The Third Word from the Cross

Good Friday, 2003

JOHN 19:25b-27

When a person is preparing himself or herself for death, the person often slowly shrinks their “circle of concern”, and so it is in the way Luke and John describe Jesus’ successive “words” from the Cross. (Matthew and Mark each only record Christ speaking once: the cry of anguish, what we call “the Fourth Word”.)

The traditional sequence (used in this service) starts with Jesus’ forgiveness for those who crucified him, moves inward to Jesus’ promise to the thief dying next to him, then to his mother, then to his cry of anguish, to his own physical need, and finally, in the last two words, to his relationship with God the Father.

So here, his focus is on his mother, whom he addresses first and then the Beloved Disciple—in contrast to other first century accounts of death bed scenes in which the person who is to care for the dying man’s widowed mother is addressed first.

Even in his last hours, Jesus continues to revolutionize social norms, first commissioning (and empowering) his mother to care for his most loyal male disciple (who, as far as we know, was not in fact motherless) and only then saying to the Beloved Disciple, “Here is your mother.”

The second command is also somewhat curious because Mary, though widowed, did have other children, as the Gospels frequently testify. While any death of a first-born son (and therefore head of the family)to a widow in the chauvinistic culture of first century Palestine would have been devastating, never mind this excruciating death, Mary would not have been left penniless and homeless had Jesus not commissioned the Beloved Disciple to “adopt” her as his mother, so I think something else is meant here.

For while Jesus’ mother had other children, they were not there at the foot of the Cross, and while the Beloved Disciple may well have had a mother who was alive at the time, she was not there at the foot of the Cross, either. Those who had the greatest, recklessly courageous faith in Jesus were there.

And so they formed the first “church family”.

People sometimes talk about parish churches as “extended families” which offer their members “brothers and sisters in Christ”—and “aunts and uncles in Christ”, “grandparents and grandchildren in Christ” and so on. Sometimes this means people do things for those who are not blood relatives but are part of their “church family” which are quite wonderful—and all too rare in this day and age, and all the more appreciated because so many people (especially in this area) may not have many members of their families-by-blood in the immediate area.

So the first message I believe Jesus is giving us here and now in this brief and poignant passage is: be family to one another. Just the night before, Jesus had told his disciples, “Love one another as I have loved you.” Be family to one another—not just once a year or once a week but whenever needed and sometimes when not needed but when it’s just fun to be together. Church people, be family to one another: that’s the first message I get for us from this word from the Cross.

And the second message is: “Get your affairs in order before you die.” By the time Jesus died, he had done all he needed to do: loved and instructed his band of followers, given himself 100% for the sake of all the people of the world, and made sure that his mother had new responsibility and care within the community of faith.

Jesus had no wife, no children, no property save the clothes on his back, so he had no need for a “will” in the usual sense. Most Americans are in a different position. We need wills—for the sake of our families, for the disposition of our temporal goods, and to try to ensure that our temporal goods will not be consumed by lawyers and taxes while our heirs have “tugs of war” or simply try to figure out what we left and where it is, never mind what our wishes were.

Half or more American adults do not have wills and many who have them have out-of-date wills. If you don’t have a will you have written, the State of New Jersey has written one for you. Whatever you want, that isn’t it.

It is especially crucial for anyone with children under 18 to have a will and name a guardian—and for anyone whose child or children has children under 18 to make sure those parents have wills. The State has discretion to name guardians if the parents die without wills—a sobering thought indeed.

Adults also need Power of Attorney forms and Advance Medical Directives and to talk about the issues these raise with their next-of-kin, their doctors and their clergy.

Most people don’t like to think about these issues. They’re uncomfortable. But all of you who are here today are brave enough to be in a Good Friday service and therefore to think about death.

As we reflect on Christ’s death, let us face the reality of our own mortality, not in a lugubrious way, but in a way that goads us to put our affairs in order: to write or update our wills as appropriate, our Power of Attorney forms and our Advance Medical Directives. Jesus needed only two short sentences to put his affairs in order, but he did so, and while in excruciating pain. We, of sound mind and in whatever states of health, can follow his lead, and put our affairs in order—and then enjoy the new life freed from the shadow of death that our Risen Lord offers us, here and now, and forever.

(The Rev.) Francis A. Hubbard

St. Barnabas Episcopal Church