His Father’s house. Thus the narrative develops so naturally, tenderly, and in a most human way.
Being only twelve years of age, Jesus knew that every Jewish son must be subject to his parents. He indicated this in His reply to Mary, for He “went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” For the next eighteen years He yielded to His home authority. It is felt that during this period Mary lost the protection of her husband, for if he had been alive he would have been certainly mentioned in succeeding events (Mark 3:31; John 2:1; 19:25). Joseph had been a carpenter, and on his death Jesus took over the village business. In that carpenter’s shop we have “the toil of divinity revealing the divinity of toil.” “Is not this the Carpenter?” Then Joseph’s place in the home would be filled in measure by Jesus the first-born, who would care for His mother and give her years of peace.
We now come to recorded incidents causing Mary to realize that Jesus had severed Himself once and for all from her control. There were to be further sword-thrusts as she understood that her illustrious Son was absolutely independent of her authority and of human relationships. For thirty years Mary had carried in her heart the secret of His birth and the prophecy of His Messianic mission. Now the moment of parting comes when Jesus leaves the home that has sheltered Him for so long. And the striking thing is that we do not read of Jesus ever returning to it. In the home Mary had made for her Son, God had been preparing Him (for thirty years) for a brief but dynamic ministry lasting just over three years. As Jesus began His public life, His first miracle gave Him the occasion for impressing His mother with the fact that she must no longer impose her will and wishes upon Him (John 2). There must have been a pang in Mary’s heart the day Jesus left her home for good, and another heart-wound as she encountered the lack of official recognition as His mother. Whenever He met her it seemed as if He repelled her.
At the marriage feast in Cana of Galilee, at which Jesus and Mary were guests, a predicament arose when the stock of wine failed, and Mary, who failed to see that the youth had become a man, sought to order her Son to meet the crisis. His mother, conscious of the supernatural power Jesus was to manifest, approached Jesus and said suggestively, “They have no wine.”
Jesus replied abruptly: “Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come.” He was not disrespectful when He used the term “woman,” for such was the common mode of respectful address among the Hebrews. Thus, in the original the words addressed by Jesus to His mother are free from any element of disrespect or of hardness. Mary said to the servants: “Whatsoever he saith unto you do it,” and a short time later Jesus performed His first miracle. His purpose in speaking to His mother as He did was to check any undue interference on her part of His mediatorial work. As Augustine put it—
He does not acknowledge a human womb when about to work Divine works.
The Christian’s allegiance is solely to Him, not to her also: a prescient forewarning of the Holy Ghost against mediaeval and modern mariolatry.
Thinking, perhaps, that she might save Jesus from the effects of an imprudent enthusiasm, Mary receives another mild rebuke in which He hinted that the blessedness of Mary consisted not in being His mother, but in believing in Him and in His God-given mission, and in obedience to His words. Jesus again denies any authority of earthly relatives, or any privilege from human relationships. “My mother! Who is My mother and My brothers?” Then pointing to those sitting around Him who had believed His word and followed Him, He said, “Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Matthew 12:46-50; Luke 11:28). In effect Jesus said, “I, in working out the world’s redemption, can acknowledge only spiritual relationships.” So the distance between Mary and her Son widens, and the piercings of the sword, which old Simeon had prophesied, were keenly felt. Although all generations were to call Mary blessed, yet privileged and highly favored beyond all members of the human family, here was a bitter cup of sorrow she was compelled to drink.
Mary’s deepest sword piercing came when in agony she stood beneath that old rugged cross and witnessed the degradation, desolation and death of the One whom she had brought into the world and intensely loved. She heard the blasphemies and revilings of the priests and the people, and saw the lights go out—but her faith did not die. If Calvary was our Lord’s crown of sorrow, it was likewise Mary’s, yet how courageous she was. Others might sit and watch the suffering Christ, or smite their breasts and cry, but “Mary stood by the cross.” Should she not have been spared the agony of seeing the Son of her womb die such a despicable death? No! It was in the divine order of things that she should be found beneath that cross to receive the parting benediction of her Son and Saviour, and His committal of her to the affectionate care of the disciple whom He loved.
At the cross her station keeping
Stood the mournful mother weeping,
Close to Jesus to the last.
Through her heart His sorrow sharing,
All His bitter anguish bearing,
Now at length the sword has passed.
To John, His much-loved disciple, Jesus left His mother as a legacy. In the last moments of His life, and in the crisis of His deepest sorrow, His thought was of the future of His brokenhearted mother whom John took to his own home. Thus, as Augustine expresses it, “He needed no helper in redeeming all; He gave human affection to His mother, but sought no help of man.” The transference of the bond of motherhood from Himself to John raises the question, “Why did He not entrust Mary to one of her older sons or daughters?” Evidently she was a widow, otherwise Jesus would not have called upon His beloved disciple to perform the duties of an elder brother. But why not commit Mary to His own brother who would become the elder in that Nazareth home? Perhaps in John’s home Jesus knew that Mary would find the spiritual atmosphere more suited to her thirst for God, and that in John Mary would find a soul on fire similar to His own zeal for God.
We may feel, that because of the steadfast tie of tender love and mutual understanding between Jesus and Mary, Jesus should have used a softer word and said, “Behold My mother!” and not “thy mother.” Was this the final sword thrust Simeon had predicted some thirty-three years before? No! He knew that Mary would be a true mother in Israel to John, and that he, in turn, would care for the blessed among women in her declining years. Further, as Donald Davidson reminds us, “In that moment the tremendous truth must at last have dawned upon Mary, that He who hung upon the cross was not her son; that before the world was He was; that so far from being His mother, she was herself His child.” On the morning of His Resurrection Jesus did not appear first to Mary His mother, but to Mary Magdalene—surely an evidence of His matchless grace.
The last glimpse we have of Mary is a heartwarming one. We find her among the group of believers gathered together in the upper chamber. She is mentioned, not first in the list, before the apostles, where the Roman Catholic Church places her, but last, as if she were of less significance than they (Acts 1:12-14). Her Son is alive forevermore, and life has changed for her. So she takes her place among those awaiting the coming of the Spirit to equip them for the beginning of the Christian community. Mary was present in that upper room not as an object of worship, not as the directress of the infant church, but as a humble suppliant along with the rest, including her sons, who, by this time, were believers. So the last mention of Mary is a happy one. We see her praying, along with her sons whom she had possibly led into a full-orbed faith, as well as the other disciples who had met to pray and await the gift of Pentecost.
This is the last glimpse we have of Mary. Her name is not mentioned again in the rest of the New Testament after the upper room appearance, which plainly teaches that she did not have the superhuman powers the Roman Catholic Church has assigned to her. With the gradual development of Roman Catholicism from the third or fourth century, there emerged the Mariolatry so foreign to the Scriptural presentation of Mary as the most tender and lovable of women, yet a woman still. If Rome had only observed the reticence of the New Testament concerning Mary, it would not have been guilty of blinding the eyes of multitudes to the ineffable glory of the One who, though the Son of Mary, came as the express image of the Father and the only Mediator between God and men.
Mary does not stand apart from the rest of the sinful human race, born immaculate and remaining sinless throughout her life. As a member of a fallen race she recognized her need of deliverance from sin and guilt when she sang, “My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.” The “culture” of Mary does not have its origin in the Bible for “there is not a word there from which it could be inferred; not in the Creeds, nor in the fathers of the first five centuries.” Titles such as The Tower of David; The Arch of Holy Alliance; The Door of Heaven; The Queen of the Apostles, Confessors and Martyrs; The Co-adjustrix with God in the work of salvation, as applied to Mary, are the invention of Rome. Mary never magnified herself—only her Lord. Her glorification as the object of worship, her function as an intercessor through whom prayers must be addressed to Christ, her perpetual care of Christ and her present influence over Him, are the false creations of Rome. Therefore, “Mariolatry belongs, historically, to unauthorized speculation; and psychologically, to the natural history of asceticism and clerical celibacy.”
The elevation and worship of Mary is most unscriptural and idolatrous. The Bible portrays her as a woman “blessed among women,” but only as a mere faithful, humble, godly woman. Rome’s exaltation of Mary consists largely of fictitious and unreliable legends and dogmas. The true Christian portrayal of the mother of Jesus is that to be found only in the gospels in which the Master taught that man has access to God only through His all-sufficient mediatorial work (John 14:6).
Read more at - http://www.biblegateway.com/devotionals/all-women-bible/2011/05
