The Seven Last Words from the Cross: Being the Body of Christ

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘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.”  --John 19: 26 - 27

Jesus’ mother and a few others were with Jesus in his final moments, standing at the foot of the cross to hear Jesus’ last words. For Mary, his mother, it must have been almost too much to bear.  Children are not supposed to die before their parents, and especially not in such a horrific, painful way.  And now she stood before the cross, and Jesus was about to be taken from her.  But Jesus did not leave those he loved alone.  Before he died, he looked at his mother and at the disciple whom he loved, and he said to his mother, “Here is your son,” and to the disciple he said, “Here is your mother.” 

Now, it is good, isn’t it, that Jesus’ thoughts were with his mother, that he wanted her to be taken care of when he was gone?  But if we think that this is all this passage is about—caring for our mothers—we are mistaken.  Here, in some of Jesus’ last words, in one of his last acts, he affirmed once again what God saw at creation, when in Genesis God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.”  It is not good for us who are humans to be alone.  God created us to be in community with one another.

Earlier in John’s gospel, after Jesus had told his disciples that the time had come for him to leave them, he prayed for them.  He prayed that THEY WOULD BE ONE, even as he and the Father are one.  This was Jesus’ prayer--when he knew that his arrest was imminent and that the crucifixion was coming--this was Jesus prayer, that his Father would bind the disciples together and make them one.

In saying to his mother and his disciple, this is your mother, this is your son, Jesus has created a new kind of family, a family bound not by ties of blood or genes or DNA, but created by the adoption of the Father who claims all of us as his children. 

In his self-deprecating humor, Will Willimon told about his reaction to a businessman in his city who was indicted for embezzling millions from his company and “bringing thousands of his employees to ruin.”  Before he appeared in front of the federal court, he was (quote) “saved.”  A month later, Willimon saw the man on a Christian talk show on TV.  “There he was, before God and everybody,” Willimon said, “Bible in hand, pious and sweet as a lamb.”

“It was more than I could take. . . ‘The creep!’”  I exclaimed to my wife, Patsy.  ‘Is there no limit to his hypocrisy?  Can you believe this?’

“She, passing through the den, mumbled to me, ‘It’s unbelievable the sort of creeps Jesus is willing to forgive.  Even more incredible is the sort of creeps Jesus commands us to be in church with’” (Will Willimon, Thank God It’s Friday:  Encountering the Seven Last Words from the Cross).

Here at the foot of the cross, when it seemed as if all was torn asunder, when these disparate people could have gone their separate ways and mourned Jesus on their own, Jesus called them together and created something new, gave them to each other as a family.  And although the physical presence of Jesus would be gone, his body would not be, because the body of Christ exists wherever his follows are together.