On May 25th, 1979, John Spenkelink was executed in Florida’s electric chair. After Gary Gilmore, he became only the second person in the nation to die following the Supreme Court’s decision to once again legalize capital punishment after the Court had banned it seven years earlier. Spenkelink was a drifter who had been arrested for killing another drifter in a Florida motel room. While in prison, he became a born-again Christian, due in great part to the prayers and faith of his own mother. I’d gotten up early that morning to follow the reports of his execution and to this day, I can still hear her deep, sorrow-filled cries, “Oh my son! My dear, dear son” as she left the death house. I remember thinking to myself, "This must have been how MARY, the mother of our Lord, must have looked and felt as she watched her OWN son die.”
Mary was the only person in the Bible who was with Jesus from the beginning of his life to the bitter end. She had to have been stunned how her child, who had begun life with such great promise, would have his life end so tragically. Yet, in spite of the wondrous events that surrounded his birth--from the announcement of the angel and the surprise greeting from her cousin Elizabeth, to the sudden arrival of the shepherds and magi--Mary never had a role in Jesus’ ministry. In fact, as time went on, she grew more worrisome as she watched him make just as many ENEMIES as he did FOLLOWERS. Besides, with Joseph’s death, Jesus was now the head of the family and I’m sure she would have much preferred that he stayed at home and resumed his father’s carpentry business, that he settled down with a wife and kids and looked after her in her old age as was expected of MOST sons. But Jesus had to be about his FATHER’S business which of course meant focusing on his call and ministry while leaving the REST of those responsibilities to his brothers and sisters.
If Mary had had concerns about Jesus’ ministry, with his arrest and crucifixion, her worst fears had finally come to fruition. In that moment, I can imagine her recalling how years earlier, at the presentation of her first-born son in the Great Temple, an old man named Simeon had peered into her young child’s face and saw not just the GLORY that was in it but also THE SHADOW OF A CROSS writ large upon it. At the SAME time, he had predicted that a sword would pierce HER heart. Now, standing at the foot of that cross along with her sister, Mary, and Mary Magdalene, his prophecy had come to pass.
When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple he loved nearby, he said to her, “Woman, behold your son!” Then, he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” With every possession he had ever had stripped from him, he was STILL able to give them both the greatest gifts OF ALL: to his executioners, he gave pardon; to the thief, he promised paradise; and now to the two most beloved persons in all the world to him, he gives them EACH OTHER- he gives a son to a mother and mother to a son. John, by being entrusted to Mary, was being admitted as a brother into Jesus' NATURAL or BIOLOGICAL family, while his mother, entrusted to John, was being admitted as a member of his SPIRITUAL family.
We’re then told that from that time on, Mary went with John and his mother, Salome- first in Jerusalem and later in Galilee. Henceforth, Mary and her children would be numbered with the disciples and followers of Jesus. In the first chapter of Acts, we read how not long after Jesus ascended to the Father, the disciples were assembled in the Upper Room: "All these with one accord devoted themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and with his brothers." This meant that somewhere between that cross and the upper chamber, Jesus had become so much MORE than her treasured son but her Lord and her God AS WELL!
It is a curious fact that NOWHERE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL does he--John--ever mention MARY by name nor does he ever mention his OWN name. MARY is always called "the mother of Jesus" while he always refers to HIMSELF to as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." This is actually quite significant for these two nameless persons are only identified by way of their RELATIONSHIP to Jesus. What’s remarkable about THIS particular scene is that here, at the foot of that cross, we see how they both receive a whole NEW relationship. Mary "the mother of Jesus" and John "the disciple whom Christ loved" are given to each other so that Mary will henceforth be known as "the mother of John" and John, "the son of Mary." Mary may have lost a son at that cross but there, at the moment of her greatest tragedy, she gains instead ANOTHER son- "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and along WITH him the REST of his disciples and followers AS WELL.
The FIRST lesson we may take away from this encounter is that Jesus is here forming the very first church. He wasn’t simply making sure that his mother was taken care of for she had OTHER children who could do that. Literally translated, the text reads that he, John, took her “TO HIS OWN that very hour” NOT that he took her “TO HIS OWN HOME.” Here, Jesus was NOT asking John to allow his mother to come live with him but rather to WELCOME her into fellowship with himself and the other disciples; he was instructing him to RECEIVE her and make her part of their remarkable group. In other words, it was REALLY about the NEW COMMUNITY that was coming into being through the person of Christ and the power of his Holy Spirit. Thus, Mary and the rest of Jesus’ siblings would be found in the company of John and the disciples from that day on.
In giving his mother to the disciple, he is causing a NEW relationship to come into being, one that did not exist before. NEW mothers and fathers and cousins and sisters are created by the Spirit of Christ where there is no blood relationship whatever, and sometimes no obvious similarity or even affection. When the Christian community is working the way it is supposed to, people are brought together who have absolutely nothing in common, who may even have diametrically different views on things whether religious, political or otherwise. What is unique about the Church of Jesus Christ is that it comes into being without regard to personal differences. As St. Paul would later write, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Gal. 3:28). The Church was never meant to be a handsome brick building for people to come and hear a sermon on Sunday mornings, nor was it intended to be a fraternal organization or social club like the Elks Club or Moose Lodge with a little organ music thrown in. The Church of Jesus Christ is foremost a FAMILY, Jesus' VERY OWN, and it remains the most LASTING, most INTEGRATED, most INCLUSIVE, most UNIFIED fellowship on the face of the earth.
In Matthew, there’s a scene where Jesus is teaching and his lesson is suddenly interrupted with the news that his mother and brothers are outside looking for him. His reply was, “Who is my mother and who are my brothers?” Stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “HERE are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother.” A little later in the same gospel, he tells them, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name's sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life.”(19:29) Now Jesus was by no means minimizing the importance of his own family. Our natural families ARE important; God WANTS us to be loving and faithful husbands and wives, to be responsible parents and grandparents. However, he wanted his followers to understand that it was his CHURCH FAMILY--a body of believers united by a common Spirit and a common purpose to perform the will of their Father in heaven—that had to take priority while his NATURAL family--comprised of his mother and brothers and sisters--was to come in second. He was placing them in their PROPER ORDER.
What we in the church fail to realize is that the very purpose of the HUMAN family is to prepare us for an even LARGER fellowship‑ the family of JESUS CHRIST. The universal fellowship of the People of God transcends every geographical boundary; it embraces every type of individual‑ male and female, young and old, rich and poor, gay and straight; it encompasses all of history‑ from the Patriarchs and ages before them to the very end of time. It is ALSO the only fellowship that will continue long after our sons and daughters, husbands and wives, parents and grandparents have died and been forgotten. It is a truism and yet one that remains very hard to accept, that in GOD’S economy, “the family of man” is ALWAYS subordinate to “the family of God.”
And if the Church is meant to be a FAMILY, it is no less called to be a HOME where ALL persons may come and find support and healing. When I visit our members in the hospitals or in the nursing homes, I hear it again and again, “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have my church family.” Their lives are touched by us, not only when I bring Holy Communion to them or pray at their bedsides when they are hospitalized, but also by YOUR visits and those by their Deacons which mean so much to them.
In a previous church, we had a member whose son was killed almost a half century ago in Vietnam. She shared with me how one Sunday morning, a couple of military personnel arrived at her front door to deliver the heartbreaking news to her and her husband Henry. Do you know what they did next? They didn’t pull the shades down over the window and lock the doors and go into a state of perpetual mourning. They didn’t wrap themselves in a cocoon of self-pity and resentment and ask, “Oh why should this happen to me? What have I done that God should treat me this way?” Instead, they put their hats and coats on and immediately went to church. And WHY? Because there was no other place in the world TO be at that particular time. That church was their home and they needed to be with their brothers and sisters who could then minister to them in the midst of their grief. That’s what a church is FOR.
In the utter depths of Mary’s grief, God gave her the grace to survive and even TRIUMPH over her brokenness. However, the VEHICLE for that grace came through the love and support and ministry she received from his body- the CHURCH. Jesus, her child of such great promise, had been taken from her but in his place she had inherited an entire CHURCH full of sons and daughters. To THESE, she would become their SPIRITUAL MOTHER, much the same way that Abraham became the father of the Jews, and Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King became mothers to the civil rights movement in our own day.
Years ago, I had a church elder named Patsy with whom I became particularly close. She had been a young war bride from England who came to America with her husband following the Second World War to settle down and raise a family. In the early 1970's, her husband developed cancer and died leaving her with her son and only child, Eric. A year later, Eric was driving down a curving road when he lost control of the car, sliding headlong into a tree. Eric, only 18 years of age, was killed instantly. Of course this devastated Patsy. First her adoring husband is taken from her and then her only son, her child of promise and dreams.
Patsy had no one to take her frustration out on other than God. She became very bitter towards God, even quitting church where she had been so active over the years. She ceased reading her Bible and even refused to pray. In fact, she felt all reason for living was gone and wanted to die HERSELF. All attempts by friends and church members to draw her out of herself and back into the world were to no avail.
Yet, over the next few years, God was performing his OWN form of surgery upon her heart. Time DOESN'T always heal all wounds as the old saying goes but with God's help, he CAN make them bearable. There was an opening at the local school for a secretary to the principle. Little did she know that that job would in time help pull her out of her world of private grief. As the school secretary, she learned to love those kids as though they were her own. She knew each child by name, often spending time with each one, helping to sort out their problems and needs which were often considerable. As they moved on through the years, they would return to the school just to say "hi" and tell her how much she had meant to them growing up. They became for her a kind of surrogate family so that through the loss of her own son Eric, she had inherited a WHOLE SCHOOL of "sons" and "daughters" to care for. She confessed to me once that those children had come to mean everything in the world to her and that she wouldn't know what she'd do when it was time for her to retire. Returning to her church, she became one of the most active and vibrant Christian women I have ever met. Yes, her grief was deep, her pain was real, but God used her sufferings to expand her own heart to embrace hundreds of young lives, and God can do the same with US.
My friends, it was there AT THE CROSS that Mary discovered and was incorporated into a whole NEW fellowship, and the love and devotion that she once reserved just for her son Jesus was suddenly opened up and shared with the WHOLE CHURCH; it was AT THE CROSS that her broken heart was mended together and enlarged beyond her wildest dreams so that her maternal care and instincts embraced, not just a single son, but an ENTIRE SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY. Thus Mary, the mother of Jesus--like Patsy, the mother of Eric--became for the Early Church and thus for US this morning an example of someone whose heart and purpose were enlarged THROUGH THAT CROSS. No longer was Jesus her son, yet she now had an ENTIRE SPIRITUAL FELLOWSHIP to embrace and be embraced by. Similarly, may OUR hearts be enlarged, OUR commitments be expanded, OUR devotion and care for OUR brothers and sisters be deepened through our OWN encounter with that VERY SAME CROSS. Let us pray…
Gracious God, we thank you for the example set by Mary that she did not allow the pain she felt in watching her own son die lead her to separate herself from his ministry and his followers. Likewise, may WE in our OWN times of grief and sorrow and loneliness be willing to open OURSELVES up to your love and presence as present in and through your Church, that we might ALSO discover within OURSELVES a SIMILAR capacity to love and care for others we did not think possible. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.