Mary at the Cross

A mother stands on a hillside outside the city walls. She cannot do anything to help. But she will not leave. She stays.

More than thirty years earlier, Mary had carried her baby into the temple in Jerusalem, and an old man named Simeon had taken him in his arms and praised God. Then Simeon had turned to Mary and said something strange and sad: a sword will pierce through your own soul too. Mary had kept those words in her heart. Now it is a Friday at Passover time. Her son Jesus has been arrested, condemned by the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, and led outside the city to be crucified. Most of his disciples have run away. But not everyone.

John's gospel tells us who was standing by the cross of Jesus. His mother. His mother's sister. Mary the wife of Clopas. And Mary Magdalene. Four women, close enough to see his face and hear his voice. It was dangerous to be seen as a friend of someone Rome was executing. The soldiers were right there. But these women stayed. And near them is one of the disciples, the one John's gospel calls the disciple whom Jesus loved. Picture Mary, who once wrapped her baby in cloths in Bethlehem, now watching him suffer, unable to reach him. This is the sword Simeon spoke of.

And Jesus sees her. In the middle of his own pain, struggling for every breath, he looks down from the cross and sees his mother, and the disciple he loves standing beside her. He says to his mother, “Woman, behold your son!” Then he says to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” He calls her woman, not to be cold, but in the respectful way people addressed a lady in that time; he used the same word at the wedding at Cana. Jesus is giving them to each other. Mary will not be alone. The disciple will look after her as if she were his own mother, and she will have a son to lean on.

John adds one simple sentence. “And from that hour that disciple took her unto his own home.” Not later. Not when things had calmed down. From that very hour. Even while he was dying for the sins of the world, Jesus kept the commandment to honour his mother. He made sure she had a home and someone to care for her. Soon afterwards, John tells us, Jesus said, it is finished, bowed his head, and gave up his spirit. But that was not the end, for Mary or for anyone. Three days later the tomb would be empty.

John's gospel never names the disciple whom Jesus loved. But around the year one hundred and eighty, Irenaeus, the bishop of Lyon, wrote that John, the disciple of the Lord who had leaned on his breast at the supper, published his gospel while living at Ephesus. Most of the early church identified the beloved disciple as John, son of Zebedee. A later tradition says Mary spent her last years with him.

Mary at the cross. You can read it in John chapter nineteen, verses twenty-five to twenty-seven. The baby Simeon held grew up to love his mother to the very end. The sword did pierce Mary's soul, just as Simeon said. But Jesus did not leave her alone, and he does not leave his people alone. Christians remember at Christmas that the child in the manger was born to give his life, and that his love reached out even from the cross. So here is a question to carry with you. Even on the cross, Jesus made sure his mother would be cared for. Who in your family could you care for this Christmas?