The Longest Journey

The Sermon Study Guide is here.

John 19:25-27

March 10/11, 2012 • Portage First UMC

INTRO VIDEO WEEK 3

That first journey seemed like a lifetime ago. She was prone to pondering, had been all her life, and as she stood there with the others on that darkest of all days, she couldn’t help but remember the journeys that had brought her to this moment. That journey to Bethlehem, so long ago, when she was nine months pregnant. Joseph had made a place for them to stay with his family, and then the baby had come. It was not the way she had planned, but as she looked back, she realized it was the way God had planned. God had been in charge of that pregnancy from the very beginning anyway. After Jesus was born, when there was still a lot of activity going on around her, she had leaned back and tried to take it all in. Those were the moments she treasured in her heart (Luke 2:19).

Eight days later, as the law prescribed, she and Joseph had taken the baby to the Temple in Jerusalem, just a short walk from Bethlehem, so that he could be circumcised and consecrated to God. They had the strangest conversation with an old man that day. He came right up to them as soon as they entered the Temple courts, asked to hold the baby, and then told God he could now die because he had seen God’s salvation. When he handed the baby back to them, he told her, “This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too” (Luke 2:34-35). She had certainly seen and heard people speaking against him over the last few years, and she had noticed that what he did often made people’s true nature, their hearts, come out. But she had never known what Simeon had meant by a sword piercing her own soul—until today.

Of course, there was that one moment, the first time they took him to Jerusalem when he was twelve. They had gone, as they usually did, for the Passover festival, and when they started home, they had gotten a whole day’s journey away from the city before they realized Jesus wasn’t with their other relatives. He was nowhere to be found! They had hurried back to the city as quickly as they could and looked everywhere. She was panicked. I mean, she had been given responsibility to raise the Son of God, and she lost him! How was she going to explain that one? When they finally found him in the Temple, he seemed surprised they hadn’t looked there first. Her fear and anger had been quickly replaced with relief that he was all right (Luke 2:41-52).

Then there was the awful day when Joseph died and she was left alone. Her children were good to her, especially Jesus, but she missed Joseph terribly. Jesus had taken off to preach throughout Galilee, as she knew he would, and she would hear reports back from time to time. Like how he was so busy preaching he forgot to eat. She and his brothers went to correct him, to feed him, but he didn’t quit just because she was there. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:33-35). Oh, they had a talk about that one. She didn’t like being brushed off so quickly.

For the last year or so, she had journeyed with him (cf. Card, The Parable of Joy, pg. 224), and as they came close to Jerusalem again this year for Passover, she began to feel uneasy—like a sword might be piercing her soul. She had made this trip before, but somehow, this time it seemed like the longest journey she had ever made. She was glad she had some of her own friends there in the city, because as the storm clouds rose throughout the week, as Jesus upset group after group, she needed them to support her. Then came the awful moment when he was condemned to death. Arrest, trial, beating, condemnation—crucifixion. She watched as the nails broke through the skin and bone she had once borne in her body. She wept as that child she had once held close was lifted up on a Roman cross. It nearly broke her, and had it not been for the others, she couldn’t have watched. But she needed to. She had to. And while everything that was maternal within her wanted to cry out, to stop this injustice, to scream, “That’s my son! You will not kill my son!”—she knew she couldn’t. And not just because the Romans would have stopped her, maybe beaten her too. No, she couldn’t because of what she saw in his eyes. As she stands there at the foot of the cross, Mary of Nazareth doesn’t protest what happens because, more than anyone else who is there, she knows who he is and why he’s up on that cross. She had heard the angel’s words: “He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end” (Luke 2:31-33). She knew he had been promised a throne. She just never imagined his throne would be a cross.

We’re in the middle of our Lenten series this year, studying the seven final words of Jesus from the cross. We’ve talked about how brutal crucifixion was, and how anything said from the cross was spoken in a short gasp. The only time when crucified men could talk was when they would push up on the nails in their feet and catch a breath. Many crucified men used what breath they had to hurl insults at anyone gathered near the cross. Jesus, of course, doesn’t do the “normal” thing. Instead, he speaks of forgiveness and salvation—and then, here in John’s Gospel, there is this tender scene that takes place when his mother approaches the cross. Now, Mary is probably just a little older than me at this point. Assuming she was between 13 and 15 when Jesus was born, and allowing for about 33 years of his life, that would make Mary between 46 and 48—a young widow. Having grieved the death of her husband, now she’s watching the death of her firstborn. Her friends with her to make sure she doesn’t pass out from grief. They help her to the cross, and there, she and Jesus exchange a look. John doesn’t record that Mary said anything to her son, but they see each other, and Jesus also sees “the disciple whom he loved” (19:26). And in that moment, Jesus utters the third final word from the cross: “Woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple he says, “Here is your mother” (19:27).

Now, this moment at the cross brings up several questions, three of which I want to deal with this morning/evening. First of all, who is this “disciple Jesus loved”? Second, why does Jesus entrust Mary to this person? And finally, what does this mean for us? But first we need to know who this person is, because there is no name given. We find this “beloved disciple” in five stories in the Gospel of John. The first time the phrase appears it’s at the Last Supper, when Jesus says one of the disciples will betray him that night. Because enquiring minds want to know, Peter tells this disciple whom Jesus loved to ask Jesus who the betrayer is. The disciple was, apparently, reclining right next to Jesus (John 13:23-26). Aside from the cross, then, the other three times this disciple appears are after the resurrection. He runs with Peter to the empty tomb (John 20:2), he identifies the risen Jesus as the one who is cooking breakfast for them on the shore when they have gone fishing (John 21:7), and he follows Jesus and Peter when they go on a walk after that breakfast (John 21:20). There are a lot of suggestions as to who this person might have been. Since the Gospel tells us Jesus loved Lazarus (John 11:36), some say Lazarus is this disciple. Others have suggested the rich young ruler whom Mark says Jesus loved (Mark 10:21). And others say this might be an unknown person to us, but to me it seems obvious that this disciple is one of the twelve, one of Jesus’ closest friends. He’s with them at critical moments, especially that last week, and most scholars will contend that this is John’s way of identifying himself (Barclay, The Gospel of John, Volume 2, pg. 145). Now, it’s not meant like we would mean it—that Jesus loved him more, that he was somehow special, that he’s bragging. No, this is John’s way of simply defining himself as a Christian, a believer in Jesus. It seems he began to believe in Jesus at that Last Supper or maybe shortly before. He becomes a disciple Jesus loved, a Christian. After all, isn’t that the way we all would want to be known, as someone Jesus loves (Card 224)? John would later write, “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John 4:19). John is a disciple whom Jesus loves, as we all are and he stands with Mary at the cross.

But that leads us to the second question: why does Jesus entrust Mary to John? We need to remember the place of women in the first century. Women did not have careers. Women did not have a lot of security if they were widows. Their worth and their income came through their husbands, and if the husband was dead, they were reliant upon their family to take care of them. It was the eldest son’s responsibility to care for his parents in their old age. As a widow, Mary was dependent on Jesus for her livelihood, for her life (Keener, Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, pg. 313). And while it’s likely that her livelihood was the last thing on her mind on this day, it wasn’t the last thing on his. Even in his pain, in his torment, in the moments before his death, he was still caring for his mother. But, you would think, after his death, wouldn’t his other brothers pick up that responsibility? We know Jesus had brothers—half-brothers, actually, but brothers certainly as far as the law was concerned. Where are they? Why aren’t they caring for Mary? Well, it’s possible that Jesus’ siblings simply weren’t at the cross (there’s no mention of them) and John was the closest thing to a relative that was available at the moment (Tenney, “The Gospel of John,” Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Vol. 9, pg. 182). Perhaps John was only a temporary caregiver, and yet the Gospel says he took her into his home from that moment on. More likely is the suggestion of other scholars that, at this point, Jesus’ other family didn’t believe in him as the Messiah. We know that from reading the Gospels. They had no faith yet, though later that changed. Jesus’ brother James eventually wrote one of the letters in the New Testament (Barclay 257). But at this point, for Mary to get through her grief, she’s going to need someone who shares her faith that Jesus’ death on the cross wasn’t a horrible accident, that it wasn’t a mistake, and it wasn’t a waste. She needs someone who believes Jesus is the Savior, the Messiah. John can be that person for Mary (Barclay 257).

The way we handle grief is influenced by our faith, and sometimes, if we come from families that don’t share that faith, it’s hard to find support there. I know a woman who lost her husband a couple of years ago, quite young, and her grief is deep. His family doesn’t understand; they keep telling her she should just get over it. But she finds the most support and strength from those who share her faith. Sometimes we need someone like that, someone even outside our biological family, who can walk with us through times of grief. We’ve tried to provide folks like that through our Stephen Ministry, folks who can listen and encourage and pray with you. When I read this passage, I picture untold numbers of people standing by a graveside, weeping, mourning, and I see Jesus entrusting their care to a Stephen Minister or a close friend or a neighbor who shares their faith. And together, they get each other through the dark times. Jesus entrusts his mother to the care of one he knows will not just support her financially in days to come (as important as that is), but who will help her have faith when all seems lost. “Behold your son,” Jesus tells Mary. “Behold your mother,” he tells John. And without another word, John accepts the responsibility and cares for Mary. “From that time on, this disciple took her into his home” (19:27).

So that brings us to our third question: what does this third final word from the cross mean for us? I think there are two primary ways this word challenges our lives, and the first has to do with caring for our family. Caring means more than sending a check or a birthday card. The first commandment with a promise in the Old Testament was this: “Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you” (Exodus 20:12). So what does it mean to “honor” someone? The word in Exodus that is translated as “honor” means “to give weight to” and it has nothing to do with the number that shows up on the bathroom scales. It means “weight” as in “importance.” The commandment is about making sure our parents have priority or importance in our lives, just because they are our parents. I’ve had people ask me what you do about parents who aren’t Christian, or who don’t deserve respect in our estimation. Maybe your parents were abusive—if not physically, then emotionally and spiritually. I knew a woman who would bring home an “A” on a report card and, rather than being told she did a good job, would be asked, “Why isn’t it an A+?” And there are parents who are physically and sexually abusive, who use their children for their own advantage. What do we do then? Well, for starters, I think that’s why this is the third final word and not the first. Jesus began with forgiveness because that’s often where we need to begin. Some of you are working on that; these cards on the cross represent people who we are seeking to forgive this Lenten season, and some of them, I would guess, involve parental relationships. And as we forgive, as we work toward the healing of our soul, we seek to find what might be good in that father or mother, what they gave us, even if it came through difficulty, that we can honor, that we can appreciate if not celebrate.

There are many things we can do to honor our parents. First of all, we can give appropriate consideration to what they say. We listen to their advice, their wisdom, their direction. Do you remember the story in John 2 when Jesus and his disciples went to a wedding feast in a town called Cana? Mary was there, and when they ran out of wine, she came to Jesus and told him about it. She didn’t ask him to do anything, though that certainly was implied. His response? “Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come” (2:4). Now, I wouldn’t recommend addressing your mother as “woman” in our day, but in the first century, there was no disrespect intended by that title (Keener 268). And even though it sounds like he’s blowing her off, after he listens to her, he turns water into wine. He honors her by helping the wedding party continue. So we honor our parents by giving appropriate consideration to their counsel. Now there still may be times, particularly with parents who don’t believe as you do, that their direction contradicts what the Bible tells you to do, and in those moments, in the most loving manner possible, I believe we have to respond, “I love you very much, but I cannot do that and follow Jesus at the same time.”

A second way we honor our parents, and one that comes more directly out of this passage, is to make sure they are taken care of in their old age. That’s a Biblical directive. Some of you have done that; you’ve even taken your parents into your home and cared for them yourselves. But sometimes additional care is needed. Sometimes, in this age when we are living longer, the care required is more than we can provide ourselves. My grandfather was like that. After Grandma died, he came back to Indiana from Texas to live near my parents. They were both still working full-time, trying to put two boys through college, and so he didn’t live with them, but he got his own apartment nearby. But Grandpa didn’t do so well without Grandma, and one day he nearly burned down the apartment building while making dinner. Mom and Dad knew they couldn’t give him the care he needed, so he moved into an early version of assisted living. And there, he got his medicine on time, got the care he needed, and saw my mom every day. In fact, he was in better shape and happier there than he had been in a long time. So caring for our parents isn’t always doing it ourselves, but it’s not putting someone in a care center and forgetting them. We’re never beyond the responsibility of caring for aging parents. Jesus did that on the cross, as he entrusted John with the care of his mother.

Thirdly, we honor our parents as we pass on the values and lessons they taught us. More and more, I find myself acting and saying things like my father. It used to scare me, but I’m kind of used to it now! And most of time, I’m grateful for it. My parents aren’t perfect, but they gave me a heritage I am proud of and one I want to pass on—a heritage of faith, of loving each other, of standing on your own two feet, of working hard and treasuring moments together. When I sit with families to prepare for funerals, as I did this past week, the things they remember are never the big presents or the extravagances. They remember the values their mom or dad put in them, that they then get to pass on to their children. We honor our parents as we hand down what we learned from them. And for those who have parents who are not Christian, who knows but that your love, your honoring them just may be what brings them closer to Jesus. I know a woman for whom that was true. Her parents went to church but didn’t have much use for Jesus, it was just a social thing, and as she continued to honor them, even with their objections to her growing faith, they found in her love an irresistible attraction to the Savior. Honor your parents; that’s the first message we hear in this third final word from the cross.

Sometimes, though, we need something larger than a biological family. As I said earlier, Mary is entrusted to John perhaps because she needed spiritual support. She needed someone with faith. So do we. In entrusting Mary to John, Jesus affirmed what he said earlier, that whoever does the will of his Father is part of the family. Bishop Will Willimon puts it this way: “In baptism we are adopted into a family large enough to make our lives more interesting…From the cross, in his third word to us, Jesus disrupts the totalitarian influence of the family in order to free us and give us a new, bigger family” (Thank God It’s Friday, pg. 32-33). And that was a radical thing in Jesus’ day, even moreso than today, because in that culture, there was nothing more rigid or determining than the family. Family determined your identity and your future. Jesus, for instance, is less often known as a carpenter himself than he as “the carpenter’s son.” And yet, Jesus pushes the boundaries and binds us to a larger, extended, spiritual family. That’s a tremendous gift of grace, especially if your family wasn’t or isn’t everything you hoped it could be. In baptism, Jesus gives us a bigger, grace-filled family. That’s why, when we baptize a child, I walk them down the aisle and say, in essence, “Behold, your brothers and sisters!”

When we lived in the south, in Kentucky, everyone in church there was “brother” or “sister.” The pastor wasn’t “reverend” or “preacher” or even “pastor.” He was “Brother Mike.” And that’s quaint and cute, we think, but it’s more than that. It’s a statement of fact. We are bound together as brothers and sisters in Christ. That’s something that’s hard for us to grab onto in a consumer-driven culture, where we “shop” for churches like we “shop” for clothes. Does it fit? Does it make me look good? Do I like the style? And, the biggie when it comes to churches: do I like the people there? The reality is the church is a family, and you might not like everyone here. You might not always agree with everything they say or do. You want to know something else? There are probably people here who don’t like you, either, and might not agree with everything you say or do. Welcome to the family! When you read the New Testament, that’s the way it was then, too. Most of Paul’s letters come out of conflict. Something is going on in the church among the brothers and sisters and Paul writes to them to clarify this idea or straighten out that behavior. Paul writes to them to help them get along. But we don’t like that today. We just go somewhere else. Church isn’t about agreement or forcing your will on the whole body. It’s a family, brought together by God’s great love (Willimon 34). It’s about being united around a common purpose, even if we don’t all get it right every time. The reason he brings us together is for healing, anyway. Jesus’ word from the cross offers us hope that, in the body of Christ, we can find healing for our brokenness, our inadequacies, and our problems—and those of our families (cf. Willimon 36).

From the cross, we hear Jesus tell Mary, “Woman, here is your son.” And he tells John, “Here is your mother.” And he tells us, “Here is your brother. Here is your sister.” So the question becomes: how do we honor those relationships? In what ways are you being called to honor your parents? There may be many things that have been sparked this morning/evening, but let me ask you to pick one thing you can do this week to honor those God entrusted you to. Are the ways you interact with your parents or your children right now honoring to them? If not, what can you do this week to begin to make a change?

Beyond that, let me push you a bit further: are the ways you connect with your brothers and sisters in the faith honoring toward them? If we believe, and we do, that God has brought us together in this place and in this time for a purpose, how do we demonstrate honor toward each other? How do we demonstrate the commitment we have to one another? The church should lead the way, but very often, it’s other groups that have set the pace. Philip Yancey tells about being invited by a friend to an AA meeting, and though he went merely to support his friend, he found that the honesty and the openness and the genuine love he experienced there is the same sort of thing he read about in the pages of the New Testament when it described the church. Why, he wondered, doesn’t the church look more like that? Why, indeed? We’re called to lead the way, to “be devoted to one another in love” and “honor one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10). Is there a broken relationship within this body? Is there someone you need to reconcile with? Is there someone you have failed to honor? At the foot of the cross, all are equal, all are welcome, and all are family, so perhaps this season, this holy season of Lent might be a time you can make it right, a time to re-learn how to show each other honor. “Here is your family!” Jesus says. He gave his life to make us family. We dare not we dishonor his sacrifice by refusing to live as he calls us to live. Here is your mother…here is your son…here are your brothers and sisters. Honor them that it may go well with you. Let’s pray.

Lord, thank you for your mother, Mary. Her witness, courage, and love for you were most profound. Help me to heed your call to John and to hear it as my own, so that I might care for my parents and children, and so that I might see those who have no parent or child as my own parents and children and care for them. Amen (Hamilton 63).