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The scripture reading of the morning is from the Gospel according to John, the 19th chapter. I begin the reading at the verse which is numbered 23. When the soldiers had crucified Jesus they took his garments and made four parts, one for each soldier, also his tunic, but the tunic was without seam woven from top to

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bottom. So they said to one another, "Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be." This was to fulfill the scripture, "They parted my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots." So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary

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the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold your son." Then he said to the disciple, "Behold your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. And may God bless to us and to our understanding

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this reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. A little over 100 years ago at a place about four miles northeast of Glasgow, Scotland, two Irish railroad workers rose up in an act of violence and killed a third worker.

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They were captured, tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. Part of the sentence was that they should be put to death on the same place where they had murdered their victim. There was a young Scots boy there the day of the hanging. He describes in his writing the black gibbets raised high against the bright

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blue May sky, the dragoons standing there with their buttons and swords highly polished, the cannon made ready to announce the moment of death. When the two prisoners were brought forward there was a great quiet, a hush over the thousands who had gathered to see the spectacle. And at just that moment, which

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preceded the springing of the traps, at just that moment, from a place a few yards in front of the scaffold, a lark suddenly flew from its nest and soared straight up into the heavens, singing as it ascended. Have you ever seen or heard a lark do that? Fly straight up into the blue with the sound of its beautiful

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song cascading down behind it. Even as the taps were sprung, the sound of that song was being heard. And Alexander Smith, who wrote of this, never forgot that. And I haven't been able to forget it in the last few weeks, as I have been thinking about our sharing on the Sundays of Lent this year. For you see, Calvary was a

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place of death. Calvary was a place where the gibbets were raised against the sky. It was not called the place of the skull for nothing. Yet even at Calvary the song of the lark can be heard. There is some beauty that rises above the scaffold. There were some kindnesses, even at Calvary. And the first one I would ask

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you to think about with me this morning is this, that you never have to go it alone. The scriptures say that standing by the cross of Jesus was his mother. Now the Bible talks about many mothers standing by their sons in times of suffering. Hagar weeping for her son Ishmael in the wilderness, the mother of

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Moses as she prepares the little ark of bulrushes into which she will place the child, setting him adrift upon the Nile, the poignant scene of Rizpah as she weeps over the bodies of her seven slain sons. But there are no more touching scenes of a mother and a suffering son in all of Scripture than this picture of

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Mary at the cross of Jesus. There are some children, it seems to me, who are different from the very beginning. There is something about them, something about the solitude of their spirit, something about the separated way in which they look at life, some kind of dream which takes up residence within their minds

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that sets them apart from other children. And I think that Mary must have seen this in Jesus. Surely this must have occurred to her when he said to her that day, "Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?" when she thought he had been lost and in fact he was being taught and teaching in the

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temple. Surely she must have noticed how when he was a child he did not cry when he was hurt, but rather cried when others were hurt. There's a great painting by Holman Hunt which depicts Jesus as a teenage boy working in the carpenter shop. He is resting for a moment, he's stripped to the waist and he has a broad

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muscled strong back and he's stretching. And as he stretches, the sunlight coming through the door behind him throws his shadow onto some wooden beams which are stacked against the wall on one side of the shop. And Mary off to one side looks up and the shadow of the young boy thrown on the beams resembles exactly

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the shadow of one crucified. I think Mary had moments like that and wondered what all was involved in that prophecy which she had heard so long ago that with regard to him a sword would pierce her heart. Now let's not make mistake, there were some rifts between Jesus and Mary. There would have to be between the

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finite and the infinite. Greatness is a very hungry suckling. There were times when there was not complete understanding, not that Jesus failed in any way to be what a son ought to be, but for example, Joseph disappeared from the scene and in those days it was the custom for the oldest son to become the

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man of the house, and yet Jesus went off as an itinerant rabbi and the record says that he only returned home one time. And that time he described himself as being without honor in his own country. And then there was the time when his parents feared for his sanity and his brothers and sisters came and they went

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to see how he was and asked to see him and Jesus didn't even come out of the house but sent a messenger with the word "whoever does the will of God is my mother, my brother, my sister." I think it must have hurt Mary to hear that. They did walk separate paths, but then came the time of the trouble. This one about

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whom the angels had sung, this one who had been promised the throne of David, this one whom both wise and foolish people had come to worship in a stable now was to be crucified. And so Mary hurried to be at his side. I've stood with a lot of mothers while they watched their children die. I think this morning

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of a mother who spent week after week by the side of her son. He'd been in a terrible automobile accident and was in a level 10 coma from which he never recovered. And she would be there almost every hour of the day and of the night and I would say to her, "Why don't you go home and get some rest?" And she would

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reply, "But he might open his eyes and if he does I want him to know that I am here." There was nothing that Mary could do to assuage the bleeding. There was nothing that she could do to ease his thirst. His strong arms, which she had felt before, she would not feel now and she could not put her arms about him.

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Those hands and feet which she had coddled as a child now were crushed before her eyes and that crown of thorns must have been like a ring of fire around her heart. But she was there. She only pushed him once, you know, and that was at the marriage at Cana when she wanted him to do some things to make the event a

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success and he yielded. But only once did she make such a request of him. I heard a woman say in California just two weeks ago that motherhood is a job which has built in planned obsolescence. I'm not exactly sure I agree with that phrase, but there is a sense in which any mother or father knows that as the child grows

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they must decrease as the child increases. And Mary understood that. But still she was there. Do you remember Kipling's words? "If I were hanged on the highest hill, mother of mine, oh mother of mine, I know whose love would follow me still. Mother of mine, oh mother of mine. If I were drowned in the deepest sea,

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mother of mine, oh mother of mine, I know whose tears would come down to me. Mother of mine, oh mother of mine. If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole. Mother of mine, oh mother of mine." Mary was there. The scriptures also say that Mary's sister, Salome, was there, and another

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Mary, the wife of Clopas, and another Mary, Mary Magdalene, and the disciple whom Jesus loved. Now it must have been risky for them to be there. I don't think it was risky for Mary to be there. There would have been enough sympathy in those who were in charge to know that the mother had a special right to be there

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at the scene. So I do not imagine that Mary was endangered, but these others, they ran some risk to be there at the foot of this one who was called an insurrectionist and a revolutionary. But I don't think they were afraid, because perfect love casts out fear. John, of course, is traditionally known as the

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youngest of the disciples, and yet he's the only one who had enough courage to confront the cross. All the rest of the disciples, the older ones, they dribbled away into the shadows and were blotted up by the darkness. Sometimes young people forget to love and honor those who have loved and honored and helped

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them. Sometimes, in fact, young people become so caught up in great causes that they forget the loved ones who've helped them to reach for those great causes. F. W. Borum, the great Australian preacher, tells of visiting in the home of a school friend, and he was allowed to go anywhere in the home he wanted except

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one room. He was told never to go into that one room, and he did as he was told. But one day as he was walking down the hall, the mother of his friend came out of that room into which he was not allowed to go, and she was weeping. And she came and she took little Borum in her arms and she said, "Never a sign of

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affection. Never a sign of affection." He found out later that they had a terribly retarded child, and the mother had cared for that child all the days of its life, but never once in all of that time had that pathetic little one been able to show even the slightest sign of affection. Well, there are some parents

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who never get the slightest sign of affection. A couple of weeks ago, I was lamenting to a friend of mine about the fact that I had no children. I said I was particularly aware of it now as I'm getting older because I was looking forward to the fact that my children might take care of me when I was older.

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And he looked at me and said, "What makes you think that just because you have children they'll take care of you when you're older?" And you know, I knew that intellectually. I've seen so many ungrateful children. I've seen children become so involved in the affairs of the church that they had no time to love

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their mothers or their fathers as they ought. No time for those who had lifted and loved and honored them. But that's not what we see in John. Jesus had been a kind of father to John, and John was there to show his love. And then there was this group of women there also. You know, of all the teachers of antiquity,

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Jesus alone is noted as having women following him. That was quite unheard of in that day. It's remarkable that the longest conversation recorded in the scriptures between Jesus and anyone is between Jesus and a woman. That was the woman at the well in Samaria. Jesus raised the status of women in marriage.

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Jesus is the one who first took the position that women should be educated. When he said to Mary, the sister of Martha, that she had chosen the better part in studying, Jesus didn't hesitate to use women as lead characters in his parables, which was quite uncommon. He praised that woman who gave the might.

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You remember, she was a widow. She gave all that she had to the offering. He says of a Syrophoenician woman that he had never seen greater faith. He did not distinguish women sexually. He did not hesitate to be touched or to announce that he had been touched by a woman with an issue of blood. And at the time of his

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resurrection, even though women were not allowed to bear testimony in a court of law, he chose to announce his resurrection first of all to women. And in one of his parables, he even represents God as a woman. It was remarkable the liberated view that the Lord had with regard to women. So it

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shouldn't surprise us that there would be some at the cross. Magdalene, who of course had been a prostitute, and I wonder if some of the soldiers knew her and gave her a salacious wink as she stood there on the crown of the hill. And then there was Jesus' aunt, Salome. She's the one, you remember, that tried to push

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her boys, James and John, wanted them to get the chief places in Jesus' kingdom. She wasn't like Mary. Mary allowed Jesus to move in freedom. Salome wanted to control more directly the lives of her sons. I think that's one of the reasons why Jesus didn't give John there that day back into the hands of his own

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mother, Salome, but instead said, "Let Mary be your mother, and Mary you treat him as a son." But there they were standing by. There is a picture, I've only seen it twice, yet it's been reproduced and I'm sure is available many places. It's a picture of Jesus hanging on the cross, just his face, the crown of thorns. And as

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you get close to the picture, you see that the picture of Jesus is made up of thousands of pictures of little people, many of them you recognize, great humanitarians, people who had been a blessing and a cause of comfort to many others. And all these many little faces go together to make the face of the

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Savior. And I think there's a sense in which when Jesus looked down from the cross on these ones who were standing there so that he didn't have to go through it alone, as he looked down at them he must have realized that already the beginnings of the power of his love and the power of the cross were moving

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out into the world. The Bible says that he saw of the travail of his soul and was satisfied. When he looked at the soldiers he saw nothing but apathy. They didn't care what was happening there. And when he looked at the priests he saw nothing but antipathy, because they despised him. But when he looked at some

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there, he saw sympathy. That was one of the kindnesses of Calvary, that he didn't have to go through it alone. Of course it's very hard to stand by people in a time of suffering. In the early days in the ministry which were mine, I was on call night and day to go to places of suffering, and it was so for 15 years. And

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now the nature of my ministry has changed so that I spend most of my time at a desk or in some public place. But I was on the front line long enough to know that there are really only two things in life that you cannot do alone. One is to get married, and two is to be a Christian. Because a Christian by

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definition is one who lives for others. A Christian is one who recognizes that as she has been suffered for, so she suffers for others. As God stands with her, so she stands with the least of the brethren. There are so many people who are caught up in loneliness, who sit weeping by silent telephones, or who sit dry-eyed in

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insensitive offices, or at night thumb the pages of their old and cracked TV guides. A sensitive Christian reaches out to people like this because he knows that on the cross a great burden was born for him, and he is anxious to bear a burden of others, a burden of loneliness or pain or suffering. On the cross, you see, there

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was love coming from the cross to those who were there, but there was also, in terms of these who stood by, a love that was going toward the cross. And the Christian is caught up in this two-way stream of love and extends it to others. You cannot learn this kind of standing by people who need help. It's not

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something you can do by some resolution, "Go to now, from now on I will be sensitive and care for the suffering." Oh no. No, this comes only out of the experience of love. The Bible says we love because he first loved us. That's the reason on Sunday mornings when you walk past me at the door and some of you

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say things like, "I feel so much better," or "I don't know how you knew what my need was this week, but you spoke directly to it," or "I'm much more ready now to confront the responsibilities of the next days than I was before." When I hear those words, I am thrilled. It blesses my soul to know that

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the words have been of some worth. But I also have within me a great hope, and my hope is that as you have been made to feel better, so you will go out and make others feel better. And that as you have been touched at your place of need, so you will go out to minister to somebody else in their place of need. And as you

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have been strengthened for what is ahead, so you will become an agent of strengthening to others for whatever is ahead. See, if you've really come to the cross, then you're going to go out and help other people with their crosses. Twenty years ago, on a Saturday night, when I was studying a sermon, there was a

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knock at the door, and the man in the church was there who was heavily burdened. I don't think he knew that I studied my sermons on Saturday night. Perhaps he wouldn't have come if he'd known that. But he came in and he sat and talked and talked and talked until the very smallest hours of the morning. And

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then he said, "Would you mind if I stayed here tonight?" And I said, "No, I have an extra bedroom and I fixed the bed in the extra bedroom in the apartment out there in California." And then he said another thing before he went to bed. He said, "If I need to talk during the night, would you mind if I wakened you?" And I

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said, "No, that'll be all right. In fact, maybe it would be better if I just sat here." So I seated myself in the chair and he went to sleep. I couldn't study the sermon. I was too tired. I couldn't read. I didn't want the sound of the pages. I nodded and dozed off, I'm sure. And never once throughout the night did he say a

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word. But there were a couple of times when I looked over at him and saw him looking at me. And you know, many months later, when he was better, he said to me, "It wasn't anything you said. It was just that you were there." That's what we're called upon to be, my sisters and brothers, to be there, so that no one has

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to go it alone. It is a grand thing to laugh with people, but it is a better thing to cry with them. It's when I grasped that that I came to understand that famous painting of John taking Mary and the other women home from the cross. You can still see the crosses on the hill behind them, the bodies have been

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taken down, and they're struggling up this hill, obviously emotionally exhausted. And when you look at the picture, the thing that strikes you is that Mary carries in her hand the crown of thorns. And you think to yourself, "Why would she take that grisly thing home?" I'll tell you why. Because every time she

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looked at it, she remembered of how her son stood by her, providing for her care, "John, take my mother into your home." And every time she looked at that crown of thorn, she also remembered that she had stood by him so that he didn't have to do it by himself. Don't be too quick to wipe all this off. I know a lot of you,

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and I know that for a lot of you, the most admirable thing in life is to be able to go it on your own, and you admire other people who are able to do the same thing. Well, let this truth season in your soul for a little while, that that kind of thing crucifies love. It crucifies God's love for you, because the fact of

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the matter is, you do not go it all alone, and he is there. And it also crucifies in you the love he has put there for you to give to others. So come to his table now and realize that he will meet you here, and that he will go forth from this table with you, and that you will not be alone. But realize also that here you

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make a pledge of love to be with others who might be walking all alone. Here you are loved, but here you are called to be a lover. And my precious people, if the world would only learn to love like that, then above the sound of its sobbing, we would all hear the song of the lark ascending.

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Let us pray. We plead our Father that thou wilt make us more sensitive to how much we are loved, and more responsive to all those who so desperately seek to see thy love, shown through us.

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Amen. [silence]