Mary – Walking in the Shadowlands

Posted on February 16, 2024 by walkingintheshadowlands · 1 Comment

A Tale of Two Sisters

Ethan’s Mom: Over the past year or two, I came to realize how many times we take stories from the Bible and make them about the people in the stories. Be courageous like David standing up to Goliath, be obedient like Mary when the angel visits her, etc., etc. In both the Old and New Testaments, we take the focus off of God and put it on the people. Despite that in almost every case, a few chapters after Abraham, Noah, Moses, or David show great faith in God, the Bible will relate how these same men fail miserably in their ability to be the moral role models we make them into.

Meredith Anne Miller, the author of the book “Woven,” has really opened my eyes to the extent in which we do this when we teach kids the Bible. She advocates for a different approach, which she calls “God centered storytelling” – read a passage/story, make a list of things you notice God being or doing, teach the story focusing on one of those things, and end by asking the kids what else they notice about God. She suggests this helps kids grow to trust God and lets the humans in the Bible be, well, human.

One example of how I have internalized the “human centered storytelling” approach is in the story of Mary and Martha. Growing up in and around church, I have heard many sermons and even read books about Lazarus’s two sisters. In most situations, Mary is lifted up as an example to live by and Martha is the cautionary tale of being too worried about earthly things. Let me give you a quick summary:

Mary and Martha are sisters. One day Jesus and his crew came to their house. Martha focused on welcoming them into their home and feeding them. She was busy trying to make the house look good and generally give off a good impression so that she could be praised by Jesus for being the hostess with the mostess. Mary, on the other hand, was focused on listening to Jesus. She busted into the room with all the men, sat right at Jesus’s feet, and drank up all the wisdom from his teaching. Martha gets mad, asks Jesus to fuss at her sister for being lazy and leaving her with all the stuff, and Jesus rebukes her. Mary is the hero of the story because she chose the better thing. Boo on you Martha for being worried about the stuff that doesn’t matter. Be like Mary. She’s awesome.

A while later, Lazarus dies. The sisters send word for Jesus to come. Jesus stays where he is instead of coming to heal him. When he shows up, Martha runs up to him and gives him a piece of her mind. What were you doing Jesus? If you had not taken your sweet time, you could have healed my brother. Jesus starts talking theology to calm her down. Mary comes out, asks Jesus where he’s been. But this time, Jesus cries with her. They go to the tomb. Martha tells Jesus not to open the tomb because Lazarus smells. Martha, we all know this, why do you have to point it out? So uncouth. Jesus says “Lazarus come out!” and happy ending.

Finally, Mary is also known to pour perfume on Jesus’s feet and anoint him with her hair. Like her actions in the first part of the story, this is very brave and insightful of her. Also, it is noted that Martha is serving the disciples when this happens. Be like Mary. Once again implied – don’t be like Martha.

OK, so that was a little tongue-in-cheek, but truly it’s not far off from my understanding of these two women. I have always identified more with Martha than Mary. I can say I am going to finish my BSF lesson or journal, but before I sit down, I’ll just need to put the clothes in the dryer or start dinner or run the vacuum. One thing leads to another and suddenly it’s time to head to carpool or it’s past my bedtime. I know I should be more like Mary, but somehow I default to Martha-mode every time. And because Mary is the hero of the story as I have told it to myself, I am tempted to believe that Jesus loves the Marys and tolerates the Marthas – Marthas like me.

But through the study, lectures, and notes from our BSF lesson on John 11 last week, I am starting to see how Martha is more than a cautionary tale; in fact, I realized that her siblings are not the only ones that Jesus loves. Jesus loves Martha, too.

My teaching leader pointed out that the sisters send a message to Jesus that is simple and to the point: Lord, the one you love is sick. They don’t add any details or give any instructions. Mary and Martha appear to trust that Jesus will help the one he loves. The BSF notes also pointed out something I had never heard before. The notes suggest that based on the timing of the message, Lazarus may have died that same day or even before Jesus received the message. I have always kind of assumed that because the Bible says Jesus stays where he was two more days that he is intentionally waiting to come until Lazarus dies, which just seems kind of mean. Either way, he receives the message and makes plans to head to Bethany in God’s timing, not in the sister’s suggestion.

I thought there was something beautiful about being able to send for Jesus without needing a plan first. We know that Martha is portrayed as the one working hard and taking care of things, but she doesn’t have to orchestrate this part of the crisis – she and Mary just tell Jesus the facts. Nor do the sisters remind Jesus of why he should care. Martha doesn’t give any reasons, like “Lord the one who opened his home to you or the one who donated to your ministry or the one who told all his friends that you are the Messiah…” The only qualification is “the one you love.” What if we did the same? What if we came to Jesus, confident in our identity as his beloved, and just put the situation at his feet? “Lord, the one you love is sick..or sad…or hurt…or lonely…” Just sending that “simple” message to Jesus shifts the weight off of our shoulders and onto His. In this situation, Martha and Mary both seem to get it right.

My brother-in-law and the BSF notes also drew out a different perspective on Jesus’s interactions with each woman after he arrives in Bethany. First, Martha is the one who gets up and runs to Jesus first. Mary stays put. Maybe she was too sad to move, maybe she was the one who was angry with Jesus – we aren’t privy to the reason. But Martha gets to Jesus first and says, “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died.” I have always read that as an angry accusation. As a person who has been hurt and confused by Jesus’ inaction when someone I love died, I don’t blame her for asking, even in anger. But the notes suggest that “this if/only statement should not be seen as a rebuke of her Lord. Martha expressed deep sorrow with confidence that Jesus could have prevented her brother’s death.” Martha knows that Jesus could have intervened and does not question that he would have, had he only made it in time.

But Jesus doesn’t leave Martha swimming in regrets and “if onlys.” He starts right where she is and then engages her intellectually. He knows how to talk to Martha and how to help her in this moment of despair. He reveals himself as the resurrection and the life and guides her from “if only” to “I know” to “I believe.” The BSF notes go on to explain: “Our faith often stumbles when we lament the past or enumerate what did not happen…Like Martha, we can mourn the past and feel paralyzed in the present, even when we cognitively believe God’s promises for the future…What promise is God calling you to believe, not just to provide distant future hope but to find strength for today?”

Once Martha is strengthened by belief, she goes to tell Mary that Jesus is asking for her. When Mary comes out, we find Jesus engaging her emotionally, not intellectually. As my brother-in-law pointed out in his lecture, Jesus doesn’t come at Mary with words of comfort, only his presence and compassion. It is at this point in the story we get verse 35, famous for its brevity and profound in its meaning. “Jesus wept.” He could not hold back the tears, despite the miracle that was moments away.

Studying this passage and focusing on Jesus throughout the story was a very timely exercise. Right now, we are in the ten weeks of the year that hold the most heartache. There are always days during January, February, and March when I don’t operate at full capacity. In fact, today is one of them. I don’t know why. Nothing in particular is going on, just a cloudy day in February. I have tried to go about my business today, but I keep finding myself staring off into space and wondering how the world can be so full of heartache.

Looking back at Martha and Jesus’s first interaction helps me to know that Jesus loves me, even on the days when the weight of missing Ethan keeps me from “getting things done.” He is troubled when his followers are grieving, including me. The story of Lazarus shows that “the things that make us sad move Jesus’s heart” (BSF notes). I can just say, “Lord the one you love is sad today” – no explanation or qualifications required – and, amazingly, the God of the universe is moved by my sorrow and meets me in it.

And when the “if onlys” increase in frequency and intensity as we approach March 10th, I can remember how Jesus gently led Martha back to what she knew and ultimately what she believed about him. Jesus is the resurrection and the life. In 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul tell us what this statement means for those who are are “asleep” like Lazarus and for those who mourn them:

Brothers and sisters, we do not want you to be uninformed about those who sleep in death, so that you do not grieve like the rest of mankind, who have no hope. For we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. According to the Lord’s word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever.
1 Thessalonians 4:13-17

The final time we see Martha in the book of John is in chapter 12. John briefly mentions that she was at her house six days before Passover, serving Jesus, Lazarus, and the disciples. While the men are reclining at the table, Mary pours out her expensive perfume and annoints Jesus’s feet. There is not a rebuke for Martha this time. Judas is the one to try and get Mary into trouble with Jesus, who defends her actions again. I have to think that Martha’s heart was different during this dinner. I think my heart is different now, too. Martha and I have come into a deeper realization of who Jesus is through our experiences with grief. The following song is one that I have listened to on repeat the last few years. I wonder if it might have resonated with Martha as well. Martha, the one Jesus loves after all.

Braver Still
I never saw it coming
There was no way to prepare
The world kept spinning 'round me
And left me standing there
And it's okay to grieve
A life that could not be
I'm trying to believe
In something better
Even if the dreams I had turned into dust
There's no wreckage that's too broken to rebuild
The world is just as scary as I thought it was
But Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver
I spent my whole life running
Trying to find a place to rest
Why did it take a wound like this
To let You hold me to Your chest?
Now I can hear You breathe
You're singing over me
You're making me believe
In something better
Even if the dreams I had turned into dust
There's no wreckage that's too broken to rebuild
The world is just as scary as I thought it was
But Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver
There is a valley
Where shadows are covering everything I hold dear
There in the darkness
I hear You whispering "I am here"
Even if the dreams I had turned into dust
There's no wreckage that's too broken to rebuild
The world is just as scary as I thought it was
But Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver still
Your love makes me braver

-JJ Heller

Posted on December 30, 2018 by walkingintheshadowlands · 2 Comments

Tough Chicks

pieta-1499.jpg!Large

Ethan’s Mom: Last week before church started I was visiting with a friend who should be celebrating her first Christmas as a grandmother. Her daughter, whom I remember being in the youth group when we first joined our church, was due in October with a baby girl but is now in “the club” after her daughter was stillborn this summer. Although our stories have some pretty significant differences, we are both believers and mommies to babies in heaven, which makes Christmastime more important and more painful than you might realize. At the end of our chat, my friend looked at me and said “You both are really tough chicks.” I chuckled at first but then said, “You know what? We are.”

One theme that has popped up again in Bible Study Fellowship this year as we are studying the People of the Promised Land is that people play a role in God’s plan for their lives. God promised them the land, but they had to go take it. They had to take the first step into the Jordan River, blow their trumpets outside the walls of Jericho, and show up for battle when they were completely outnumbered. Last year when we studied Romans, we learned that salvation is the same way. It is not by our own will or volition we are saved, but there is some kind of mystery of how God enables us to receive His salvation through faith — not the absence of doubt but the presence of faithfulness. I remember one of the teaching leaders illustrations was about a man who walked (or maybe rode a bike?) on a tight wire across Niagara Falls. He asked the crowd if they believed he could carry someone across with him, and the crowd went wild with cheers… until he asked for a volunteer. No one came forward to show their faith in his ability by the action of volunteering.

There are days I literally have no idea how I made it through, and I know there was something supernatural going on. But even on those days, I have to choose to get out of the bed. To be honest, nearly two years later, the days where that is a sacrificial choice are fewer but not gone. Just today I had two conversations (with my friend and my husband) that basically ended in us shaking our heads as we said “It’s just really, really hard.” Sometimes there is just nothing else to say.

I didn’t sign up for this. It is my honor to be Ethan’s mom, but it is a really, really hard job.

Which brings me to the actual point of this blog post — there is a woman, really a girl, who signed up for the toughest mothering gig ever. When the angel showed up to tell Mary, “You will conceive and give birth to a son and you will call his name JESUS,” she didn’t try to find out exactly what would be involved before saying yes. She had one (understandable I’d say) logistical question but quickly came to “I am the Lord’s slave, may it be done to me according to your word.”

I can remember in 2016 sitting in the Christmas Eve service, 34 weeks pregnant with the twins, thinking how amazing Mary was for traveling to Bethlehem. At that moment, if Greg had told me we needed to take a trip to his homeland of Ohio, I would have pointed at my huge belly and declared that “we” would not be making this trip with him. Even still, nine hours in the car cannot be compared to a few days on a donkey. Mary is a rock star, I thought.

Two weeks later, there was an ice storm in Birmingham, and I went into labor with no way to get to the hospital. A fire-rescue truck came to our aid and attempted to get me to the only accessible hospital, which I had never even seen before much less planned to go to for delivery. There was no room for my husband in the back with me, so he watched their births as best he could through the small window up front. There was no one to hold my hand, no technology to monitor the babies, no nurses to coach me through the contractions, and no mom standing nearby with a camera and moral support.

After we got to the hospital and they asked me a million registration and medical history questions, one of the nurses asked if she could call my mom for me. YES! If there is ever a time when a daughter wants her mom, it is when she herself becomes a mom (or becomes a mom again).

Back to Mary — she makes this crazy trip on a donkey. I have always wondered whether or not she expected to make it back before the baby was born. It is not inconceivable that the difficult trip contributed to premature labor and the baby took everyone a bit by surprise. Either way, whether she knew she would be away for the birth or not, she was. No mom or familiar midwife to coach her through her very first delivery. No familiar and safe home in which to welcome her baby. She was probably in the last place she would have thought she would deliver the Son of God.

This is a far cry from the typical nativity scene played out in churches and yard displays. We just went to the live nativity at our church, and I think ours is typical of most of these programs. Mary and Joseph walk straight to the stable. At best, Mary looks about 6 months pregnant and is moving pretty well. Lights go out. Lights come up. Mary and Joseph sit beaming at a baby doll either in Mary’s arms or the manger. Shepherds and Wisemen arrive, and everyone just looks goo goo eyed at the baby. Curtain.

Now, don’t misunderstand me — I am not advocating that we all bring our children to watch an actress screaming in pain with bloody rags around the stable. I just think maybe we should all realize that was part of Mary and Joseph’s experience as much as the goo goo eyes.

Yes, Joseph found that kind innkeeper. But how many doors did he knock on first? How close were the contractions when they finally found the stable? Did Joseph deliver Jesus and if so, how did he know what to do? Did Mary think “oh how charming this little manger is, full of nice clean hay” or did she cringe as she put Jesus down in the feeding trough because her arms were too tired to hold him another minute? When Mary said, “Let it be done to me as you have said” could she have imagined this? Did she think “this is not what I signed up for as the mother of the Messiah”? What an amazing honor, what a really, really hard job.

Andrew Peterson’s song, “Labor of Love,” conveys the real scene well:

“It was not a silent night
There was blood on the ground
You could hear a woman cry
In the alleyways that night
On the streets of David’s town

“And the stable was not clean
And the cobblestones were cold
And little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
Had no mother’s hand to hold

“It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

“Noble Joseph by her side
Callused hands and weary eyes
There were no midwives to be found
On the streets of David’s town
In the middle of the night

“So he held her and he prayed
Shafts of moonlight on his face
But the baby in her womb
He was the maker of the moon
He was the Author of the faith
That could make the mountains move

It was a labor of pain
It was a cold sky above
But for the girl on the ground in the dark
With every beat of her beautiful heart
It was a labor of love

“For little Mary full of grace
With the tears upon her face
It was a labor of love.”

I was really upset for weeks about how the twins came into the world. Turns out, having twins (one breech) in the back of a moving ambulance in an ice storm is a walk in the park compared to burying one of them two months later. It didn’t get any easier for Mary either. When Simeon tells her “a sword will pierce your soul,” he is not kidding. She gets to see the miracles, but she is there at the foot of the cross, watching her baby cry out in terrible pain. She watches him die.

At the retreat I went to in September, the counselor handed out small cards with a picture of Michelangelo’s Pieta on them. I had never seen this sculpture before. Mary is holding the body of Jesus after his crucifixion. She has one hand cradling him and the other open and pointed up, as if she is both holding on and letting go at the same time. According to Catholic tradition, Mary was the first person to hold Jesus and the last. That was her holy and sacred duty and privilege as his mother. Mary, blessed among women, is my new #1 hero in the faith. She isn’t just a smiling, well-coiffed new mother in a charming, rustic stable. She is the toughest of all tough chicks.

If you are reading this as a mother of a baby in heaven, hear me say this — you are a tough chick. God has promised to see you through to heaven where He will wipe all the tears from your eyes and reunite you with your sweet baby. Keep choosing to fight the darkness, and know you are winning the battle even if all you can do is take your next breath. If you can’t take it day by day, back up to hour by hour, or even minute by minute. I am praying for you as I write this, and I think you have a special place near to the heart of the Mary as well. After all, she is in “the club” too. But most of all, you are seen and known by the God who was faithful to strengthen Mary for her very unique mission and is able to strengthen you for yours.