‘Woman, here is your son. Here is your mother.’
Scriptures:
Psalm 22:27-31
John 19:25b-27
What have been the prime examples of family life and family values over the last several television seasons? Hmmmm? Right. “The Simpsons” and “The Sopranos”. We’ve come a long way, baby, from “Father Knows Best” or even “The Cosby Show”. Now, I have to confess that I’m not a big fan of either of these series. I was going to try to catch the first episode of the new season of “The Sopranos” last Sunday night, after its long hiatus, just so I could look like I knew what I was talking about, but somehow it slipped past me. I do know that there are thousands – even millions -- of viewers out there who just can’t get enough of Tony Soprano and his clan and who have been waiting impatiently for a new (and probably last) season finally to start. I have colleagues among religious communicators who find great theological and sociological significance in “The Simpsons”, but whenever I catch a part of an episode as I’m channel-flipping the “d’oh”-ness of Homer, the smart-aleckness of Bart, the cloying sweetness of Marge don’t particularly make me want to stay with them.
It’s fascinating that two such dysfunctional families have come to define what we think of as family life – at least as it appears on television – for our time. Yet, in some ways it isn’t surprising. For all its violence and foul language, “The Sopranos” does exhibit some traits that we as Christians would find, well, if not uplifting, then at least worth pointing to: the primacy of family, strong female characters who are their own persons, Tony’s desire to learn more about his psyche and thus become more of a whole being. Despite their internal clashes and general smarminess, the members of the Simpson family usually end up being supportive of one another and finding their family base to be the defining element of their lives. Both “Simpsons” and “Sopranos”, therefore, are contradictory and even paradoxical in their portrayals of what family life can look like. In that way maybe they are more like our own families than we might want to admit.
The concept of the nuclear family, as you may know, is actually a fairly recent historical innovation – entering history, oh, probably, over the last 250 years or so. In Jesus’ time and for much of the 2000 years since, the idea of “family” would have been more like what we consider today to be extended family – the network of interweaving relationships that includes several generations, uncles, aunts, cousins, and even in some cases what we might call “friends of the family”. This was considered the “clan”, and it identified who you were in relation to the rest of society. The family unit was rarely based on our modern-day idea of love; perhaps the most important quality for family members in past centuries would have been loyalty (maybe this explains, in part, the attraction of a show like “The Sopranos”, since it helps us harken back to a time when such a concept of loyalty within the family took on so high a level of significance).
Families were built, not on the basis of romantic love, but through trade and bargaining and looking for the most favorable match for your children. In many societies prior to the Industrial Revolution brides were literally property, and the “father-of-the-bride” was trying to get the best price he could for her. We continue a vestige of this practice in the wedding ceremony when the father “gives away” the bride – which refers back to his position as property owner – and which is why I don’t particularly like to include this element when I conduct wedding services.
Relationships within families and among family members, therefore, were often based on intricate power struggles along with feelings of envy and efforts at one-up-manship. You can see this, for example, in a play like James Goldman’s “The Lion in Winter”, where Henry II and his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine vie for power over the throne of England, and their three sons each try to weave their webs to ensure that they will win the succession. Talk about a dysfunctional family! But for medieval times, especially in royal families, this kind of behavior was but par for the course.
Right about now, I imagine, you’re starting to think, “What does all this have to do with me and my family, AND what does it have to do with Jesus there on the cross looking down upon Mary and John?” I’ve gone into this short historical overview of marriage and the family in part in order to point out how different we are today in our family structures and how far we’ve come since Jesus’ time…..but then also in that context to look at how far-sighted Jesus was in pointing to what is truly important in relationships.
At first glance, it seems like Jesus is almost anti-family! At age 12 he runs away from his parents, not letting them know where he is going, and then when they find him in the temple teaching the teachers, he rebukes them saying, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” While he is preaching and teaching, according to all three of the synoptic gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke -- his mother and brothers come to see him, but when Jesus is told that they are there he says, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Harsh words to hear. It certainly feels like rejection coming from the one whom people are starting to believe is the Messiah. I don’t know of any minister who is entirely comfortable trying to interpret this passage.
But then we come to this tender moment in the midst of the agony on the cross. Despite all that is going on, Jesus feels the need to take the time to ensure that his mother and a beloved disciple would take care of one another. Here the emphasis is on the family member and the friend, not some general group of “those who would do the will of God”.
Beneath the cross of Jesus, according to what we heard in the scripture passage today, there were four women: Mary, the mother of Jesus; her sister, who, from Mark and Matthew, we believe may have been Salome, the mother of the sons of Zebedee; Mary, the wife of Clopas; and Mary Magdalene. It’s not hard to imagine what they were feeling. If you’ve ever been at the bedside of a loved one who is dying or seen someone you loved killed in a horrific accident, you know the sense of helplessness and the “Oh God, WHY?” scream of anguish. And perhaps, too, besides the pain she was feeling, Mary was remembering the prophecy that had been given to her 33 years before and her response: “Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed.” This doesn’t feel very much like a blessing, this cruel death. For now she has truly lost her son, not just been rejected by him – although sometimes it’s hard to know which is the more painful loss.
What Mary might have been coming to realize in this moment was her part in the drama of divine redemption. Christ was giving his life for the sins of the world. Mary’s part in that gift was to give him to the world. This was the true meaning of the prophecy and the blessing. But Mary was all too human – despite the veneration of her by later generations of Catholics and some Protestants. This giving of her son could not have come easily. In The Green Wood, a dramatic liturgy of the Christmas events, Joseph says to his wife, “But all is not accomplished, this is not completion. The law must be obeyed, and we are here at the time of your purification to offer the child.” And Mary responds, “O Joseph, I know it, I am trapped into obedience and acceptance. This moment of completion is only another beginning….. I know I am a peculiar treasure to the Lord, and yet I feel unworthy and unwilling. The burden will single me out, when I would be one among others.” Like so many of us, Mary does not really want to be special, to be set apart. She would rather know the normal, human joys of motherhood.
Also there among the crowd – probably not too far from this sorrowing mother – was the man whom the Gospel of John calls the “beloved disciple”. We don’t know for sure who this is, but most commentators assume him to be John, the introspective yet passionately loving follower. He is the only disciple reported as being present at the crucifixion; evidently, all the others had fled out of fear.
What was going through his mind? Might it not have been that here was the end of love? If Jesus could be treated like this when his only crime had been that he had loved so much and tried to give so much, then such love must not be possible in a world filled with this kind of hatred. John had known the power of God’s love in the mutual sharing that had been what he experienced with Jesus and the other disciples. But now there must have been doubt in his mind: how can this love that we have shared possibly be stronger than what they are doing to him? Is love only the way of the weak which might and violence can break?
But then from the cruelty that is the cross Jesus answers both his mother’s misery and his disciple’s doubt: “Woman, here is your son. Here is your mother.” Knowing that in many ways Mary had never really had a son, Jesus now gives her a son to care for. Knowing that the disciple had only begun to plumb the depths of what mutual love can bring, Jesus gives him a companion to be able to deepen that understanding. But the more powerful answer to their doubts and anguish was still to come.
Jesus was now giving up his human relationships. It was hard for his friends to understand the necessity of what was happening. His work as teacher – as rabbi – was finished; he must now go on to his greater work: the salvation of humankind – the sacrificial lamb, the suffering servant, the redeemer of Israel and of all the world. The mutual love he had shared with friends and family (philia in the Greek) was now giving way to a greater, sacrificial love (agape). Yet, even here, even now, he took time to respond to two important human relationships.
Why? Because, in the final analysis, divine salvation isn’t complete unless human beings learn how to care for one another. That’s what Christ has to give to us from the cross. The cross is a symbol of powerlessness. Pilate and Herod and the Roman soldiers and all those in authority today who wish to, can wield power over us. Power, military might, and the ability to bend someone else’s will to ours would seem to be the way of the world. But now Christ was presenting an alternative. This powerlessness that was his death is the answer that Christ was giving to the anguish and the doubts of his mother and his disciple. They had known the potential power of mutual love; now they were to know the paradoxical powerlessness of sacrificial love. Jesus knew that their lives would be empty without mutual love, so he gave them one another. But with his death he gave them much more.
Did Mary and the disciple really grasp this answer to their anguish and doubts? We don’t know. All that the gospel says is, “And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” They were to live together as mother and son, having been given a gentle nudge in the direction of mutual love by the one who had loved them both. But if not them then others realized that God’s sacrificial love had now come crashing into the world through the powerlessness of the cross, trumping all the power that human men and women can muster, and so was born a movement that would transform the world.
What this second word from the cross is telling us – well, is telling me, at any rate – is that the most important defining element in relationships today is caring. Love is fine; loyalty is good; mutual respect is quite important; blood ties mean something. But when real caring is present a family is formed. We like to think of ourselves as a church family, and to the extent that we are it is because of the caring that we do for one another. There are all kinds of family configurations today – from single parents to grandparents taking care of grandchildren to adoptive families to gay and lesbian couples (some with children) to senior citizen group homes to those living by themselves – all the way even to that prototypical nuclear family of one woman and one man and 2.2 children with a dog and a cat. But whatever we identify as family today what is important to look for in it is the caring that goes on. For where we find this we will find the places where Jesus has spoken his word: here is your mother; here is your son; here are the people that God wants you to care for. If the members of the Simpsons and the Sopranos can find ways to care for one another, then surely, surely, we can do no less.
Amen.
Next week we’ll be looking at the word “I thirst”. Bring your water bottles.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church, United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
March 19, 2006