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[silence] This is Glendale Presbyterian Church People Moving Power. This tape includes the reading of scripture and a message by Dr. Bruce W. Thielman titled "You Never Have to Go It Alone."

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This is the first in a series of Lenten sermons called "The Kindnesses of Calvary." At the conclusion of side number one of this cassette, be sure to turn immediately to side number two for the remainder of the message. This tape is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

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Any public or commercial use, in full or in part, requires the advanced written permission of Dr. Thielman. The private use of this material for the spiritual gain of yourself or others is heartily encouraged. If you would like a catalog listing titles of other sermons available,

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write to People Moving Power at the address on this cassette. [silence] Let us continue in our worship by giving reverent attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in the Gospel according to John, the 19th chapter,

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beginning at the verse number 25. "So the soldiers did this. But standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.

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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."

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And may God bless to us this reading from his Word. Let us pray. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. A little over a hundred years ago, a young boy stood on a wide field

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about four miles northeast of Glasgow in Scotland. Thousands of people were gathered there before two scaffolds. A short time before, two Irishmen working on the railroad in Scotland, in an act of violence, had murdered a man.

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Soldiers and police had been brought in to swarm the area in an attempt to capture them. And this little boy, now viewing the scene, had read all of the accounts in the paper and had thought of the desolate feelings that must have been in the minds of those two fugitives as they tried to escape the gradually closing net of the law.

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And now they had been captured and were being brought to be put to death on the exact same spot where they had perpetrated the murder. The dragoons were there with their swords flashing in the sunlight. The cannon were at their ready to announce the deed.

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And the whole crowd stood stiff with fear and silence and awe as the prisoners were led to the scaffold. And then, in the moment of quietness which preceded the happening, from a grassy space directly in front of the gibbets, a place clear of the crowd,

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there suddenly arose from the grass a lark, a singing lark which flew straight toward the sky. If you have ever watched a lark go skyward, you know it goes straight, quivering up into the air until it's nothing but a vibration in the light. And cascading behind it came the loveliness of its song.

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Everyone heard it. The music above that place of murder. The song singing out above the scaffold. The executioners set about their task, but even in the doing of it, you could still hear that song coming from the fringes of a cloud on that May morning.

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The little boy who watched it all, Alexander Smith, never forgot the scene and later wrote of it. And ever since reading what he wrote, I've never been able to forget it either. And it's been much upon my thoughts in the last days. For in these weeks of Lent, we are going to be going to Calvary together.

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And it was a place like that field four miles northeast of Glasgow. The crowds were there, the soldiers were there, the scaffolds were there, and the dying were there. But soaring out above that scene is a song. Rising above all the misery, there is a special kind of music.

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And that's what I want us to hear in these weeks. The kindnesses of Calvary. The lark in the darkness. And the first kindness I would ask you to notice is this.

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That Jesus did not have to go it alone. His mother was there. John notes in the 19th chapter of his Gospel, "But standing by the cross of Jesus was his mother." Now the Bible has a lot to say about the faithfulness of mothers.

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We think of Hagar weeping at the side of Ishmael in the wilderness. The mother of Moses fashioning the little ark which would be his home for a while. That sad scene when Rizpah goes out to protect the bodies of her seven slaughtered sons. The wisdom and the courage of that unnamed mother who turned over her son to Solomon

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and because of the justice of Solomon received him back again. The Bible has a lot to say about the faithfulness of mothers. But it has no more touching word than this. "But standing by the cross of Jesus was his mother."

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You know there are some children who it seems to me from almost the very beginning of their lives give evidence of having a hard road ahead. Most youngsters when they come into the world, well there is about them that ordinariness which leads us to believe they're going to be able to make it all right, they'll come through.

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But, and I realize I speak as one who has not been a parent and so the words may seem to you to be absurd. But still it seems to me that there are some children who come into the world with about them a sensitivity, a tenderness to hurt, not only their own hurt but the hurt of other people. A kind of susceptibility to the hardness of life which evidences itself from the very beginning.

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And we know, and especially mothers and fathers know, that these children are going to have a lot of loneliness with which to live, and a lot of friendlessness, and a lot of that kind of separation which Shakespeare gives to the characters of his kings. Well I think that as Mary looked at Jesus, even when he was a little boy, she knew that he would be one of these.

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It would not have been easy to rear Jesus. How would you cope with a 12 year old who disappeared for two days, and when you found him at last he looked at you lovingly and said, "Did you not know that I must be about my father's business?"

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How would you respond when the gap between you and the one you are seeking to rear is so great, literally between the finite and the infinite? A child who didn't so much cry when he was hurt as cried when other children were hurt. There is a painting by Holman Hunt which shows Jesus as a teenager in the carpentry shop.

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He's been working hard, he's stripped to the waist, and in a moment of relaxation he straightens up from his work, and wanting to ease the discomfort in his back muscles he stretches his arms wide. And his mother across the room looks up,

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and the sun coming through the door throws the shadow of the young boy onto the wall, and stacked against the wall of the carpentry shop are some pieces of lumber, and as she looks, seeing the shadow on the lumber, she sees a figure on a cross. At that moment, did she think to herself,

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"Is this a renewal of the prophecy, the prophecy of Simeon, that a sword will pierce my heart?" I'm not trying to idealize the relationship between Mary and Jesus. There were rifts, it must be admitted. It was the custom in those days when the father died for the oldest son to take over the responsibilities of the home,

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but Jesus left the home and went out as a wandering rabbi. That must have hurt Mary. The record notes that he returned to Nazareth only once in the three years of his ministry, and that was a very unhappy occasion.

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There was a saying quite common in that day, that a prophet was not without honor save in his own country, and Jesus repeated that saying many times, but he added to it, "Not only in his own country, but with his own kin and in his own home," and he said that publicly, and that must have been very hard for Mary to hear.

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And then how about that time when she thought he had somehow lost touch with reality, and so she went to bring him home to care for him, and she wasn't even admitted to the house, but instead they brought out the word, "He or she who does the will of God is my mother and my father." He did not even acknowledge her.

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Greatness, you see, is a hard suckling, and there were rifts between them, but now, at the moment of his dying, she is there. He is her boy, you see, and he is in trouble. For a little while, the prophecies given so long ago at Christmas had seemed to her to be very real.

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She heard about the multitudes following him, the miracles, the episodes that occurred at his hand, the seeming wondrous power which was his, and so the words of the angel, "He shall sit upon the throne of his father David, and under the increase of his kingdom there shall be no end," and the carols of the angels in the heavens over Bethlehem,

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and the praise of both the wise and the foolish there at the stable, it somehow seemed to be all coming true. And then came the word that he was accused, that he was captured, that he was cursed, and that he was to die. And so she went to be by him. It's a hard thing for a mother to watch her child die.

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I don't know how hard, but I have sat with mothers doing it and seen the price of it. How must she have felt? The arms that once had circled her now stretched out on those rude beams, the hands, the feet she used to fondle now crushed and broken and bleeding, so thirsty and she could not assuage his thirst,

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and the crown of thorns, it must have been like a ring of fire around her heart. They called him names, "Blasphemer," "Traitor," "Fool," "King of the Jews," "Enemy of the people," but she called him "Son." She'd never been a pushy mother.

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There are some mothers you know who say things like, "I live for my son," which is of course a terrible thing to say, for too often it becomes true, and the son is deprived of his own life while the mother proceeds to live through him. I am on my guard when I hear some mothers say, "I have given myself to my son."

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You cannot give a self unless you have a self. There must be a self in order for a self to be given, and the child has a self as the mother has a self, and each self is to be by itself, though there is to be sharing, and Mary understood that.

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She pushed him only once, and that was at Cana, and he explained to her that it should not be so, and it never was so again. But now, when he's dying, she's there. How is it Kipling put it?

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"If I were hanged on the highest hill, Mother of mine, O Mother of mine, I know whose love would follow me still, Mother of mine, O Mother of mine. If I were drowned in the deepest sea, Mother of mine, O Mother of mine, I know whose tears would come down to me, Mother of mine, O Mother of mine.

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If I were damned of body and soul, I know whose prayers would make me whole, Mother of mine, O Mother of mine." He didn't have to go it alone because Mary was there. And he didn't have to go it alone because there were some friends there too.

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In this same 19th chapter of John's Gospel, we read that the sister of Mary was on hand, and then Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene, and the disciple whom Jesus loved. Now it would have been risky for those people to be there. No risk for Mary, they understood in that day.

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Even as this, how a mother wants to be near her son at such a time. There was, in fact, some sympathy perhaps for her, but not for these who called him friend. They came at least a little bit afraid, but perfect love casts out fear, so still they came. It is especially touching to me to find that John was there.

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He is traditionally understood to have been the youngest of the disciples. We cannot prove this, but the evidence is such that it is, it seems, a valid surmise. John was there. The other disciples were not.

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They were not men enough to stand up against that cross. They were not strong enough to confront Roman soldiers who made sport of things like spears and vinegar. They could not face a coronet of thorns, so they kind of dribbled away into the shadows and were blotted up by the darkness. But John, the youngest, was there.

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I find that especially meaningful in a day when young people as a whole seem to be given more to the general and not so much to the specific. More to the impersonal and not so much to the personal. I find our young people today ready to go and clothe the naked and feed the hungry and civilize the cannibal and reform the institutions of society, but somehow strangely short-sighted, so they do not see that feeding the hungry has at least one shade of meaning,

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which means feeding the hungry heart of a mother who'd like to see them at dinner sometime. Or clothing the naked means, at least to some, that they would dress themselves in a way that would not offend their parents, who buy the clothes they wear. Ready to go out and civilize the cannibals, yet strangely ignorant of the fact that the basis of any civilization is the home,

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and they seem so indifferent to their own homes and what goes on there, or doesn't go on there. So quick to reform the institutions of society and so blind to the absurdities of the ephemeral institutions of their own kind, to which they so readily and uncritically give themselves. What is it in our young people today which leads them to say, "I want to be loved, I want to be respected, I want to be tolerated, I want to be heard,"

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and at the same time to say, "But do not ask me to love, do not ask me to respect, do not ask me to tolerate, do not ask me to accept." This young man, John, was one of those who would turn the world upside down, but lost in great causes, he still had the time to stand beside a friend who was dying,

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to love his teacher, and to be tender and intimately personal, to stand by. And there were women there too, three of them. Now it doesn't surprise me that there were women there. Jesus had a strange relationship with women.

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Of all the teachers of the ancient world, it is recorded of only one that there were women in the group who followed him, and that one was Jesus. It's noted in Luke, the eighth chapter. Jesus even went so far, and this was unheard of in the time, to describe God in feminine terms. Do you remember his parable of the lost coin, in which he describes a woman as going out to seek the coin,

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the picture of God going to seek those who are lost? That was completely out of character for that day and that age, but Jesus did it. He was, even as he was hanging there on the cross, breaking the curse which they had borne from Eden. So it doesn't surprise me that there were women there.

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Mary Magdalene was there. The scriptures say of her that she was delivered of seven demons by Jesus, and traditionally we believe that she was a woman of ill repute. And I wonder, as she climbed the hill, did some of the soldiers look at her knowingly, and perhaps solicitously. And then Salome was there. Salome was the sister of Jesus' mother.

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She was the mother of John. Jesus had rebuked her once. She was the one who was a pushy mother. Do you remember how she came to Jesus and said, "Let my two sons, James and John, sit at your right and your left hands, when you come into your kingdom."

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Very aggressive, this mother, ready to live for her children, and he rebuked her, and rebuked her soundly. I think that's the reason there on the cross, Jesus said to John, referring to his mother, that is to Mary, "John, let my mother be yours, and you be to her a son." He said that, you see, because he understood that this young John, this son of thunder, needed room in which to grow,

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and his mother was not the pushy kind. And Salome heard this, and loved him still, for she knew him as Lord also now. It must have been so much to Jesus to look out from that cross, and see them standing there, this group of friends. They were, you see, the promise of all that was to come.

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They were the first fruits of his dying. Here was the earnest of all those multitudes who would be saved by the blood he was at that moment shedding. Here was the promise that it was not all in vain, but already the power of it was beginning to move out into the world. And as he hanged there dying, he must have thought of that.

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Looking out on a world of thorns, to see one cluster of lilies, straining for the sunlight. That must have meant so much. He didn't have to go it alone. Well, it must be admitted that it's hard to stand by a person in such suffering.

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It's not easy to stand by somebody's cross. God knows I've seen it enough to know what it costs. I think of a family named Cruz in a former church. They had a neighbor whose name and face were spread across all the papers because he had in fact been arrested as an embezzler.

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He was thrown out of his church, his Sunday school class was taken from him, and those good Christians with whom he associated in his fellowship would have no more to do with him. And so these people went and put their arms about him and brought him into the fellowship of our congregation. And that was hard and we heard about it.

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I'm not talking about standing by a person in a way where you send a check or a get well card or a cake or a casserole that you make up. I'm talking about where you go someplace that the cost is to you out of your heart and soul. When you pick the drunk up out of the gutter and hold him close, even while he vomits on you, and you keep on holding him close.

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It's very hard to see it when it doesn't happen. I note that especially in youngsters. The youngsters somehow different, marked on body or soul, somehow set aside from other kids by lack of social grace, personality, describe it as you will, and the other kids just shun him as if he was not there.

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Turn away from her as if in the providence of God she did not count. We all do it, but it's especially naked and lacks subtlety in the young. God, it's cruel. But if it's cruel in such a time as that, it's beautiful to see the other side of it.

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To go as I did into a hospital room in this city and to see a woman waiting by another woman who was dying. They were not sisters and yet had been reared almost as sisters. And when the one who was dying had lost mostly all sense of what was going on about her, I would say to her, she looked so tired, this one who stood by, why don't you go home and get some rest now.

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No, she might need me, so I'll just stand by. And she did until the end. She understood, you see, what we must all come to understand, that there are only two things in life that you must have more than yourself to do.

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One is get married, and the other is be a Christian. You can't be a Christian by yourself. The Christian is the one for others. That is, he recognizes his own needs and opens his life so that others come in and stand with him.

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And when he sees others standing alone, he goes out opening himself so that he can stand with them. Did you see that article in the paper? It wasn't a big article, it was on one of the back pages, just a couple of column inches, about the young aircraft mechanic back at Kennedy International in New York. He and his girlfriend wanted to get away from it all, so he stole a DC-3 and got it out onto the airstrip.

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He'd written to a friend of his that once he got to the runway, they would never be able to catch him. And they hurtled down the airstrip, but the plane did not gain altitude, and it crashed and he was killed. It was, as I say, a very little story, and I don't suppose I would have remembered it had it not been for one line in the story which he wrote to this friend of his before he did the deed.

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He wrote, "I will be at the controls all alone, just like most of my life, all alone." Well, people who are all alone always end up cracking up, and the Christian is sensitive to that. He has been, you see, to Calvary, and he discovered there the utter necessity of someone, the Son of God, standing by him, and he recognized in the moment that the sacrifice was made, and he became compellingly conscious of it,

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that had that not happened, he in his loneliness would be absolutely and forever nothing. And in some instant of God-given inspiration, he grasped with mind and heart the truth, the truth that God stood by him, that he might never be alone, and that God standing by him obligated him forever to stand by any who were trying to be alone at the controls,

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and thus preparing to crack up. What I am saying is that this ability to stand by is not something you learn out of books, that you gain by lessons or lectures. It is not a matter of self-discipline and control. It is instead having such a sense of God's love for you in your nothingness,

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that you, confronting other people's nothingness, go out with an equal love, and as God would not be defeated by you, you will not be defeated by anyone's separation, but will stand close at any cost, and just in the standing bear witness. It was a Saturday night, and Saturday night is sermon night when this preacher doesn't like to be disturbed,

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that he came to the door. We'll call him John, and we won't go into the nature of the case, because it's too long for here. But he was cracking up and flying all alone, and we sat and we talked until the small, small, littlest hours, and then he said to me something strange, "May I stay here tonight?" And so we made a bed and he stayed. And then he said to me something stranger still,

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the only time in all my ministry that anyone has ever said such a thing. He said, "May I wake you if I want to talk during the night?" And I said, "Well, I will sit by your bed." And so I sat by his bed, and I was too tired to read, and too tired to study.

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I guess I dozed most of the night. Well, he's much better now, and his life has a certain blossoming beauty about it, at least the beginnings of such a thing. But he is frank to say it was no word of counsel of mine, no suggestion of advice,

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no book I asked him to read. It was simply the fact that several times during the course of that night, he opened his eyes and I was still sitting there. Put this in your heart and let it seize in a while before you decide.

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Sorrow is the other side of love. Sorrow is the most tangible expression of love. It is beautiful to laugh with someone, but it is more magnificent to cry with them. So I can understand that painting in which the artist shows John leading Mary and the other women away from Calvary.

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And on their faces are looks of extreme woe and sadness. But Mary carries something in her hand. And what do you think it is? She carries in her hand the crown of thorns.

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Now why, we ask, would she take such a hideous thing home with her? I shall tell you. Because her son, while wearing that hideous thing, still loved her enough to say, "Woman, behold thy son."

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Thus providing for her. And because every time Mary looked at that crown, she could remember that at the moment when her boy needed her the most, she was there. It's a blessed thing to be Christian enough to let other people stand with you when you need it.

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And to be Christian enough to stand with other people when they need it. But you only learn that here, contemplating this kindness on Calvary. Let us pray. Our Father, we thank thee for thy word, and for the truths wrapped within its tiniest scenes.

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In the upturned faces of a mother and friends, we see the light which leads us skyward. O God, fill our hearts with the song of a singing lark, so that even in the darkness, there might be for us the melody of faith. We ask it in Jesus' name. Amen.