John 19:25b-27
“Relationship”
March 8, 2020 – Second Sunday in Lent
Was Good Friday the first Mother’s Day? This third word of Jesus from the Cross has often been understood something like that. Here we see Him dying in agony for the sins of the world, and yet He has love and breath to spare in order to arrange for the tender care of His aging mother. The Son of God is also a good son to His human parent. That is all true, and it is heart-warming, and it reminds us all to obey the fifth commandment: to honor our father and mother, like Jesus did. Yet there is something more going on as Jesus speaks to Mary and John at the foot of the Cross.
We need to remember that Jesus was not exactly a family man. He never married. Let all of us who live alone for whatever reason take some comfort in that. And whenever we catch a glimpse, it looks Jesus did not really have close relationships with His mother or His brothers. You may recall that Matthew and Luke both tell us that once when His mother and brothers came to see Him, He left them standing outside.
Jesus was hard on other families too. As we heard just a few weeks ago, He called James and John to walk away from their family’s fishing business, leaving their father sitting there in the boat. We may deduce that Peter had a wife and left her behind while he went roaming around the countryside with Jesus.
Likewise, in Matthew 8:22, when Jesus called someone to follow Him, the man said that his father had just died. He needed to go home first and take care of things. But Jesus told him, “Let the dead bury the dead.” In Matthew 10:35, Jesus said, “I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother… and one’s foes will be the members of one’s own household.”
Even more challenging, let’s not forget that Jesus in Luke 14:25 said, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” As we think about what Jesus is saying on the Cross about family, let’s remember what He said earlier about family in relationship to the Cross.
Beth and I know personally some of that family tension about following Jesus. When I accepted what we felt was God’s call to come here as pastor to Valley Covenant Church 27 years ago, Beth’s parents in St. Louis felt abandoned. We were taking their two granddaughters far away across the country. Instead of a day’s drive, we were suddenly a costly plane ride distant. That tension continued as Beth’s parents aged. Her brothers resented the fact that we were too far away for Beth to help with day-to-day care, especially of Mom. We still believe we did what Jesus asked of us, but the relationship with Beth’s remaining brother is strained to this day. Jesus is not always a family friendly guy for us.
Perhaps with Christmas not that far behind us, with all those images of the Holy Family around the manger, Mary tenderly cradling or even nursing the baby Jesus, we need to remember how Jesus addresses His mother the two times we see her here in the Gospel of John. Both here at the Cross and back in John chapter 2 at the wedding in Cana, Jesus speaks to Mary as “Woman.” It’s the same way He addressed the Samaritan woman by the well in John 4:21. It was not as rude as it sounds to us. That was a polite way to speak to a female person back then. But it was still not how you talked to your mother.
However touching this third last word of Jesus is, we need to recognize and admit that Jesus was putting some distance between Himself and His mother. Both there in Cana and here at the Cross He wanted her, and us, to understand that He has business in this world which goes beyond simple family ties. He said that to both Mary and Joseph when He was twelve years old and they had to search for Him in Jerusalem before finding Him in the Temple. “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?”
Which all means that we may need to do a lot more Bible study and careful thinking before we sign Jesus up for what we typically think of as “family values” these days. Yes, Jesus honored His father and mother. Yes, Jesus loved little children. Yes, Jesus told husbands and wives to stay together and to love each other. But when you put all those facts together with the rest of what Jesus says and does in regard to family, we realize that Jesus had bigger fish to fry than simply wanting everyone to have a nice, cozy “nuclear” family with a mom and dad and 2.5 children. The truth is much more challenging and, I believe, much more hopeful than that.
This third word from the Cross is sometimes called the “word of relationship.”[1] When I first laid out this sermon series I thought that sounded awfully cold. I almost changed it to the word of “family.” But now I see there is real wisdom in designating this third saying “relationship.” Throughout His ministry, and even right there on the Cross, Jesus was forging for us a whole new set of relationships which extend and even supersede ordinary human relationships like parent-child, husband-wife, brother-sister. Those new relationships come to exist as people come into relationship with Jesus Himself.
In Matthew 12:48, when Jesus refused to greet His mother and brothers and left them standing outside the house where He was teaching, He asked those listening to Him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then He pointed to His disciples and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
It’s not that Jesus is throwing ordinary human relationships under the bus. He really did care about His mother and took care of her at the end, but He also wants to offer hope and a new kind of relationship to everyone on earth for whom ordinary human bonds are, as we sang, so often broken. That’s many or most of us, isn’t it?
So look again at whom Jesus is talking to there below the Cross. It’s His mother Mary and the “beloved disciple,” whom most Christians believe is John, standing next to her. To Mary He says in verse 26, “Woman” (there is that polite but not really intimate address), “behold your son.” Now some have said that He was talking about Himself. “Behold me, your son,” in other words. But I’m just going to rule that out. It doesn’t fit with what He said next, speaking to John. No, Jesus was telling her that she now had a brand new family-like relationship with one of His disciples. John was to be her son, her child.
Likewise, reciprocally in verse 27, Jesus told John, “Here is your mother.” John had left his father behind in that boat three years earlier. Now Jesus gave him a new parent, His own mother Mary. The rest of the verse shows us John took it seriously, “And from that hour, the disciple took her into his own home.” There is a tradition that she went to live in John’s parents’ house near Mt. Olivet. From there John supposedly moved to Ephesus in Asia Minor, taking Mary with him. You can go today and see the “House of the Virgin Mary” where she is supposed to have lived with John until the end of her life on earth.
Regardless of how those living arrangements worked out, and it’s all just legend except for what we read there in verse 27, think about who Mary was and still is in relation to Christians down through the ages. Catholics and Orthodox and even some Protestants call her “our Mother.” You may raise your eyebrows at that, and worry that it somehow sets Mary up alongside Jesus as a person to worship. Or, you could think about the fact that even as Protestants we must admit that Mary was the first person to believe and have faith in Jesus. That’s what her cousin Elizabeth said in Luke 1:45, “blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.”
We heard today Scriptures from Genesis and especially from Romans 4 saying that Abraham believed God and because of that Abraham is the father all who share his faith. “For he is the father of us all,” wrote Paul. Now if Abraham is our father because we share in his faith, it’s not really a big leap at all to say Mary is, in that sense, our mother when we share the faith she had in Jesus. As I first heard a Catholic speaker say a long time ago, Mary was the first Christian. That makes her the mother of all Christians.
So in one sense, Jesus was recognizing that faith relationship in regard to Mary and one particular Christian disciple, John. Yes, He did want John to care for His mother, but Jesus was also telling him and telling us that in Him, in Jesus, we have a whole new set of relationships. It makes perfect sense to talk about Mary as the mother of all the faithful in Christ. In Jesus we have new fathers and mothers, children, and brothers and sisters.
There on the Cross Jesus spoke this word of relationship to show us how His dying there and then rising again would create those new relationships. Christians have acknowledged those relationships ever since. Paul called Timothy his son in the faith. Christians called each other brother and sister. Even husbands and wives called each other sister and brother in Christ, leading the Romans to falsely accuse Christians of incest.
Later on, John would write, “See what kind of love the Father has for us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.” In Hebrews 2:11, the writer says that Jesus “is not ashamed to call them brothers,” meaning all Christians. In Romans 8 Paul tells us that in Christ we have been adopted as children of God. The old human family relationships are still with us and still important, but everyone who believes in and belongs to Jesus belongs to a new and greater family.
That new family Jesus created by dying on the Cross and rising again is a huge comfort and hope in this time when human family seems so strained, and cracked and often completely broken. Not long ago someone whose biological family relationships are estranged and distant told me that this church is her family now. The “sisters and brothers” and maybe “children” and “grandchildren” she has here in our congregation are the relationships she truly cherishes. And that’s exactly how it should be.
Even when human family relationships are good, our family in Christ just makes it all bigger and better. As our youngest daughter grew up here in Valley Covenant Church, for many years her Sunday School and youth group consisted of herself and seven boys. She didn’t have any brothers at home, but she had seven brothers in Christ around her. My wife Beth often expresses her opinion that it gave Joanna an opportunity to get to know “what boys are really like,” rather than having some idealistic notion of the opposite sex.
I am guessing that many of you can tell your own stories of Christian brothers or sisters or maybe parents or grandparents, not physically related to you at all, but spiritually related in a way that made a difference in your life. Some of you have heard me before name Ted, and Charles, and Chuck, and Monty, who were Christian fathers to me because my own father was not around. I am absolutely sure I would be a much worse person, and would not be a pastor, but for those relationships.
I said these new relationships are a challenge for us. The challenge is partly to do the simple but sometimes hard work of making them happen. John had to actually take Mary home with him, provide for her, maybe take extra care of her as she grew old and feeble. If we are going to be the family of God to each other, then we will have to actually offer the love and care that brothers and sisters and others around us need. These days it may not mean taking another Christian home to live with us, but it might. It certainly means things like sharing meals on holidays, giving someone a ride to church, remembering birthdays, getting together for coffee, or lending a hand with home repair. We can’t just talk about being a family without doing the sort of things families do for each other.
Another challenge of these new relationships in Christ is that, just like ordinary human relationships, they are sometimes difficult, maybe even more so. In Jesus we find ourselves related to people who are totally different from us. They like different music and movies. They eat different food. They have different politics. Some are optimists and some are pessimists. Some are extroverted and some introverted. Some are sunny and cheerful and others are gloomy and grumpy. And we are all brothers and sisters in Christ. So it takes a little effort and a lot of patience to make that all work out.
Part of the pain of our current political situation is how polarized that same family of God is by it all. I constantly hear and have even thought myself, “How can a Christian support that?” or “How could a follower of Jesus vote for him or her?” Yet there it is. Jesus died and rose and redeemed that person whose politics, and maybe even morals, I loathe. He is my brother. She is my sister. They’re part of the family. Someday, if not this morning, I will have to sit across from them at the Table of the Lord. How will I handle it? How will I be the brother, father, child in Christ that I am called to be to them?
So it’s a challenge, but the family of God is also our deepest and greatest hope on earth. If anywhere on the planet a person is to find acceptance and peace and true sacrificial love, it will be here, among the people, the family, whom Jesus loved and for which He gave His own life. The relationships created in and by the Cross are where God is saving us and saving the world.
I’ve told this story before and some of you lived it. Not long after I came here, maybe 25 years ago, a gentleman named Chuck came to our church. He believed in Jesus, but he was hard to love. He dressed shabby. He had totally rotten teeth. He talked way too much in adult Sunday School and a home fellowship group. And, frankly, he smelled bad. But our church family, some of you among them, made him welcome, treated him as a brother.
We raised a couple thousand dollars to get Chuck’s teeth fixed and fit him with dentures. We welcomed him in our homes and tried to show him love in other ways. But we also just got to know him. His family had pretty much given up on him. Some of us, including your pastor, were sorely tempted at times to do the same. But this family of believers did our best to receive Chuck and give him a place among us. I am still proud of how well our church showed itself to be what Jesus meant us to be in relation to Chuck, family for someone who had pretty much lost his own family.
My prayer is that when we read and hear this third word from the Cross, the word of relationship, we will in fact hear how much Jesus loved His mother and how well He took care of her as He was dying. But I hope we will also see in that new mother-son relationship between Mary and John, which Jesus spoke into being as He died, a hope and promise for a new kind of relationship in our own lives. Our Lord is calling us all into a home where there is grace and peace and love which transcends all our differences. There is a place for each of you in that house, that family of God, whatever family you do or do not have otherwise.
So Good Friday is not the first Mother’s Day. It’s the first “Family Day,” the day of the beginning of the family of God.
Amen.
Valley Covenant Church
Eugene/Springfield, Oregon
Copyright © 2020 by Stephen S. Bilynskyj
[1] The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia Vol. 4, Geoffrey Bromiley, ed., p. 426.