Lent 37

3. Woman, here is your son.

I spent a while in a hospital room today with a patient and her husband. When I walked into the room, I got my hand sanitizer and introduced myself as the chaplain. The patient, in a strained voice filled with tears said, "We need help." This moment of panic flashed in front of me because her plea for help seemed urgent and I immediately wondered what I needed to do. I asked her what was going on and she choked back tears and told me about her condition. She's a mess. She really is. I pulled up a chair so that I could sit close to both the patient and her husband. Her husband proceeded to tell me the story of his wife's accident and all about their lives and struggles. I responded politely through his stories with "holy hmms" and "that must be hard" and "oh, I'm sorry to hear that" knowing that I would eventually ask those spiritual assessment questions that ask about sources of strength and joy and faithful coping mechanisms. And then he got quiet, and said, "Ma'am, I need you to tell me why? Why would God, the God who this woman beside me has done nothing but love and serve all her life without ever saying an unkind word, why would God let this woman suffer?" My spiritual assessment questions which, I must admit, serve to distance me a little from the patient and his/her struggle at times went out the window. I snapped back to reality and I faced this man in a moment of pure human honesty and pain.

It's very easy to over-spiritualize the cross. The cross is a whole lot less messy if we keep it in view only as a corner of the screen that really centers on Easter morning and the Resurrection. Jesus suffered and died, BUT Jesus rose. Sure. But Jesus suffered and died. When Jesus scans the crowd from the cross, he notices his mother. "Woman, here is your son." To think of Jesus as a man, with a mother, is a lot harder to swallow. These words of Jesus bring to us a sense of horror about the scene because we are forced to see this torture and death through the eyes of his mother.

The humanness of Jesus is something that is so important to me that it's something I identify as a cornerstone of my own faith. Yet, somehow, even as I consider it so important, I seem to rush past it when it seems too tough to handle. So often when I sit with dying patients, their minds go to the loved ones they know they'll soon leave behind. This is a very human thing. "Woman, here is your son." As uncomfortable as it may be, I commit to take the next couple of days of this Holy Week to sit with the messiness of the man rather than rushing to the glory of the divine.