Third Word from the Cross: 'Woman, Behold Your Son'

A Sermon originally preached on Good Friday 2013

‘Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that shall be spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also).’

So said Simeon to Mary when she brought her son to be presented in the Temple. Now, as he hangs on the cross, the sword has pierced her own soul. How could anything be worse than to watch your child die? How could anything be worse than to watch your child die such a horrific death, one reserved for the lowest kind of criminal?

Strange things had happened all through Mary’s life. Out of the blue, a messenger from God had arrived to tell her that despite being a virgin, she would give birth to a son, and the Son of God, no less. Going to the hill country of Judah to visit her aged relative Elizabeth, Mary is told that the very sound of her voice had caused the miraculous child in Elizabeth’s own womb to suddenly leap for joy.

When Mary’s son is born, a motley assortment of shepherds arrive to see the new baby, telling stories of angels that appeared to them in the country, announcing the great significance of this child. And Luke says that ‘all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds had told them, but Mary kept these things, pondering them in her heart.’ Later, they make a routine trip to Jerusalem to present their new son in the Temple, and to make the customary sacrifices that the Law prescribed at the birth of a child. Mary and Joseph are startled to hear Simeon and Anna recognize the significance of their infant son. ‘And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him.’

When Jesus is twelve, Jesus goes to Jerusalem again with his parents, and is left behind as they head home. After a frantic search among the relatives, and a hasty return to Jerusalem, they find him sitting in the midst of the teachers in the Temple, amazing all who hear him. He goes back down with them and comes to Nazareth, and is obedient to them, but again, we are told, ‘his mother kept all these things in her heart.’

Later, at Cana in Galilee, Mary still seems to recognize that her son is no ordinary son. When the wine runs out at a wedding they are attending, she tries to spur him into action to help the soon-to-be-embarrassed bride and groom. When he is initially reluctant to act, she still takes it upon herself to set the stage for him to perform a great sign, telling the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to.

She comes to see him with his brothers while he’s teaching in Capernaum, and when they can’t get to him because of the crowd, they call out to him from where they’re waiting outside the house. Jesus won’t even come out to them, though, saying that his followers and disciples have a greater call on his family loyalty, saying that ‘whoever does the will of God is my brother, and sister, and mother.’

And up until the Crucifixion, that’s all that the gospels tell about Mary’s role in her son’s life and ministry. Tradition tells a bit more. The Stations of the Cross give Jesus and his mother a tearful meeting at the Fourth Station. Popular imagination gives Mary a place among the women going to the tomb on Easter morning. Our own Resurrection window at the back of the sacristy has Mary there, but the gospels don’t.

The pictures of Mary that the four evangelists paint is of a woman who clearly sees the great destiny of her son. There has been much that she has pondered and treasured in her heart. She is able to point the servants at the wedding in Cana to her son, but there is nothing yet in the gospels to show her as one of his disciples.

Of all the people we would expect to believe in him, we should most expect his own mother. While I can hardly compare myself with the saviour of the world, I’d like to think that my mother would believe in me. This might be a little disappointing, but it fits with what the gospels tell us about Jesus’s family’s reaction to his ministry and teaching. Every indication is that they did not believe in him, nor were they his disciples, at least during his earthly ministry.

So here in John’s Gospel, we are shown a striking new development. ‘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.’

There are a number of reasons why I’m reluctant to name John the son of Zebedee as the Beloved Disciple. In many ways, this recurring character in the fourth Gospel is all the more effective as an unidentified figure. But whether he is or he isn’t John, the gospel clearly portrays him as the ideal disciple. Where others falter and fail, the beloved disciple stands faithfully at the foot of the Cross. John’s Gospel is fond of portraying Jesus as particularly cryptic and inscrutable. While Jesus talks to his disciples at the Last Supper, most of what he says is sailing right over their heads, but if anyone is going to get what he’s saying, it’s likely to be the Beloved Disciple, who sits right next to him, leaning against his breast, able to ask him clarifying questions. After the Resurrection, when Jesus will appear to his disciples beside the sea, even at a great distance, in the early morning light, it will be the Beloved Disciple who will see and immediately recognize Jesus.

And this is the disciple to whom Jesus will commit his mother. This ideal disciple is given a special blessing: the privilege of taking the mother of God into his own home, of caring for her as if she were his own mother. And yet Mary is being blessed as well. The wonderful things she has seen in her son’s life are not just her own personal memories to ponder in her own heart. She is being brought into a community of faith. It may be that the only community there is to speak of at this precise moment is the Beloved Disciple and the mother (neither of whom, in John, are ever referred to directly by name). Nevertheless, it is from this tiny community that the Church will grow.

When next we see Mary, it is gathered together with the disciples in the upper room, after the Ascension, in the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles. There, as part of the community, she has taken her place as a disciple. To understand Jesus and to be his disciple, it is not enough just to treasure things in your heart. You have to be part of a community. That should be the challenge to us when we hear this Third Word from the cross. Even Our Lady, greater in honour than the cherubim, and incomparably more glorious than the seraphim, is not St. Mary in isolation.

So it is with us. Christianity is not a personal, individual religion. Our religious experiences touch us each very deeply, on an individual level, but they are not for us alone. Rather, they are for the building up of the Body of Christ. We are not called to be individuals, but rather, part of a new, transformed people of God, and our new life in Christ can only be found in community with other believers.