A mother's experience

A great Mothers Day service at St Peter's yesterday  as we thought about Mary's experience of being mother to Jesus.We looked at the one story in the Bible of Jesus' childhood: The boy Jesus at the Temple in Luke 2

Firstly, Mary did what every mother does as her child grew up 'she treasured up' and remembered the significant moments in his life. Except that Mary had more things to treasure up and ponder than most. Even before his birth she had been told: 

You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus.  He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

Next, we saw how seriously she took to the task of bringing up this child. It was expected that a Jewish dad would take his son to the Passover festival each year. But we read that Mary also went - perhaps an indication of her own desire to worship God and be reminded of all that he had done in delivering his people. But also she encouraged her son in his own faith, and modelled what parents promise to do as they bring their children to baptism:

Will you pray for them, draw them by your example into the community of faith and walk with them in the way of Christ? Will you care for them, and help them to take their place within the life and worship of Christ's Church? With the help of God, we will

But then Mary wasn't perfect. She got it wrong big time. She lost Jesus. Not just lost him for 5 minutes in Tesco (or at the pub as David Cameron did with his daughter recently), but for 3 days. 
What went through Mary's mind in those 3 days? Whatever she thought, she would have had good reason to believe that a member of the extended family or someone who knew them would spot him. And he was 12, and quite sensible...

Approx 20 years later, Mary would lose Jesus again for another period of 3 days. She would watch her son be hung on a cross and she would see him placed lifeless in a tomb. And for three days she must have thought on those experiences she had treasured up, the things she had been told about him, the hopes that she had in him - what was the point if it was going to end this way?
But after three days he was restored to her. Did he greet her in the way that he'd greeted her in the Temple in Jerusalem at the age of 12...'Why were you anxious? Didn't you know I had to be about my Father's business?' Maybe.

Being the mother of Jesus was never going to be easy - she'd been promised that from the beginning: This family trip to the Temple, to celebrate the Passover, prepared Mary for what was to come in the future. He would become the true Passover lamb - the one who would deliver from slavery and death all those who look to him from any nation and in any age.

At the end, we recognised that being a mum is a high calling, and brings great challenges and privileges. The greatest privilege is to walk alongside our children to help them to find faith in Jesus, the real life-giver.