{"id":4197,"date":"2022-04-11T05:54:56","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T11:54:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/?p=4197"},"modified":"2022-04-11T05:54:56","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T11:54:56","slug":"the-last-seven-words-of-jesus-woman-behold-your-son-son-behold-your-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/whatgodwantsforyourlife\/2022\/04\/the-last-seven-words-of-jesus-woman-behold-your-son-son-behold-your-mother\/","title":{"rendered":"The Last Seven Words of Jesus: \u201cWoman, behold your son. Son, behold your mother.\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s meditation reflects on the third of the Last Seven Words of Jesus.\u00a0 All seven passages are from the Gospels, and they often serve as the focus of the church\u2019s prayers on Good Friday.\u00a0 Given the length of each mediation, I have chosen to offer one a day, ending on Good Friday.\u00a0 This is the second of eight meditations.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among the crucial words from Jesus on the cross, why these?\u00a0 Are they a final gesture of filial affection or an effort to provide for Mary?<\/p>\n

They are, in fact, neither one.\u00a0 With these words, Jesus entrusts his beloved disciple and his mother to one another\u2019s care as the first members of his church.\u00a0 This is the beginning of the family God longs to create, drawing the two of them and all of us in love, to love and to be loved.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s dominant religious narratives are misleading.\u00a0 To hear most of us, the Gospel is about one of two things: The salvation of individuals or the redemption of society.\u00a0 For our brothers and sisters of a more evangelical bent, each soul is made fit for heaven and sent on ahead, one by one.\u00a0 For our brothers and sisters of a more progressive bent, the gospel is a message that remakes the world, ordering society and promoting justice.<\/p>\n

But both narratives capture only fragments of God\u2019s redemptive effort and, as a consequence, they distort our understanding of what God is doing in the world.\u00a0 The Gospel is not about saving the individual who lives in splendid, spiritual isolation, nor is it about reordering the politics of our day.\u00a0 It is about the transformation of souls and lives who are saved to live in relationship with God and with others as members of the body of Christ.<\/p>\n

It is that body-life that transforms us and our relationships.\u00a0 It is that body-life that witnesses to the transformation that is possible individually, as well as communally.\u00a0 As such, then, the church is not just the instrument of salvation, it is also our destiny and our home, as we journey into the life of God in Christ.\u00a0 Anything less than that empties the church of its profound calling.<\/p>\n

It is not a book club or a gathering of like-minded people.\u00a0 It is not even a place for worship, mutual support or inspiration, though we may receive those gifts there.\u00a0 It is that place where we experience the deep intimacy and connection with God and with one another that can only become a reality at the hands of the one who says, \u201cBehold your mother, behold your son.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are, of course, times when life in the church can be comfortable and comforting.\u00a0 We find soul friends.\u00a0 People whose loyalty to God\u2019s calling on their lives and whose awareness of the Spirit\u2019s prompting is a source of encouragement.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had a handful of friends who fit that description, and they are one of life\u2019s sweetest gifts.\u00a0 I am blessed to be married to one of those friends.<\/p>\n

There are other times that what means the most to us are the encounters with God that we experience in worship.\u00a0 I often describe my spirituality as Eucharistically centered, by which I mean that my spirituality is fed by the sacrament of Christ\u2019s body and blood.\u00a0 And both gifts undoubtedly strengthen and encourage us in our engagement with the needs of the world.\u00a0 But these are secondary and derivative gifts of the body-life that we share in Christ.<\/p>\n

Is that body-life always what it should be?\u00a0 Is it always rich in the gifts that it imparts?\u00a0 Of course not.\u00a0 There are many times that our differences are disquieting, and the body-life of Christ eludes us.<\/p>\n

C.S. Lewis understood this.\u00a0 In his Screwtape Letters, <\/em>master tempter Screwtape advises his new intern, Wormwood <\/em>to use our discomfort in order to drive us away from God and one another:<\/p>\n

When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided.\u00a0 You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours.\u00a0 Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like \u201cthe body of Christ\u201d and the actual faces in the next pew.\u00a0 It matters very little, of course, what kind of people that next pew really contains.\u00a0 You may know one of them to be a great warrior on the Enemy\u2019s side.\u00a0 No matter.\u00a0 Your patient, thanks to Our Father Below, is a fool.\u00a0 Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous\u2026.Keep everything hazy in his mind now, and you will have all eternity wherein to amuse yourself by producing in him the peculiar kind of clarity which Hell affords.[i]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sadly, this is not a temptation that the devil uses just from time to time.\u00a0 This is \u201cThe Age of Screwtape.\u201d\u00a0 We have lost our capacity to witness to the power of the Gospel, to its universal embrace \u2014 to the community it is able to forge in unity as the body of Christ \u2014 to its power to transcend and heal human differences.\u00a0 In its place is a very different kind of witness: a witness to the power of tribalism and division \u2014 a witness to diverse versions of the Gospel and churches to go along with it.<\/p>\n

We have also set a precedent for the future: Because if we are prepared to walk away from unity in the body of Christ, there is no argument to be made for unity anywhere else \u2014 in the world, in our respective nations, and communities, or in our own homes.\u00a0 Where the priesthood of all believers has run amok, every individual is a church.<\/p>\n

Until, of course, we realize that in commending his mother to his disciple and his disciple to his mother, Jesus puts an end to that kind of enmity.\u00a0 Then we realize that the very fabric of existence has changed, and what we are promised is not just private healing, but healing that embraces our relationships.<\/p>\n

The question, then, is this: Are we prepared to participate in that healing?\u00a0 Are we willing to set aside petty differences, the secret satisfaction that comes with self-righteous indignation, the defining moments we find in conflict with others, and the comradery that we nurture with those in our tribe.<\/p>\n

It isn\u2019t clear that we are either willing or prepared.\u00a0 But what choice do we have confronted with the words of Jesus that establish a new way of being?<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

+++++++<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWoman, behold your son.<\/p>\n

Son, behold your mother.\u201d<\/p>\n

With those words<\/p>\n

You mend our broken relationships,<\/p>\n

Inviting us to embrace a world<\/p>\n

Forever changed by your sacrifice.<\/p>\n

[i]<\/a> C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters<\/em> (New York: Harper Collins, 1996): 6f.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s meditation reflects on the third of the Last Seven Words of Jesus.\u00a0 All seven passages are from the Gospels, and they often serve as the focus of the church\u2019s prayers on Good Friday.\u00a0 Given the length of each mediation, I have chosen to offer one a day, ending on Good Friday.\u00a0 This is the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":240,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2432,101,3798],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holy-week","category-lent","category-the-last-seven-words-of-jesus"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Last Seven Words of Jesus: \u201cWoman, behold your son. 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