We have all seen pictures of Jesus nailed to the cross surrounded by his Mother, the Beloved Disciple and Mary Magdalene. Whose heart is not broken in contemplating this mother witnessing any mother’s worst nightmare – the death of her child. We remember that John’s gospel talks to us about themes associated with family – becoming children of God, being born not of blood but of God, born again of water and the Spirit, nourished by bread and fish and abiding with a loving Father. While these images come from family life, Jesus shifts the meaning of family from the biological family to the family of faith. As he stands on death’s door, Jesus entrusts this new family to the leadership of the Beloved Disciple.
For Jesus, blood does not makes a family. The Spirit creates family. All who are God’s children, all of us, born of water and the Spirit, all of us make up God’s family. When the Beloved Disciple takes the Mother of Jesus into his home, we see more than a loving son caring for his mother. We see the start of God’s new family, those who abide in God and God in them are the sisters and brothers of Jesus.
I’d like to tell you the story of Kelly Latimore. Kelly is an Episcopalian who lives in St. Louis, Missouri. He paints icons, religious paintings usually found in Orthodox Christian churches. After the murder of George Floyd, he painted the icon Mama. In this icon, the Mother of Jesus holds the dead body of her son. Look at the face of Jesus. When Kelly is asked if the dead person is Jesus or George Floyd, he replies Yes. We hear: Yes, it is Jesus. Yes, it is George Floyd.
Look at the face of the Mother of Jesus. She is looking at you. She looks at you to invite you into the mystery of this death. In her broken heart we see more than the pain of the Mother of Jesus.
In her eyes we see the pain of the Mother of George Floyd, the mother of Brianna Taylor, the mother of Irvo Otieno, the mother of Cashay Henderson. The Mother of Jesus is looking at you, inviting you to share the mystery of suffering of mothers and fathers who have lost their children. The mother of Jesus invites you into that mystery because we are all sisters and brothers, linked heart to heart by God’s Spirit who abides in each of you.
We gather today, standing beneath the cross of Jesus and Jesus says to us, Behold, your mother, behold your son, behold your daughter. He invites us to discover that we are sisters and brothers of Jesus and so sisters and brothers of one another. Through our worship today may we discover one another as God’s beloved family, feeling the link between us created by God’s Spirit abiding in each of us. May that powerful Spirit send us out into the world, send us out to help create that world where no mother mourns the untimely death of her daughter or son, the death of any son or daughter killed by misguided police officers, killed by wonton violence, killed by hatred because they are different. May each of us who stands by the cross of Jesus feel the Spirit of the Risen One well up in our hearts as we go into the world as heralds of that love that burst from the empty tomb.