Summary: It has never been easy to be a mother or father. The responsibility has always been awesome but there are some senses in which it is more difficult today than ever. Changes have swept over us and through home and family, altering both structure and expectations. Guidance is needed and here we look at the relation of Jesus and Mary. Five pictures are shared: the wonder of the Annunciation, the pondering of the sayings of those who came to the manger, the visit to the temple when Jesus was twelve, the enmity of the officials of the society and the refuge Jesus found in home and family, and the tender scene on Calvary when most had fled but at the cross Mary his mother was to be found. We seek not only to illumine the relation of Jesus and Mary but to suggest some guidelines for parents today.
The Lord was engaged in the task of creating mothers. He was in his sixth day of overtime when the angel appeared and said, "You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And the Lord said," Have you read the specs on this order?" Then the specs were set forth: she has to be completely washable but not plastic, have 180 moveable parts ... all replaceable, run on black coffee and leftovers, have a lap that disappears when she stands up, have a kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair, and have six pairs of hands. But hands were not the major problem. The problem was the three pairs of eyes. One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, "What are you kids doing in there?" when she already knows. Another set of three in the back of her head that see what she shouldn't but what she has to know, and the ones in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect, "I understand and I love you" without so much as uttering a word. The Lord went on working on the model and the angel suggested putting the task off. But the Lord said, "I can't. I'm so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick, can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger, and can get a nine year old to stand under a shower." The model was finally finished complete with a tear of which the Lord said, "I didn't put it there." The tear, the Lord told the angel, "was for joy, sadness, disappointment, compassion, pain, loneliness, and pride."
That fable, taken from Erma Bombeck's book Motherhood: The Second Oldest Profession, touches somewhat heavily on sentimentality but it has a hard nugget of truth. Many of us would confess with gratitude that the closest we come to knowing the love of God in human form is found in a mother's love. As the fable says, God indeed created something close to himself.
There is certainly no question but that motherhood, especially in our day, is a difficult and demanding vocation. It is an art and part of the trouble is that a mother is compelled to undertake the task with no previous experience. Especially with a first child, the mother faces the experience forced to learn as she goes along. And most mothers (and fathers, too) would confess a need for a model, some indication of what should be done and how to do it.
It is here that we turn to the New Testament and look at some selected scenes out of the relation of Mary and Jesus. Our intention in this is not simply to understand what took place between Mary and Jesus, but also to see what guidance can be found in their relationship for mothering (and fathering; both are involved) for parents today.
All motherhood begins in awe and, perhaps, more than a little fear. Something essential is missing if these emotions are not involved. Mary certainly knew awe and apprehension.
When the angel appeared to Mary and said, "Hail, 0 favored one, the Lord is with you .... And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus," Mary was "greatly troubled." But the apprehension did not cancel out the acceptance: "Behold," said Mary, "I am the handmaid of the lord; let it be to me according to your word."
The apprehension felt by Mary and probably by a great many parents since her time is easily understood. Not only does parenthood launch a person into an uncharted wilderness, with no nice, easy paths to follow, but it confronts one with a frightening sense of responsibility. No doubt this is one reason why some people are not only reluctant to have a child but determined not to enter the murky region of parenthood. Also involved nowadays, of course, is the feeling of not wanting to bring a child into this kind of world. Over against that mood of despair, however, is the wonderful fact that every birth of a child is a gesture of tough-minded confidence in the future.
It would be a strange kind of person who did not feel to some degree the awe and wonder of the power possessed by a mother. Anna Quindlen is the author of a wonderful series of columns in The New York Times in which she shared her feelings as a mother. At the time of the writing of the columns she was the mother of two young sons, and one night the younger of the two sought reassurance that all was well; and this quest led him to the bed where "two terribly fallible people toss and turn, the closest thing he knows to God. This is what no one warns you about when you decide to have children. There is so much written about the cost and the changes in your way of life, but no one ever tells you that what they are going to hand you in the hospital is power, whether you want it or not ... Their father and I have them in thrall simply by having produced them. We have the power to make them feel good or bad about themselves, which is the greatest power in the world. Ours will not be the only influence, but it is the earliest, the most ubiquitous, and potentially the most pernicious." True enough! and no wonder there is apprehension and awe but also, by God's grace, acceptance and joy.
Every human being is in a real sense a mystery. We never can fully understand one another. Husbands and wives, despite the intimacy of their relationship, will at times exclaim, "I really don't understand you!" It is not always said in anger. It is an honest admission that there is a blessed aura of mystery about each of us. If this is true of adults, how much more vividly do we feel it when we look at an infant and wonder what life will hold for him or her. It doesn't matter much what others tell us; we listen to their words, but we are still uncertain. This was Mary's feeling at the time of the birth. She heard many things about the Child and she did not understand fully. Mary, we are told, "kept all these things, pondering them in her heart."
Wise parents will accept the fact that there is always a gap between the genxADerations. Children do not automatically echo all the opinions of their parents. Someone has suggested that this is God's way of making sure humanity does not stay permanently mired in the ruts of custom. No doubt this is often hard to accept; there is perplexity on the part of parents who ponder like Mary and cannot quite understand why the next generation is unwilling to continue the old patterns. There is nothing wrong with the perplexity, provided that along with it there is persistence in love. Mary pondered the mystery but persisted in the love.
One of the great things about the Bible is its quality of stark honesty. The accounts are not censored to make them look nice. It is set down honestly, and this is what gives the Bible its great helpfulness.
We can see this in the next scene at which we look in the account of Mary and Jesus. The infant has grown; now he is about twelve years of age and his parents have brought him to Jerusalem at the feast of the Passover. They made the journey in the company of friends, and when the feast was over, they started back. Jesus, however was not with them; but at first they simply thought he was in the group. But after the first day of his absence they went back to Jerusalem and spent three days looking for him. They found him ultimately in the temple.
Mary's reaction is both interesting and understandable. She was angry. "Son," she said, "why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been looking for you anxiously." This was a note of discipline and it is part of the difficult responsibility of parents.
Because this is such a difficult art, it is often not done well and sometimes not done at all. This may reflect a prejudice which enthrones the child as the master of the household, every whim indulged and no desire thwarted. In such a climate what is often produced is a person unbelievably self-centered, inwardly unhappy and outwardly a menace. What is needed, of course, is what has been called "tough love," a love which cares enough to dare to say No! when that word is needed. Without the discipline of such tough love, we fail to prepare persons for effective living and we do both society and the church a grave disservice.
The years pass and Jesus sets out on his public mission, preaching, teaching, healing. And the forces of opposition stand against him. He is seen as a threat to the establishment of that day, and plotting begins as to ways by which this danger could be eliminated. In Mark's Gospel, after he had selected the disciples, this opposition intensified. It was said that he was possessed by Beelzebul and that he was "beside himself," a polite way of saying he was insane. It was then that Mary and the family stepped in. "And when the family heard it, they went out to seize him."
Christopher Lasch once called the family and home "haven in a heartless world" and this surely lifts up an important function of the family. It is the group where hurts can be healed and wholeness restored. Beyond any other place, the circle of mother and family is a haven.
It does not require that we minimize a father's role if we stress how often this healing is a mother's gracious gift. In his lovely book A Walker in the City, Alfred Kazin, one of our fine literary critics, pays a profound tribute to his mother. Kazin and the family lived in a Brooklyn Tenement, part of a large Jewish settlement. His mother took in sewing to help keep the family together and Kazin writes: "The kitchen gave a special character to our lives; my mother's character. All my memories of that kitchen are dominated by the nearness of my mother sitting all day long at her sewing machine, by the clacking of the treadle against the linoleum floor, by the patient twist of her right shoulder ...
... The kitchen was her life. Year by year, as I began to take in her fantastic capacity for labor and her anxious zeal, I realized it was ourselves she kept stitched together." What a lovely tribute ... not stitching garments, but a family. It was a haven in a heartless world ... like the home in Nazareth.
The final scene is toward the close of Jesus' earthly ministry. Outside the city's wall a cross was raised and he was placed on it. Most of his followers had fled into the shadows of safety. "But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and mother's sister ..." Only that - standing by. It was all she could do for him but she carried through all the way, from the mystery of Bethlehem's manger to the anguish of Calvary's cross. And we know, too, that there are times when mothers (and fathers) can do no more than to be there. It may not be much but it is of crucial importance.