Woman, Here Is Your Son (Holy Week Devotional)

“When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing besides her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

- John 19:26-27

When you reach the end—of a journey, your career, even your life—it is natural to look back to the beginning, to retrace the steps that led you to this point. “My whole life flashed before my eyes,” say those who think they are about to die. When there is nothing left to see ahead of us, we look back.

So as Jesus hung from the cross, blood dripping down his brow and his vitality fading, I wonder if he did that when he looked down and saw his mother. I wonder if he was transported back to a day three years earlier in Cana, when his ministry had only just begun. Mary had been with him on that day too, but the occasion could not have been more different—where Jesus’s ministry now ended with the pain and humiliation of an execution, it had begun with the joy of a wedding.

It had been a happy occasion, but the festivities had nearly reached a premature end when the bride and groom ran out of wine to serve their many guests. Mary knew exactly who could produce something from nothing, who could turn worry into joy, so she had turned to her son for a miracle. Jesus had initially rebuked her, but she was undeterred, telling the servants to follow whatever instructions he gave. And her faith was rewarded—when Jesus commanded the servants to draw six stone jars of water and take them to the chief steward, it was not water he tasted, but wine.

If in Jesus’s dying hours his mind drifted back to that day in Cana, I don’t think that it would have been the miracle, the first of many, which stood out to him. I suspect it was the words he’d said to his mother when she looked to him for a sign: “My hour has not yet come.” Now that hour was here and, just like at the beginning of his ministry, so was his mother.

So it was that, beset by the physical agony of crucifixion and the spiritual agony of humanity’s sinfulness, Jesus took a small, intimate moment to care for his mother. Soon her son would be dead, her world turned upside down. She would need someone to watch over her like a son, and someone she could watch over like a mother—the sacrifice Jesus was making for the sake of humanity should not be Mary’s to suffer as well. So Jesus looked to the disciple he loved and brought him into the family the Lord was now leaving.

At Cana, Jesus had given Mary the sign she wanted, even though it was not yet his hour. At Calvary, Jesus gave her what she needed without her having to ask, precisely because it was his hour. In both instances, he showed the love of a son for his mother, but at Calvary he showed the love that God’s Son has for all who come to his cross, love that gives what is needed even when it is undeserved or unanticipated, love that can only be called grace. In his dying moments, Jesus refused to leave his mother alone to wistfully look back on her old life. Instead he gave her a new life—and he offers the same to any who will, like Mary, come near the cross.