"Here is Your Son...Here is Your Mother" (Third Sunday in Lent)

John 19:25b-27

25b Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. 26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, "Woman, here is your son." 27 Then he said to the disciple, "Here is your mother." And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

            Johnny woke up Monday through Friday (and sometimes Saturday) before the sun was up.  His mother Listine and his father Sonny did the same. You see, all three of them worked at the same plant, so all three of them rode to work together in Johnny’s old, green Dodge truck. They lived on a red clay road that the county would grade and gravel every year or two, and every morning Johnny would get behind the wheel of that green jalopy while his momma sat next to him and his daddy next to her. He’d drive off the clay road onto the paved road for a couple of miles, then turn right onto another dirt road, and about a quarter mile down that road, waiting by the mailbox at the end of a gravel driveway was Rose.

            Rose always wore a hair net over her rarely-brushed hair, a flannel shirt that looked like it was cut for a man a good bit bigger than her, baggy jeans tucked into rubber boots, glasses as thick coke-bottle-bottoms over her crossed eyes, and a pair of fluorescent-colored ear plugs around her neck on string of blue or green plastic.

            Johnny would stop his truck in front of Rose’s house. She’d open the door and climb in as Sonny and Listine slid closer together and closer to Johnny. He’d never even put the truck in park; all four of them, together in Johnny’s beat-up truck would head on down that clay road until it ended, turn on the paved road again, and find their way in the early moments of daylight to the plant where they all worked. The only days this early morning ritual didn’t repeat were on the days when Johnny was sick or on vacation.

            It’s really not a very interesting thing I suppose—four people riding to work together, perhaps bending the law a bit as they ignored the maximum engineered occupancy of their vehicle. But you see, Johnny, Sonny, Listine, and Rose all lived in a small, rural community in South Alabama, and Johnny, Sonny, and Listine were black, while Rose was white. They lived in a part of this country where people still hold on to prejudices of the past, where it is a bit uncouth for an older white woman to be seen on a regular basis with a poor, black family, never mind riding together with them in the same truck or working with them at the same place. But Rose never seemed to see it that way. They were all friends. They looked after each other: Johnny drove them all to work; Sonny and Listine grew Turnips and Collard Greens to share with Rose; and Rose grew tomatoes and peppers to share with them. Sonny would come over to drop off vegetables for Rose when she got older, but he never came to the front door or came inside the house—a custom left over from the racist residue that still sits on so much of the South.

            They were friends who cared for one another and looked out for each other, Sonny, Listine, Johnny, and Rose. I know because I watched Johnny on many Friday afternoons drop my grandma off at her mail box (hair net, rubber boots, ear plugs, and all), and I was there on a few occasions when Sonny would pull in the driveway in his old, silver Lincoln, with his blue overalls and straw hat, and a bushel of greens for Grandma. I think about them from time-to-time even though Grandma’s been gone for over five years now, and I’m not even sure if Sonny and Listine are still alive, or what Johnny is doing. I think about them as I think about the way God calls us to love one another, the way Christ commands us to care for one another with a love that sees past whatever biases and bigotries that others may try to convince us are right. I think about how they simply cared for each other; they didn’t make grand gestures of sacrifice, nor did they ever receive any awards or recognitions. They cared for each other in the way they met the most basic needs that allowed them all to live life. The words we have heard from Christ from the cross this morning are words that call each of us to care for each other the very same way.

            You see, by now, at this point in the gospel story, I kind of want to move past this sort of stuff. Jesus has been preaching, teaching, healing, and living with his disciples for a few years now, and all during that time, all throughout the gospel accounts, Jesus has had the same message: “Love God and each other,” or to put it that way it appears throughout the entirety of Holy Scripture, “Love the Lord your God with all you heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength…and love your neighbor as yourself.” At this point, however, when Christ is there upon the cross, dying for the sins of the world, breathing his last, bringing the eternal plan of God to fruition, I want to focus on the theology of it all. I want to move past this seemingly over-simplified notion of loving God and each other to more complex questions like the nature of the atonement, the Trinitarian relationship present at the crucifixion, what happened to Christ between his death and resurrection.

            At this point I want to start picking apart the complex soteriology of a divinity that would die in an act of self-sacrifice. I want to read on to the mid-stretching words of those like Paul and Augustine, to begin the process of exegesis in order to form rules and regulations regarding who is right and who is wrong. I want to use the cross and Christ upon it to point to some far-off certainty that assures my present comfort and tranquility whilst allowing me to point my fingers at others, condemning them to damnation for all eternity. At this point in the gospel narrative, as Christ hangs upon the cross that would prove to be the source of life for all rather than the death of one, I am ready to be done with this fanciful notion that the life of faith is about anything other than what it takes to secure my place in eternal comfort.

            But then I hear these words before us this morning, and I hear Christ in his agony between the certainty of life and the mystery of death look to his mother and say, “‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple [whom he loved], ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” In those final hours of pain and torture, those moments when the God who created the universe was surrendering himself in the ultimate act of love, in those moments on which all of history turn, Jesus looks from the cross to his mother and his best friend and says (in essence), “Take care of each other.” There in that moment about which theologians have written volumes, that moment in which one would expect expressions of eternal exhortation, we find Jesus with the same message he’s had all along: “Love each other…care for one another.”

            Jesus looks to his mother Mary, the one who has known him longest, the one who swaddled him in a manger, the one who hosted Magi in her home as they came to worship the future king, the one who worried when he seemed to be lost while staying behind in the temple, the one who has been beside him all along, he looks to her and says of the beloved disciple, “here is your son.” It is as if Jesus is saying, “I, your son, am almost gone, but here is one who needs you, one who will take care of you, one who will love you.” Mary would have been destitute without a son or husband, forced to live the life of a beggar or even a prostitute, but with a son, with a male who would take the responsibility of caring for her, she could avoid such a life. This is why Jesus says to the beloved disciple, “Here is your mother.” It is now this disciple’s duty to care for Mary; to be sure that she is looked after, that she has what she needs and is not left to beg on the streets.

            One can spend a great deal of effort attempting to explain this scene, citing the identity of the beloved disciple as a cousin or relative of Jesus, and therefore the one who would naturally be charged with caring for Mary. One could point to the possibility that this is the normal custom of the crucified in the ancient Roman Empire, that the one being executed would often settle his estate in the final hours of his life from his cross. One could speculate that Mary and the beloved disciple are merely metaphors, standing as symbols for everything from the Jewish traditions of the Old Testament to the collective presence of the Church. But in the end, this scene, these words from Christ on the cross are pregnant with power as they are, for in these words we hear Christ in his final moments upon the cross declaring one of the foundational truths of the kingdom of God: take care of each other; love one another.

            We don’t want it to be that simple though, do we? We want this faith thing to be more complicated. We want more doctrine, more rules, more lines being drawn, more walls erected, more checkboxes. We want to be able to label right and wrong. We’re more concerned with orthodoxy than we are orthopraxy, which is a five-dollar way of saying we’re more concerned with knowing what’s right than doing what’s right.

            When Christ says to his mother and the beloved disciple to take care of each other, to love each other, we want it to mean something more. We want Jesus’ words from the cross to fit the enormity of the moment, words that tell us something about the mystery of God’s kingdom, words that have the power to change the world—not words about looking after his widowed mother. But then again, aren’t these words truly powerful? Don’t they speak to the enormity of this moment? Don’t they truly tell us something wonderful about the mystery of God’s kingdom? For these are words that hold the power to change the world!

You see, Christ’s words to his mother and his disciple are words he could so easily speak to us—that he does speak to us! “Take care of each other. Love each other!” What would happen to our world if we all stopped looking out for ourselves and began looking out for each other? What would our lives be like if ceased looking for reasons to ignore one another’s pain, if we stopped trying to avoid each other’s problems, if we stopped justifying our callousness by blaming others for their failures and misfortune? What would our community look like if we cared enough to make sure every hungry child had food to eat, if we made sure every cold home had heat, if we did our best to make sure every childless mother and motherless child was cared for? What would happen if we—all of us—cared for those who aren’t in this room with us this morning, those who may never join us for worship? What would happen if we quit helping others for a pat on the back and started serving others because it is the very thing Christ calls us to do—even from the cross!? What would this world look like? I think I know…it’d look a lot more like the kingdom of God.

With these words for Christ from the cross we find hope, hope in a loving God who shows us that real power is found in the kind of love that one is willing to die for. We also find hope in our ability to change the world through the power of love for others. It doesn’t take the kind of power that only comes with money or fame; it doesn’t take the kind of power that comes with influence or connections. The kind of power that can change the world, the power of love for others, comes in the most simple ways like stopping to talk to a neighbor, buying someone’s lunch, sending a card, giving a hug, sharing your garden, dropping by for a visit, making sure someone has heat when it’s cold, or driving someone’s grandma to work at the chicken plant every week. With these words from Jesus, simple and specific as they may seem, we are reminded even from the cross that love for each other is what brings the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. We are reminded of Christ’s command to care, of the undeniable call to love.

Let us love one another. Let us faithfully answer Christ’s command to care by relentlessly loving those around us without condition. Let us see mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers in the faces of those we meet every day. Let us love God, love each other, and together we can change the world for the glory of our Lord, for the kingdom of our God. Amen.