t h e s e v e n l a s t w o r d s o f c h r i s t # 3 : the new family 3.27.11 Rev. Brent Wright Broad Ripple UMC John 19:25-27 Meanwhile, standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, Woman, here is your son. Then he said to the disciple, Here is your mother. And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. My favorite commercials during the last Olympics were the ones that honored the moms of the athletes. Do you remember these? Little kids doing press conference, signing autographs, getting ready for hockey, ski jump, figure skating, ski racing, bobsled, luge, speed skating; "To their moms, they'll always be kids." Moms singing "You'll Never Walk Alone" to their kids as babies, as the kids are getting on the school bus, while tending to injuries, when picking up their kids at the principal's office, while taking them to practices, and finally in the audience at the Olympic skating event. "When you walk through the storm, hold your head up high, and don't be afraid of the dark. Walk on through the wind, walk on through the rain You'll never walk alone." "Is there anything better than being a US Olympian? There is, actually. Being that US Olympian's mom." Clips of ecstatic moms celebrating their kids' achievements. I loved these commercials, calling attention to the unique role moms play in all our lives. I was reminded of these this week as I sat with Jesus and his mom, Mary, at the cross. In my reading, I came across this stanza from a hymn about Mary that dates back hundreds of years: At the cross her station keeping stood the mournful mother weeping close by Jesus to the last. That beautiful poetry started the movie screen in my mind (do you ever have those moments, when a biblical story starts playing like a movie in your mind?): The first shot is a wide one we're high in the air; we can see Jerusalem in the distance beyond a hill with three crosses on it facing back toward the city. It is a turbulent gray day. The camera slowly zooms in toward the hill, and we see that there is a small crowd Rev. Brent Wright 1 Broad Ripple UMC
gathered. They are attending to the execution of three men by crucifixion. As we continue to zoom in from behind the crosses, past the head of the one in the middle, we notice one onlooker who seems to be staring at us with incredible intensity. As our view passes the man's head, we hear his voice, or rather, his thoughts: "Mom has been standing there the whole time, her eyes locked on me. Every time I look up, she is right there with me. The rest have fallen away, but not Mom and Aunt Mary and my friend Mary. The other two try to get her to sit down, they try to get her to eat, they try to give her drink. She'll have none of it. She stands there, motionless, tears streaming down her face, jaw tight, eyes of fire. She is a rock. For me. She is angry. Her soul is torn in two by deep sadness. But for me, she is a rock. She is staring her strength into me. She is loving me, holding me, with her eyes." As he is talking, the screen fills with Mary's face, wet with tears, lips cracked, brow furled, nostrils flaring. The camera keeps moving, slowly circling Mary's head until we are now behind her. We see the crosses in front of her, blurry in the distance beyond her graying hair. We begin to hear sounds it's the sound of a happy baby, and the sound of a crowded place. As the sounds get louder, the scene fades from the darkness of the stormy day to the brightness of a morning long ago. Still behind Mary's head, we see that there's no gray hair now. We're in the Temple it's magnificent! And there are people all around. Beside Mary is her husband, Joseph, and in front of them is an old man with a huge grin on his face. He is speaking a blessing for them, and as he hands the baby back to his mother, the old man lowers his voice and says to Mary, "This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed and a sword will pierce your own soul too. As his words ring in our ears, we're snapped back to the present by a gasp of pain. It's impossible to tell whether it was hers or his. His head is hanging down; he looks exhausted. She feels like she's dying with him. Another memory breaks through: it is the days following Jesus' birth, and an exotically-dressed rich man is paying homage to her baby son, presenting them with a very strange gift myrrh. She remembered her confusion about why he would give a baby ointment used for burial; there was no more confusion now. Then scenes of her memories begin to stream across the screen: pottytraining accidents, his first steps, his first words, washing his scraped knees, soothing him when he had nightmares, wiping away his tears. We see her holding a sniffling little boy, speaking softly to him what the archangel Gabriel had told her, "You will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give you the throne of your father David, and you will reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of your kingdom there will be no end." Neither of them had known what this would mean, but both were comforted by it. She returns to the present when she realizes that he's talking to the man on the cross next to him. She can't hear what she's saying. She aches for him to look at her, for them to have a moment of eye contact. Then a more recent memory pushes in: they are at a wedding, and the wine is running out. She knew what Jesus could do; she'd seen him learning, experimenting at home when he thought no one was watching. She asked him to help out, but he got angry with her. "My hour has not yet come," he'd said, but she gave him The Look. It hurt, now, to think of that again. She had dismissed his protest as selfishness or too much modesty. Now that he hung on the cross Rev. Brent Wright 2 Broad Ripple UMC
in front of her, she heard those words differently Now he's looking at her. The memory blows out of her mind in a moment and she is here, with him, for him, loving him with her eyes. Our viewpoint reverses, and we see what he sees, his mother and aunt standing with each other, and on the other side of his mother, his friends John and Mary Magdalene. He breathes a sigh of relief to see John; he speaks to his mother. It is a great effort to speak. "Woman, here is your son." Then his focus shifts to John and he says, "Here is your mother." It is his last will and testament. He owns nothing. He has nothing to leave behind but his relationships. To his mom he gives a new son, someone to provide for her in her old age. To John he gives a new mother. Jesus is taking care of his momma. And there's more that's happening here. Like the rest of Jesus' life, he was both a guy like all the rest of us and he is God showing humanity the way. Here, as he takes care of his mom, he is also showing humanity the way: he is expanding the meaning of family. He's been at this throughout his life, redefining boundaries of every kind all along the way. He ate with sinners. He talked to Samaritan women. He touched lepers. He accepted criminals. And he redefined family boundaries several times. In an episode that was painful and confusing for just about everybody, he redefined family one day when his mother and his siblings came to check on him as he was teaching: A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you. And he replied, Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking at those who sat around him, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother. (Mk 3:32-35) And this wasn't the only time he had hard words to speak about the fact that, in the Kingdom of God, family means something other than blood relationships. The gospels tell other stories of sayings like: Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me (Mt 10:37) And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or fields, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold, and will inherit eternal life. (Mt 19:29) In the light of his third word from the cross, we see that Jesus wasn't rejecting his blood family, he was proclaiming that in the Kingdom of God, family is defined by connection to God, not genetics. Family is much much wider than literal siblings and cousins and parents. Jesus Christ came to transform the world and this transformation of how we understand community and family calls into question some of our most familiar and beloved customs. As a follower of Jesus, my first loyalty cannot be to my own people, my clan, my tribe, my nation. No longer is there an 'us' and 'them'. No longer does it make any sense to divide ourselves into groups based on our own criteria, like politics or skin color or theology or age or income or education. As a Christian, I don't have the luxury of choosing for family only those who won't make demands of me. Jesus Rev. Brent Wright 3 Broad Ripple UMC
chose the widow, the orphan, the outcast, the leper, and the foreigner as his family, and he gives them to us, too. Jesus gives us not only each other, but everyone else around us, as a gift. A gift to be embraced and cherished. Methodist pastor and former bishop Peter Storey said in a sermon: In this third word from the cross, we, as disciples of Jesus, are invited to accept a sacred trust. If we accept, can anybody suffer hunger, homelessness, or need? Would there be any lonely old people? Could there be a single unwanted child? If Jesus has made everyone kin to me, would that not make every war in history a civil war and every casualty a death in my family? From the cross where he is nailed, Jesus nails us to each other. 1 This is the new covenant written in the blood of Jesus: we are in covenant with each other and with our neighbors and our enemies. We did not write the covenant, and we don't choose those to whom we are bound by it. We are simply invited to accept the gift of the bond. New family bonds are created by God where there is no blood relationship at all, and sometimes no obvious similarity or even affection. And at the core of this challenging truth is good news: it means we all belong. No matter what your oddity, no matter what your flaw, no matter what your nerdiness, you belong. No matter what the struggles or brokenness in your blood family, you have family. You'll never walk alone. This good news also brings challenge, of course. It means we have to resist the temptation to build walls between people. It means we must be in relationship despite our differences because how we live together inside these walls is the beginning of our hospitality to the outsider, and we are not a church if we are not radically open to all outsiders. This good news also means that we must continue to be in community while our differences remain otherwise, we are proclaiming that a person is only welcome among us if they will be like us; that's not the gospel, that's a country club. From the cross, Jesus formed a new family, bringing together a mother with an adopted son. And he announced the reality of the Kingdom of God: we are all family. Thanks be to God! 1 Peter Storey, Listening at Golgotha. Upper Room Books, 2004. Rev. Brent Wright 4 Broad Ripple UMC
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