Who is my mother?
Chapter 10 from Mary: honor and value.
Every child needs to leave home. If you don’t leave home no matter how old you are you are still a child. Adulthood is a very scary thing. Because you are now responsible. This is why so many of us find ways to avoid it. The role of a father is to call a child out of the arms of his mother, and into the dangerous world of adulthood. It’s a difficult and heavy task. Women hate men for it because the child gives them comfort. And because the role of a mother is to create a safe place. If you never leave the arms of your mother, you will always be a big baby. We can assume (again, I am in the dangerous place of the silence in scripture) that Jesus lived with his widowed mother until he was thirty years old. In this case, he wasn’t being a baby, he was being responsible. The son was the only social safety net in the ancient world. And then, one day, down at the river, Jesus heard the Father call him out of the arms of his Mother. This is my Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. When the Father names you, it is a defining moment. It is the moment when your value and worth meet your True Identity, and you are called into the fullness of Being. That was the sound of what a father does. For Mary it was Overflowing with Grace. For Jesus it was Beloved Son. A word from God can keep you going through incredible difficulties. This morning I realized that I went for almost 10 years with no money in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. A word from God is worth more than a million bucks. And Jesus, after the voice of the Father, went into the desert, into temptation, hunger, and difficulty. He knew who he was and where he needed to go. His identity drove his decisions. Mary got exasperated with Jesus several times. There was that time when Jesus began to feel his independence and left his parents on a trip to Jerusalem. In the end, they found him in the temple, after five days of separation. Any time you get frustrated with God, and you finally figure out what’s going on, you discover something much bigger than your brain can process. Mary found her son, twelve years old, teaching the priests of the temple. If you are Jewish, you know that twelve years old is a boy, not yet allowed to read from the Torah in public, or lead prayers. He is not a man, and should not be respected. And a little child shall lead them. I wonder if Nicodemus was among the men who sat for days and listened to the boy from Nazareth. And later on, Mary gets exasperated again. And this time it is very important because it says something about Mary, and it says something about you and me. We forget who we are. And we forget our value and our worth. Luke tells us that one day Jesus was teaching and a large crowd gathered inside and outside of a house. And Mary along with the family of Jesus wanted him to come outside. It must be tough being the Mom of a superstar. We don’t have any context, so we can’t draw too many conclusions. But I do know that Mary was a Jewish Mother. In terms of world mythology, there is nothing more powerful than a Jewish Mother. I don’t know if Mary wanted preferential treatment, or wanted Jesus to come home and stop all this Messiah nonsense, or if she was bowing to the pressure of the rest of the family that Jesus was getting out of hand. We really don’t know. What we do know, is what Jesus said in response. My family is not limited by the expectations of my Jewish culture, and although I honor you Mother, my Father has a big family. Matthew makes it clear, “Whoever does the will of my Father is my brother, sister, and mother.” Luke says it a different way. He turns the words of Elizabeth’s greeting on their head: “Blessed is she who believes the word of God and keeps it.” In Luke Jesus tells his mother the words of Elizabeth. My brothers and sisters and mother are those who believe the word and do it. Mom, I love you, but you are forgetting I must be about my Father’s business. Remember, you said, “Let it be to me, according to your word.” Let it be, Mom. Yes, even the Mother of God forgot who she was. We all forget. We are trapped in fallen time and we are all edging toward death. That makes it easy to forget who we were, and who we are, and what we are worth. We all have bad days with pressure. We all have moments when we want to go back to our old life and just be normal. Really walking with Jesus is never normal. There is no normal in a Kingdom where everything is possible. We live in a world that is deeply committed to lies. Lies about where we came from, whose we are, and where we are going. Lies about the destiny of each person and the endgame for the world we live in. I get especially grieved when churchy people agree with those lies, so that they can get ahead and make a buck. It seems that some sections of the church can be sold to the highest bidder. Blessed is the one who hears the word and does it. Blessed is she who believed and kept it. Listen to the Lord and do what He tells you. This is how you discover your worth, not in the things you do but in the way you respond to the Voice of the Father. The more you resist the more you are not being who you are. You were created to be in relationship and that relationship is defined by honor and value. To not be relational is to go against the grain of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Word of the Father became the Word made flesh and the Holy Spirit incarnates that Word in us. That’s who we are. You are designed to be a brother or sister of Jesus. We need to be reminded every day. Because the Woman who was visited by an angel, overshadowed by the Most High, carried the Son of God in her body, and gave birth in a manger; The Woman who was visited by strangers from a far off land, and presented with the most valuable things available in her world, and was exiled in Egypt; The Woman who found her boy teaching the highest authorities in her religion, and who hid all these things in her heart for safe keeping— forgot. We all need to be called back to the basics. Blessed are the ones who hear the Word of God. Blessed are the ones who do the will of my Father.
This is a chapter from my book Mary: Honor and Value. If my work encourages you, consider becoming a paid subscriber or buy me a coffee. Thanks.