Jesus is put through a trial and sentenced to death, paraded through the streets of Jerusalem, carrying his cross, battered and torn, mocked and ridiculed. He is nailed to a cross and left to die – a horrible, protracted and excruciating death. What an end to a man of peace, love and forgiveness. What an end to the Son of God, God incarnate. It is unthinkable, unimaginable, unspeakable.

Hanging there, Jesus looks at those who gathered to watch. He is not so wrapped up in his pain and anguish as to be disconnected from the world around him. John 19:25-27 tells us that Jesus looked down and saw his mother. And he saw the disciple whom he loved, John. We reflected on Day 28 on what it means when Jesus ‘sees’ people. When Jesus sees you, he really sees into you, he sees the authentic and whole you. On the cross, Jesus looks and he sees his mother and he sees John. Even at such an extreme point of his suffering and humiliation, Jesus continues to see people. He is persistently turned outwards, expressing love for those around him. Jesus transcends his own suffering and connects with the suffering of someone else.

And seeing into his mother, Mary, he sees her not just as his ‘Mum’, but as a human being, as a beloved person, as someone’s mother, as someone who will become for many the supreme example of motherhood. And so he calls her “woman”. This is not a cold or impersonal address. It is not like saying, “Hey, you”. It is Jesus speaking to the human being who is called Mary. He speaks not so much as her personal son, but as her personal Creator. And as Creator, he recognises her anguish as she witnesses the life drain out of her son. And it is to that grief that he responds with love.

It reminds me of Psalm 139 and Jeremiah 1:5, where we learn that God knew us before we were born, before we were even conceived:

O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.

For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.
When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,
your eyes saw my unformed body.
All the days ordained for me were written in your book
before one of them came to be.
(Psalm 139: 1, 13, 15-16)

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations.
(Jeremiah 1:5)

God has a picture of us in God’s heart, God’s mind; a picture of our authentic self, much loved. We are all individuals to God, occupying a unique and sacred space in God’s heart; each one beloved.

As Jesus hangs dying on the cross, he sees this woman, who is his mother, and his heart is moved with compassion. He was there when she was knit together in her mother’s womb, preparing her for the great task of bearing the Christ in her own womb. He knew her intimately and fully as a child of God, and he loved her.

God is always present to bind up the broken hearted and to carry those who are weak. The events of Good Friday through Easter Sunday are the darkest and most horrific experiences in the life of the triune God. And yet even here, God the Son, operating in harmony with God the Father and God the Spirit, invests in the expression of love. This is because love is at the heart of God. The very fabric of God’s being is comprised of love. God can do nothing but love – love is an expression of being of God.

Let us be in no doubt that God looks at us. And when God looks at us, God sees us. And when God sees us, God still loves us. If this is true at Jesus’ lowest point, at the bottom of the kenotic U that we looked at on Day 20, how much more is it today, when Jesus is dwelling in perfection within the bosom of the Godhead? God looks, sees and loves. God cherishes and celebrates the individual that you are, a unique and beloved creature, a blessed creation emanating from the hand of God. God sees you and God loves you.

But there is more.

As Jesus looks down from the cross, as his life ebbs away, he sees also a broken community.[1] His disciples have scattered. Judas has betrayed him for a handful of coins. Peter has denied him. His movement for peace and love, for spiritual regeneration, has been shattered. His community is a fallen community. Sin, once again, impedes God’s wonderful vision for a flourishing human community.

We saw on Day 4 of our reflections that God created a community of people, people-in-relationship, rather than merely two individuals. God was interested in community, because God is a community: three-in-one. God did not wish to create merely individual persons. God’s desire was to create people in relationship with one another, with creation and with God, so that we could experience the same joy of fellowship that God had enjoyed for eternity.

On that Friday, community was once again fractured.

Community was first shattered in the Fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3. Both Adam and Eve were evicted from the Garden of Eden – a shattering of fellowship with God. The relationship between Adam and Eve became one of dominance and subordination – a shattering of fellowship with each other. Eve suffered in childbirth – a shattering of fellowship with one’s body. Adam had to toil to produce fruit from the ground – a shattering of fellowship with nature. The result of the Fall is, primarily, a shattering of community.

We see these results to this day in the spiritual apathy of much of the world, showing so little interest in God; in domestic violence, rape and child abuse; in psychological problems like anxiety, depression and schizophrenia; in illnesses like cancer, tuberculosis and HIV; in the prolonged wars in Africa, the Middle East and Ireland; and in the negative impact of human civilisation on climate. Sin manifests in broken community.

But Jesus, in his dying moments, works to re-create community, to turn back the effects of sin, to undo evil and death. He creates a new family.

Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home. (John 19:25-27)

John is Jesus’ best friend. Mary is Jesus’ mother. These are the building blocks of community – friendship and family, kith and kin. And Jesus unites these two by giving his mother another son and by giving his friend a new mother. He could just as well have said, “Dear woman, dear man, you are family.”

“At the darkest moment, we see this community coming into being at the foot of the cross.”[2]

Can we think of this as part of the Great Commission? Can we consider this to be part of Jesus’ last will and testament? To re-establish communities. Can we, in our neighbourhoods and our churches and our workplaces, participate with Christ in crossing the social barriers that divide? Can Christians reach out to Muslims? Can straight Christians reach out to gay people? Can male Christians reach out to women? Can wealthy Christians reach out to those who are poor? Can white Christians reach out to black Christians and vice versa? Can Christians step across the boundaries to encounter those who are different from ourselves?

Imagine if Jesus came in the flesh to your community, and saw you and someone who is unlike you, someone you’d rather have little to do with, and said to you both, “Here is your mother. Here is your son.” Surely, if Jesus said that to you, you would, like John, take that person into your home. You would take them in as family. You would form a family. You would discover in your heart the capacity for boundary-crossing love, for free and generous love. If Jesus came in the flesh and said this, you would do it, wouldn’t you? How could you do anything else?

The truth is, Jesus has come in the flesh, and he has actually said this. He has called us to cross boundaries and to establish Christian families, where there is “neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for [we] are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is a community that mirrors the community we see in the triune God, a community of love.

Meditation for the Day

Consider the extent of God’s love for you, even in his darkest hour. Consider that he has the same love for those whom you find unlovely. What does it mean for you that Jesus worked on the cross to re-establish community?

Prayer for the Day

My God, the reconciler, fill me today with such an excess of your love, that I cannot but love those around me. Give me courage to step across boundaries.

[1] Radcliffe, T. (2004). Seven last words. London: Burns & Oates, pp. 33-36.

[2] Radcliffe, p. 33.