Letting the Cross Speak

The weight of the Cross has been sitting with me heavier I think than ever. It’s been a weighty few months, maybe that’s why?
I’ve experienced loss and in deeply unexpected areas, maybe that’s why? What might it look like in your life today if you let the Cross … that solemn moment continue to speak? Between Good Friday and Mother’s Day we let the Cross speak and it changes everything…

Stepping into the mind and feeling the heart of those who experienced the death of Jesus in person is a powerful way to connect with the heaviness of the moment. We don’t do it just for the sake of feeling sad. Instead, when we attempt to empathize, we bring Jesus from far away to very close.

How we remember that night…how we let the cross speak…shapes more than a religious moment, but our daily walk.

Remembering should bring Jesus near because that is where Jesus longs to be.

Consider Mary somehow standing at the foot of the cross, not crumpled in a heap, not fainting over grief – John says she was standing by the cross…Hold that image of Mary in your mind and now flashback 33 years earlier…

Mary is before the angel Gabriel telling her that she would give birth and her son would be the Savior of the world. Imagine her hearing Simeon’s prophetic words that a sword would pierce through her soul. Imagine the tender moments she had raising Jesus – His first word, step, friends, school days…watching Him grow through awkward adolescence and on to adulthood seeing Him, as the Bible says, “grow in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.¹

The Bible tells us that she thought a lot about what was happening. She pondered it all Luke said when the shepherds came to His birth.²

Then after losing Him and finding Him again in the temple, Luke said she kept close to her heart, she treasured and even guarded all the things Jesus was doing.³

We can relate as parents because we do the same for our children as they grow. We hold close to our heart each first, every discovery, every quirky way they say things. We relate as children because growing up we saw our parents hover over us as we grew. Mary is a mother and whether or not we’ve ever been a mother – don’t we try to relate to her heart?

Don’t we have that emotional tendency to dwell with her especially on the most painful day of her life?

…standing, maybe clinging to John for strength at the horror before her…the sacred head now wounded, as the poem goes – the small hands she once held, the little feet she taught to walk, now pierced and tearing under His weight…the face she wiped and cleaned now covered in blood, the body she tucked into bed now tormented on the rough wooden beams.

Mary had treasured every first word that her precious son spoke…and now don’t you think even more she is treasuring every last?

“Why have you forsaken me?”⁴ …Yes, God, why? Where are you?

“Father, forgive them!”⁵ …Could she agree? Could she even ask that in this moment?

His promise of paradise to the dying criminal, His cry to commit His spirit to God⁶

and then the final words He would ever speak directly to her…“Here is your son.”⁷

Surely Mary clung to John and John to her as they watched the agony rip through Jesus…

“I thirst”⁸ she heard Him say to anyone listening…Oh, how many times had she brought her little boy something to drink. She had nursed Him, fed Him, brought Him water. She had been there when He changed water to wine…and now, she’s helpless. No way to do the one thing a mother wants most to do, help her child.

Finally, for all the world to hear, in one anguished gasping cry, Mary hears the last word she imagines she’ll ever hear from His lips, “Tetelestai” it is finished.⁹

Christians understand that the pain of the cross was the greatest of all loves. We know that the cross cannot be separated from the grave or from the victory coming up from that tomb. But Mary would have been absorbed in the pain as she wept that afternoon.

There was no resurrection on her mind in between her sobs.

She wasn’t crying weak little tears because she had a secret insight that in a few days everyone else would be in on.

She was wailing for her baby. She was sobbing for her child. She was terrified and horrified and even inconsolable for the loss of her son. She was every mother who has ever said to their suffering child, “If only I could take your place. I would take all your pain.”

Mothers think like that. Anyone who truly loves someone feels the same. We want to just somehow crawl into our loved one’s pain and take in on to ourselves.

How much more then, did Mary, the one who had heard the magnificent words that her son would be the deliverer want to deliver her own son from this pain…how could she reconcile that miraculous prophecy with this horrific scene?

As we feel for the heart of Mary, let’s not forget Jesus’ words to her. The gospels do not record the baby Jesus’ – Mary’s Son’s – first words, but scattered across these account, they do record His last – because, after this moment, Jesus will no longer just be her Son…

He will be her deliverer her risen Savior and His last words to her remind us why we must never lose sight of the Cross: “Here is your son”¹⁰ He said as she clung to John…and to John, here is your mother.

Jesus’ words to Mary are His words to those who have received Him – we are family at the foot of the cross. Look around, Here is your mother, here is your son. We’re here for one another like God’s family should be because Jesus was not just Mary’s son, but THE Son…the Son of God who took away the sins of the World.¹¹

Sitting with the weight of the cross reminds me of the true weight of it all and how my life is shaped because of that miserable, predicted-yet-shocking “good” Friday – enabling me to live in Him through any and all of my miserable and shocking days as I keep my eyes on Him¹² who was not defeated by the cross, but alive and living in me.

Thank you for reading this blog today. I update a few times a month and would love to invite you to connect with me and the Dwelling Richly community. If this blessed you, encouraged you, or gave you something to think about – would you leave a comment?
Share this post and bless a friend today. Thank you again.

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You are loved and prayed for. If you are struggling with anxiety, depression, worry, stressful feelings, please know that there is hope and healing. I encourage you to reach out for prayer or even to meet with your pastor. As a full-time pastor serving now with Dwelling Richly Ministries, I meet with people like you who want to hear and be heard and most of all to orient their lives to the true living God and His peace that passes understanding. Please reach out. Use the contact form on my website.

1. Luke 1:26-38; Luke 2:52 ↩︎
2. Luke 2:19 ↩︎
3. Luke 2:41-51 ↩︎
4. Matthew 27:46 ↩︎
5. Luke 23:34 ↩︎
6. Luke 23:46 ↩︎
7. John 19:26 ↩︎
8. John 19:28 ↩︎
9. John 19:30 ↩︎
10. John 19:26 ↩︎
11. John 1:29 ↩︎
12. Hebrews 2:8-9 ↩︎