‘Woman, here is your son…’ ‘Here is your mother.’ (John 19:26-27)
Death is never merely an abstraction, something to be studied philosophically or with academic interest only. Death touches each one of us at some point in our lives. Those we love and care for are taken from us. We grieve, weep and mourn their loss. We do not study Jesus’s death simply from an academic or theological perspective only either. His death matters to us because it is the means of our salvation; we cannot simply gaze and be unmoved.
Jesus thinks of his mother and his beloved friend at the cross. He knows that His death will have an impact on them. No man is an island and everyone’s death impacts someone else. In thinking of His mother, Jesus not only demonstrates selflessness even in the midst of personal agony; He shows us how interconnected our lives are. We neither live to ourselves nor die to ourselves. We belong not only to God but to each other. We have a duty of care to other people. As Eugene Peterson says, ‘With these words, Jesus made His mother and His disciple mutual participants in all that is involved in His death: abandonment, forsakenness, the hope of heaven, atonement, sacrifice, pain, salvation. And, it goes without saying, resurrection… All of Jesus’ words and actions, from this moment, enter the arena of everyday domesticity to be worked out and practiced precisely there.’ (‘The Word Made Flesh’, P 255)
In the midst of all the eternal, world-changing action of Calvary, Jesus cares for the ordinary lives of the people He loves. We can never, John reminds us later, love God without loving people as well (see 1 John 3:11-18). This is a lesson he learned first-hand from Jesus.