John, in specifically selecting the events that lead to belief, preserves for us three of the recorded sayings that Jesus made while suffering the unthinkable, the unimaginable on the cross. The Synoptic writers record four others. We would be in error to portray that we know for certain that these seven were all that He said. We have no way of knowing if more words passed over a thirsty tongue and cracked lips only to be drowned in the din of hatred and sarcasm. But we do know that the Lion of Judah, through sheer will, mustered the strength to roar, if not in volume in at least importance, what these inspired men immortalized. And we know why as well. Jesus is dipping the brush of His creative power into the pallet of His perfect existence and upon the canvas of life’s pain paints the portrait of what all sons and daughters of the Most High must look like.
One that has quickly become my favorite is when the Son of God places His mother Mary into the care and custody of His cousin and disciple John. She and she alone had been with him from conception through incarceration and each line on her familiar face is telling its own story with each tear providing commentary. His mind races through the many scenes of pain and fear that has resided in her heart and soul from the moment the angel declares God’s intentions and a young, unwed Jewish girl becomes pregnant and all the talk and ridicule begins. To the agony of knowing that all the pain and suffering caused to those families whose young babies King Herod had put to death was because Herod has trying to kill her son. The words of the aged Simeon, that remained just below the surface of every thought and filtered every experience: that a sword would pierce her very soul. And now the events of the past twelve hours of watching her own flesh experience - Crucifixion. Because she is as much His mother as God is His father, she is His family and the greatest love of His human heart is for her. Oh, the struggles that must have occurred between His incarnate feelings and His divine logic. He could have relieved her present agony by abandoning the cross and fleeing the Skull, but her soul was worth the tears. Instead of laying aside her grief momentarily, all the while condemning her soul, Jesus insures her entire wellbeing as John will take care of the present while Jesus himself takes care of the eternal and thus fulfills not only the law of social responsibility and the obligation of grateful son for the life she had given him but also the just demands of a Holy, Life-giving God. He found great joy in knowing that refraining from addressing her present sorrow, He could insure her eternal joy in the presence of her son and His Father.
For John this event is an issue of belief, and if we indeed believe, then the gentleness and concern expressed in the midst of His pain, His misery, His anguish must…..must soften the heart and touch the core of our existence. We must be moved deeply by His compassion and even more transformed by His gesture.
Of all of the meaningful lessons that can be gleaned from this image, for my life, one unavoidable lesson has declared itself supreme. I believe that this was recorded because the Savior, our Savior wanted to stress a very practical and poignant point with His people, His family. That there is NEVER, NO NEVER an excuse for not loving and taking care of each other to and with the fullest extent and expression of the love we have graciously received from God. There can never be a reason for us not to respond with the same compassionate gesture in spite of surroundings and circumstances.
If the sinless Lamb of God could extend forgiveness to the very mob who lied and deserted and flogged and beaten and spit and crucified him by asking that His Father not allow these Satan blinded ones to be hindered from coming into the presence of God, can we, who are NOT sinless or guiltless, do any less? If the guiltless one graciously extended pardon to a guilty, undeserving criminal can we, equally guilty and undeserving not show gracious pardon to at least our family? And yet it is so often we who beat with our actions, who flog with our words or equally damage by withholding them, who crucify spirits and dreams and hopes of others simply because someone else did it to us. Jesus in this gentle, tender expression screams that the only time we can allow our “having a bad day” to keep us from treating our families, physical and spiritual, like he treated His family is when our “bad day” exceeds the “bad day” he is experiencing. And the likelihood of that ever occurring is ZERO because the very reason Jesus is suspended not just between Heaven and earth but Heaven and Hell is so that you and I will never experience anything close to what was administered to him. If Jesus can choose to focus on Mary’s well being in the midst of the torment inflicted upon him, brothers and sisters so can we. So must we.
We must stop allowing our schedules to interfere with our sympathies, our agendas to overlook the anxiousness in others, our self-preserving walls to isolate, our preoccupations to justify our right to exclude, our petty preferences to give us the privilege to ignore and the devil inspired thought that it is okay for us to reproduce our pains in others.
And so:
To you, my family, my family in the flesh and in the faith, I charge before God and pledge to you, that from this day, this hour, this moment we must be committed to the pursuing two things.
First, we will change how we will treat and honor each other and therefore covenant before God that:
We will stop being sarcastic in order to motivate; it just crushes others spirits and only brings humiliation.
We will stop being critical because we will set aside our erroneous assumption that it is okay to expect the worse and focus on the negative.
We will stop being judgmental because we will stop assuming we have all the answers and know each other’s motives.
We will stop yelling and shouting and losing our temper because we have deluded ourselves into thinking that it is our right.
We will stop gossiping under the pretense that it is beneficial because those intentions are never pure and the only person we are really trying to benefit by doing it is us.
We will stop being oblivious to each other’s hurts and needs because we have permitted ourselves to focus entirely on our own.
We will stop complaining about how bad life is and that we are so mistreated because we now intend to filter our perceptions through a crucified carpenter’s eyes.
We will stop being too busy to listen, too distracted to care and too preoccupied to love.
We will start submitting ourselves to each other by valuing each other’s needs and committing ourselves to meeting them.
We will strive to know each other well enough, deep enough so that we know what words and actions will benefit and encourage each other. We will want to be involved in others life but also to live our lives in such a way that we can trust each other to be there.
We will make time to create memories that will outlive our physical existence.
We will practice the disciplines of God’s Spirit so as to allow His fruit to grow and the seed contained in that fruit to be replanted so that the tree of the life in Christ will continue to flourish.
We will acknowledge each others presence and honor it with politeness.
We will commit to make laughter the first thing from our mouths and joy the first from our hearts.
We will recognize the importance of asking you “How are you?” and be genuinely interested in each others answers.
When we are with each other, we will spur one another on to love (for each other and for God) and our involvement in the many good things that God has prepared for us to do.
We will strive to model Christ without hypocrisy.
And we will pray. We will pray for each other and not pray about each other. And we will let each other know that we are doing so. We will pray for God’s will and His guidance in each others lives and that He will forgive our past failures to do this.
Secondly, we will commit ourselves to encourage each other to start doing the same. I am more than painfully aware that this process of heeding our Lord’s example begins with me, but that it does not stop there.
Therefore, we will no longer stand by and idly watch others do these either. The time has come for us to lay aside our fears and with all of the love that Jesus demonstrated that morning to His mother, expect each other to live out the request of the Messiah. We must challenge each other to “love and good works.” and stop fostering an environment of disinterestedness. This can only be accomplished with encouragement and instruction, but may on an occasion call for confrontation in all gentleness and brotherly love. You have the God-given responsibility to remind me of this when, as a blood-bought believer, my words and action don’t look like the portrait Jesus painted.
The crucifixion of Jesus on the cross of Calvary was for the purpose of gaining a victory over death and more importantly the one who by the fear of death held each of us captive. Our refusal, and I can think of no better word to describe it, our refusal to love as Christ loved, to care as he cared, to lay aside our very lives for each other as he demonstrated by His selfless sacrifice allows the evil one to hold captive our homes, our families, our churches and our very lives and to run the risk of voiding in ourselves what Christ’s death accomplished.
Will this task be easy or accomplished quickly? Heavens no! As long as we allow the sheer volume of our selfishness to remain cloistered in our hearts it will be extremely difficult. But once the passion of that moment, the tenderness of that exchange between a son and His mother, when, amidst the torture of providing Redemption, Jesus allowed His eyes to fall upon Mary and He at that moment focuses His entire attention on her and His one desire is for her wellbeing, when that becomes a glimmer of reality, the process will begin.
At the very beginning I shared that this is my favorite life lessons that echoes from the cross. That is because in its simplicity and brevity Jesus encapsulates the entirety of His wish for us: that we love one another. The “forever new and yet as ancient as time” concepts that He taught in His Life is now being manifested in His Death. God, in the greatness of His wisdom, allows us to clearly see in this one event the glorious purpose of His mission. Jesus’ selfless act of love to His family member occurs while His selfless act of dying makes it possible for us all to be His family members as well. At least to those who are willing to do the same in kind for others. What Jesus provides in regards to the physical welfare of His mother, He provides in regards to the spiritual welfare of all humanity for those same eyes that fell upon His mother sees us as well. And as every resident hurt and pain in Mary’s life had His attention so does ours. As, out of immeasurable compassion, He provided for her care He has and will continue to provide for us. All Christ asks of us from this scene is that we take those same tear-filled, blood-drenched, fist-beaten and soon to be darkness-blinded, forsaken eyes and allow them to be the ones we use to see each other.
