Good Friday 2001

Jn. 19:25-27. Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary of Magdala. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said, “Lady, here is your son; son, here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his own home.

Jesus said: Lady, here is your son; son, here is your mother.

A prominent person in our diocese suggested not many years ago that it is possible to offer too much worship to Jesus. When we think about this word, who can rightly adore the one who spoke it in the extremest pain and weakness? We are not as He was: I remember my terrible distress when, having left behind in England two vigorous, healthy middle-aged parents five years earlier, in ’76 I saw them again with their health broken down; the very worst thing was that for them, who had spent themselves in the service of others, life now, it seemed to me, had become small and circumscribed, and revolved at least for some months around their pills, their meals and their sleep. Nearer home, I myself am not like Him: As everyone knows, I am ardently in love with my husband; I have been consciously in the Lord for 43 years; but give me a nasty ’flu bug, or a bad tooth, and my frail flesh complains of the effort involved in showing common courtesy and good neighbourliness even to this dearest of men.

The Lord’s mother and His closest friend are both exemplary people. Mary, so brave 35 or more years ago when she opted for obedience with lifelong public disgrace, is brave still. Now the sword is indeed passing through her heart. John, son of Zebedee and one of the inner group of the Twelve, is the only male disciple still risking himself for Jesus. These are exemplary, but not perfect people: Mary has yanked on the umbilical cord in unhelpful ways, John has been hot-tempered, merciless and crudely ambitious. Both have unwittingly betrayed and used the Lord, as surely as Judas, with his interest in money, or Pilate, with his career in mind, as surely as the individual who comes into this community to steal what has been offered to Jesus, as surely as any of us, with our shopping-list of demands for release, fulfilment, affirmation and success.

There is no reason to suppose that these two people particularly like each other, or would choose to live together. They may well have seen each other as rivals in the Lord’s close affections. Mary may feel that she has seen enough children to last a lifetime, John that he has no interest in becoming anyone’s child at his age. Like us, they really love Jesus, but there is very much which they do not understand. They have given up much for him, and looked for a payoff. They are in terrible distress, a very human compound of suffering with Him and ruined personal hopes. The special revelations which both have received look all illusory now. They do not know how to pick themselves up and go on. To them Jesus speaks a pregnant word of healing, a word packed with meaning for them and for us. These are the meanings which I think that I discern in it this Good Friday:-

Weep not for Me. I do not want any kind of sentimentality as an expression of your love for Me. You must not live as though all the good things were in the past. I want your love for Me to be shown in engagement with your life as it is now. I chose this that is happening freely, for you and for Me. It is the best for all of us. I am still master of this world, and your Master. Know that I weep for you, for your pain. I understand what you are going through better than you do. Where you are in your pain, there I am with you. I weep also for your blindness. Even now in dying I am able to live for God and those He has entrusted to Me. I honour My mother and care for My neighbour. My life in God is unimpaired. Out of that life I give you My personal marching orders. I want you to care for those I love. And I promise you a future: out of My dying will come life, life in a large place bigger than you can imagine. There is a purpose to this horror, and it is a good and creative one. I am dying so that you may be happy. I am able to make you as I am, you will be able to get your eyes up off yourselves and shed your sorrow in obedience to Me and in the work which I am giving you. You will not be broken, but this which seems unbearable will make you. Where I now am in my love, there you will one day be with Me. If ever you lived your lives and conducted your relationships with a view to what you could get out of them, you will grow up to think in terms of what you may put into them. You are going to be enlarged through this. You are going to grow into real people. In My Church there will be relationships deeper and more lasting than any biological ones. Those who mourn will enjoy riches far more than what has been lost, however unique and precious. The weak will be able to depend on the strong, the strong will learn that their mature need is to be depended on. I am reconciling the parents to the children and the children to the parents. I am making peace between men and women. I am reversing the fall of Adam.