Here is Your Son, Here is Your Mother

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

Friday is usually full of good things. Cook-outs and road trips; family game night or movie night; the beginning of Sabbath; baseball, yard work, and blessed downtime. But this week, we actually name it “Good Friday,” when it seems anything but good.

This day, we mark the time of Jesus suffering. We witness the darkest side of human nature, on grotesque display. We know this darkness is not contained within a few pages of the gospel, or to a single week of the liturgical calendar. We don’t have to look very far to see it on display, every day of the world. But still, we call it good, somehow…

We want to believe that new life waits, just beyond the cross. Just right inside the mouth of that cave there… If we squint, we can almost glimpse the sun coming up over the mountain.

But the hope of good news does not transform the suffering and grief of this day. We sit with the pain of knowing that the light came into the world, and people loved the darkness more than the light. We wait, like the disciples—knowing that there’s more we could have done. That even now, there’s more we could give up, more we could risk, more we could say—to avoid the wave of violence that is now, terribly, upon us.

Those disciples… they sat in the dark with only a shimmer of something Jesus told them once… Something they could almost remember, but not quite understand.  What was that he said again? Something about rising from the dead? But in the haze of grief and shock, those words failed them.

The only thing they had were the words he spoke from the cross. Powerful, haunting, and persistent. Perhaps each disciple held onto one question or directive more tightly; one that he or she was certain Jesus meant for just them.

For “the disciple that Jesus loved” –which one was that again? Didn’t he love them all?– for him, these particular words would not let go:  “woman, here is your son. Friend, here is your mother.”

From the depths of pain and suffering, Jesus had the selfless presence to give his mother and his best friend into each other’s keeping. In that simple transer of love, Jesus ensured that the ones he loved best would be cared for in his absence.

Isn’t that a glimpse of hope? The first hint that his presence might remain among them in some powerful ways they can’t yet understand?

Jesus committed his love to those who remained, and then committed his own spirit to the goodness of God. He believed in that goodness, even unto his dying breath. What trust it must have taken—after other friends had betrayed him—to suggest that the same goodness dwelled within his disciples; and that they would now be the caretakers of his mother, and of each other.

Maybe there is a reason that the gospel writer left this disciple unknown and unnamed. So that, in the space where a face should be, we would be able to see our own. In that silence where a name might be spoken, we hear instead the voice of our dying savior calling to us. “In your grief, you are all connected now. In remembrance of me, you are all related. Mothers and sons, friends and disciples. You are mine, and you belong to each other”

We are all beloved disciples. And Jesus saw within us the embodied goodness of God.  He trusted us to care for neighbors and strangers alike, loving each of them as ourselves.  With that truth as our story, we love and are loved, even in the midst of suffering; even on the darkest day.

We sit in that darkness knowing–that the world is broken and hurting, and we could do so much more to ease the suffering around us. We are both comforted and convicted by this reminder that Jesus saw us from the cross—beloved disciples—and named us, and trusted us; and even with his dying breath, called us good.