Sermon for Mid-Week Lenten Vespers Week III 2018 Woman, behold your son... Son, behold your mother Woman, behold your son... Son, behold your mother With these words Jesus showed us his love in a very human way. It is certain that Jesus understood that it is perhaps the most difficult thing a mother should ever have to face watching her own child s death. And yet Mary stayed near her son. We can only imagine her feelings and thoughts her wrenching sense of helplessness of watching him suffer. Jesus must have known her feelings, for even as he suffered, he looked to his mother and to his beloved disciple, and he entrusted them to each other s care. Jesus must have been trying to teach them that family is so much more than those with whom we live. Family is made up of those who love you and care for your spirit. Even in his last moments of life, Jesus tried to tell those who loved him the most that would not be left alone. Woman, behold your son... Son, behold your mother Now some translations simply interpret this word behold as look or here is as if Jesus is pointing to John and saying to Mary, Woman, look at this man and recognize him as your son. But I think there is more to this word behold. The definition I found that seems to apply best here is the one that says behold is the utterance of one who brings forward something new and unexpected. In the case of the angel near Bethlehem, the something new and unexpected was the birth of Emmanuel, God with us. 1
In the case of Jesus words on the cross, it was the new creation of what it means to be family. In this sense something new and unexpected was born at the foot of the cross. In fact, one of the early church fathers, Origen, said, From the wound in Christ s side has come forth the Church. The blood and water that came out of the piercing of Christ s side, can be seen as metaphors or signs of the two sacraments which create us and unite us as the church the waters of Baptism, the shed blood of Communion. To be sure, there were clues throughout Jesus life that should have led this re-orientation of what it now means to be family to come as no surprise. Family and pure bloodlines, are one of the most significant aspects of Jewish life, but Jesus always seemed to be chipping away at this (and any other) boundary that divided people into us and them. Why even the first words we hear Jesus speak in the gospel of Luke make you wonder about his sense of family. When he is 12, on their way home to Nazareth after a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the Passover, the family realizes that he is missing. They are three days away from the city on their way home and they discover that Jesus is nowhere to be found. They return to Jerusalem and find him in the temple debating theology with the priests. When they ask him what he thought he was doing by scaring them like that, he replies, Why were you searching for me? Didn t you know I would be about my Father s business? Of course, we know he is not talking about Joseph and they know it, as well. 2
And then there is the time when Jesus is in the heat of his public ministry, surrounded and even hounded by the crowds and others such that he barely has time to eat and to rest. When his mother Mary and his sisters and brothers come to see him, to restrain him as the evangelist Mark puts it. They think he has lost his mind. (Passion can look like craziness from the outside.) When his Mother sends word to him by way of a disciple for him that they are there and they want him to come them, he responds, Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking at those who sat around him, Mark writes that Jesus says, Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. In other words, behold my family and yours. Woman, behold your son. These words were certainly spoken as words of comfort, but they are far more than simply words of comfort. These words are words of new creation, they create a new family... a new holy family. Jesus tells his mother to love his friend as she loves him. In this way, Mary becomes for us the firstborn of a new reality, a new family that only God could create through the bloodline of his Son on the cross. But it takes more than one person to make a family. So Jesus turns to his beloved disciple and says, Son, behold your mother. And from that moment onward, Mary was taken into his home. So there, at the foot of the cross, Jesus took his grief-stricken mother and friend and knit them together into a family, a holy family created through the love of Christ. 3
This is a new creation which embodies his new commandment:... love one another. Just as I have loved you, You also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. This is what Jesus is teaching from the cross in knitting together his mother and his friend into a new family. Beloved mother, beloved friend... love one another. I have been blessed to witness this kind of love that Jesus taught here at this holy church family. I have seen you lovingly care for one another in a variety of self-giving ways through good times and in times of sickness, trouble and sorrow. We may not always get it exactly right, but there is the desire to share God s love with one another that gives witness that you are indeed Jesus disciples. Recently I was blessed to witness the kind of love that Jesus taught outside of this holy family. I was asked to preside at a funeral of a man who had been a lifelong resident of Wood-Ridge. Apparently he was not so much a church-going man, but he was a man of faith and he was a Lutheran. The only stipulation in his will was that his funeral service be performed by a Lutheran minister. This man also did not have any living blood relations He and his wife were childless, and he had been widowed for quite some years. There were no sisters or brothers or even cousins. But this man ate every day in the same local restaurant after his wife died. The owners of the restaurant, a husband and wife and their young daughter befriended him. 4
When it became clear that this man could no longer care for himself alone in his home, they brought him to their home to live with them. Hearing this story and seeing the profound love for this man and the grief this family for his death moved me deeply but it also made me think of this moment on the cross Behold your father. Behold your children. Love one another just as I have loved you. Love like this has the power to create something new a true and holy family where there was none. In the movie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Robin Williams who plays the divorced husband and father who is so passionate about his children that he goes to extreme and ridiculous lengths to be with them. (If you haven t yet seen this movie, I highly recommend that you do.) At the end of the movie, he comforts a young girl whose parents have divorced and is wondering if she still has a family. He tells her: There are all sorts of different families. Some have one mommy, some families have one daddy or two families. Some children live with their aunt and uncle. Some live with their grandparents and some children live with foster parents. And some live in separate homes, in separate neighborhoods, in different areas of the country and they may not see each other for days, weeks, months... even years at a time. But if there s love, dear, those are the ties that bind, and you ll have a family in your heart, forever. Love is the tie that binds. And the love of Christ not only binds us and gives us to each other but it creates us into all sorts of different families with brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers we would never think or even choose to bring into our family. 5
But God s love knows best. We are all children of God, brothers and sisters of Christ and in Christ, members of the holy family of the Church. We are called to love one another and continue Jesus mission of new creation in what it means to be a family, what it means to be the holy family of the Church. So look around you... Behold your mothers and fathers. Behold your sons and daughters. Behold your brothers and sisters. And behold the ones outside these doors that hunger and thirst to be part of the family of God. It is Jesus intention that they should be part of the family too. If we love one another as we have first been loved, this is the tie that binds. And we will be embraced in that love forever. 6
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