Behold, Thy Mother

Rogier van der Weyden, Crucifixion Diptych (c. 1460)

“Woman, I bought you a life insurance policy. You’re going to be fine.”

As best we can tell, Jesus didn’t ever speak these words from the cross.

Nor did he say: “Woman, get thee to a nunnery, go. Farewell.” 

Nor: “Woman, find yourself a nursing home.” 

No: “Mother.”

Only: “Woman.”

No: “I love you.”

Only: “Behold, your son.”

This is the last exchange that takes place between Jesus and his mother, the “God-bearer,” in John’s Gospel. What is Jesus on about?

Here, on the cross, as at the beginning of his earthly ministry, he is forming a new family.

This is not a family bound by blood or by law, nor linked by custom or common religious heritage.

This is the family of Jesus, the Body of Christ, formed by the wounded body of Christ, comprised of every tongue, tribe and nation.

It’s noteworthy that Jesus doesn’t ask his mother her opinion. Nor does he ask John for permission. He simply says: here’s your son; behold, thy mother. It all seems rather presumptuous. With his last breaths, a desperate man impulsively makes arrangements for his disconsolate mother by presuming upon his beloved friend?

This is of course to take a cynical view of the “deathbed” exchange. It’s quite the opposite. The exchange that takes place is a grace and a sign.

When Jesus gives his mother to John, and vice versa, he enacts what will become normative for the church throughout the ages. 

Families fractured by the sword will find a new home in the family of Jesus. 

Families broken apart because of a betrayal by blood will be placed in the household of God on account of the blood of the Lamb.

Strangers will become fellow citizens, the lonely surrounded by brothers and sisters, the abandoned adopted, and the barren comforted by sons and daughters by faith. This is the grace enacted in this exchange between son and mother.

Whatever else Jesus intends with these words from the cross, he means also to signal a radically hopeful future. With God as our Father, Jesus joins the lonely, the misfits and the brokenhearted into a family that, by his Spirit, becomes a foretaste of the home for which our hearts painfully yearn.

This, dear friends, is the good news of Good Friday—the good good news.