Jesus was going to die. Jesus wasn’t going to come down off the cross as his taunters demanded. “If you really are the Son of God, jump down; then we’ll believe,” they bellowed. That wasn’t going to happen.
There was one thing Jesus had to take care of before he died. His mother, Mary, was there. Mary’s sister was there. Though she is not named, in the other gospels, we find out her name is Salome. Mary, the wife of Cleopas, was there. We know nothing about her. Mary Magdalene was there. Lots of speculation about her place in Jesus’ life. And John, the disciple was there. Three Mary’s, Salome, and a disciple. None of them taunted Jesus to come down from the cross. That doesn’t mean they weren’t wishing and praying for it to happen. That Jesus would some how be taken off the cross. That he would live. That this horrible scene would go away. But it wasn’t.
Jesus has to take care of his mother and the disciple. He’s thinking of them, as he is dying. By telling them they have each other, Jesus was trying to reinforce in their minds the fact that they won’t have him anymore. That this wasn’t going to end as they may be hoping. Jesus’ fate and short future were already sealed on the cross. Nothing was going to change that.
In a way, Jesus, as we all must some day be, was on his own now, in facing death. Comfort and solace was like an echo that was receding in the distance. There comes a point, when you are dying, where you can take your loved ones no further. You must go the rest of the way without them.
As in the song, “Lonesome Valley,”
Jesus walked
that lonesome valley
He had to walk
it by himself;
Oh, nobody else
could walk it for him
He had to walk
it by himself.
Jesus saw that lonesome valley ahead of him, and it was time to give his mother and John over to each other. He had to know they would be taken care of. He had to know that they would do that for each other. Once that was done, Jesus was ready to walk into that lonesome valley.
Jesus knew that the images and scene the Mary’s, Salome, and John were having to look at from the foot of the cross would stay with them the rest of their lives. There are some images, like a gruesome death, that sear themselves in your mind’s eye forever. For John, that ended up being a long number of years. He didn’t write his gospel until maybe 50 years after he witnessed the Crucifixion. So he had a long time to think about and contemplate those images--what they meant, and how they affected his life, and the future of the humanity.
So, what is happening in this scene of Jesus hanging on the Cross, and using his last statements to his mother and John: “This is your son...This is your mother?” What is Jesus signaling by saying this to them?
It seems Jesus is marking a change--a different way we view and organize our relationships. You’ve heard the saying, “Blood is thicker than water.” Maybe some of you watch the KU basketball games. The Morris twins have attracted most of the attention this season. They are so identical that even their tattoos are the same. One of their tattoos are the letters “FOE.” They stand for “Family Over Everything.” It’s one of the values they uphold to the point of imprinting it on their bodies.
But it’s not just their blood family. The Morris twins have pulled the players on their team into their family. The KU team has had a lot of ups and downs and deep grief this season, and they have done that as a family. It’s part of the leadership the Twins have brought to the team.
Blood may be thicker than water, but family may become inclusive of others; and that seems to be what Jesus is saying from the Cross to John and Mary. Remember the instance when Jesus was preaching in a house. Someone came and told him his mother and brothers were outside to see him. Remember what Jesus replied? “Who are my mother and brothers? And looking around on those who sat about him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother” (Mark 3:32-35).
Jesus is transforming the meaning of “family” to be much broader than what is normally thought. Which was revolutionary in Middle Eastern culture. Jesus is saying, from the Cross, that love, family love, is not just reserved for blood relatives but is now multiplied through Jesus to include others.
For the disciple John, and Jesus’ mother, Mary, standing beneath the Cross, that new relationship he calls them into is not only defined by faith, but by shared grief. In order to continue on, as mother, as disciple they now need each other. In a short while, Jesus would be dead and entombed. But they would still be alive. Mary and John would have to go on. The best way to do that, according to Jesus, is to lean on each other as if they were family--as if they were mother and son. In their mutual loss, emptiness and endings, there is a new beginning, a new relationship that is forged.
For those who live on after a loved one dies, that grief may never be entirely gotten over. That is especially true if those who grieve isolate themselves. One research study discovered that widows spend at least 14 out of the first 18 months after their husband dies, at home, isolating themselves from family and friends. Jesus is saying to his mother and John, that’s not going to happen for you.
In my first church, I visited a lady who lived out in the country. She had invited me out for tea and to chat. When I asked about a picture of her husband, she immediately broke out into tears. He had died 15 years before my visit. Right after the funeral, her adult kids sent her on a two week trip to Hawaii to “get her mind off it all.” When she came back, no one wanted to talk about her loss. They wanted to hear all about her trip and what she did. But she was aching from loneliness and loss. All her friends assumed she was ready to put her loss behind her when she got back from Hawaii. Subsequently, no one ever really helped her with her grief. That is, until I came along and innocently asked a question about her late husband’s picture, 15 years later.
People don’t get over their grief by themselves. It’s not something you can just tough it through by yourself. It doesn’t work to deny your pain and loss. We need others to tie on with us, to be compassionate companions along the way of our grief.
When I was in Bakersfield, I started a ministry called “Compassionate Friends.” I wish I would have called it the “Mary and John Ministry.” I did a survey of the congregation (and it was a huge congregation) asking them to check off items on a list of life experiences that they had faced. I had every bad thing I could think of that can happen to a person on that list. I was utterly amazed at what came back to me--what people in that congregation had experienced, what awful things.
I then asked those people if they would be willing to let me train them in some basic counseling skills. I wanted to build up a human resource pool. I wanted to draw from these people so I could send them out. If I heard of someone who was experiencing what they had already gone through, I had someone I could send out to be a Mary or John for them. Not someone to just be a listener. But someone who actually had experienced what they were currently going through. It ended up being an amazing ministry of caring.
I didn’t want people going through those times alone. They needed “family.” Not blood relatives. But “grief sharers.” People who became family because they leaned on each other, needed each other to just get through each day.
“Here is your son...Here is your mother.” Instead of looking out for his own grief and pain on the cross, Jesus was making sure a relationship of support was created for those he loved that would last after he was gone. Jesus knew he wouldn’t be around to take care of Mary or John. But Jesus knew they could take care of each other’s grief. That they could become family--a family much deeper and richer than blood relations could ever be.
So, as I ponder Jesus’ statement from the Cross to his mother and his disciple, I wonder if this is also a vision of Jesus for the church? This is your mother--maybe not a woman who is your real mother, but who none-the-less is in need of you to treat her as if she is. This is your son. Maybe not the boy you gave birth to, but someone who needs you, at some point in his life, to tie on with him and let him know he’s not alone.
There’s a lot of grief out there. A lot of grievers. A lot of loss and heart hurt. A lot of hits on a person’s spirit. How are we to handle it all? Job, when he is losing everything in life, laments, “Suffering is all part of life, like sparks shooting skyward” (Job 5:7). If suffering is such a large part of human experience, then we need to make sure we have others to help us live. Help us go on. Help us get through. Be with us as the “sparks shoot skyward.”
There was a woman whose child died unexpectedly. She went to a monk who was supposed to have the gift of healing. She wanted him to restore her daughter’s life. Instead, the monk sent the grieving mother on a mission. He told her to go out into the town and collect an onion from each family who had not experienced grief like hers. He told her to return to him when the basket was full of onions.
Mystified, the woman began her quest. When she finally returned to the monk, her basket was still empty. She had no onions. But she had so many new friends. New “family” to who helped restore her heart in her pain. Though her basked was empty, her heart was full. She had gained so much strength from being with people who had experienced loss as she had. And she gained so much from being able to share her new found strength with others whose loss was great.
“Here is your son...Here is your mother. In the face of their emerging grief over his death, Jesus directs them to each other. In the face of the fact that grief is part of the human condition, Jesus directs us to other mourners, suffering from all of life’s reasons for grief. Jesus says, “This is your son, your daughter, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister.” Jesus, in his dying words, makes us into a family, related not by blood, but by grief. We are a family related in faith through the Christ on the Cross, and are directed by that Crucified One toward each other.
In the book, Living With Grief, Patrick Del Zoppo wrote,
It is essential that the religious community offer homecoming to the bereaved. Homecoming is the communal soul responding to the individual’s soul. It is the essence of being alive and fully connected to a larger and healing group of believers. (page 172)
What Jesus is doing from the Cross is starting that community of the bereaved. Jesus is showing Mary and John the importance of offering a place of homecoming for each other. And by so doing, Jesus is starting a way of being the church that embraces each other in a place of homecoming.
Prayer:
Lord,
you have given us yourself.
That we know.
Sometimes, what we don’t realize,
is that you have given us yourself
through others.
In their smiles,
is your smile;
In their hands,
are your hands;
In their words,
are your words;
In their touch
is your touch.
Forgive us,
and help us,
when we push you away,
by pushing away those whom you have given us
to be our loving and caring Christian family. Amen.
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