LENT 2025 – PART TWO

LENT 2025 – PART TWO

1. The Family of God

 This Lenten season, we at A Vivid Life, are pondering what is known as the seven last words of Jesus from the cross. Lent is the 40-day period before Good Friday, Holy Saturday and Resurrection Sunday.

 Today we will linger at what is generally accepted as the second words that Jesus spoke from the cross as found in John 19:26. When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to her, “woman, here is your son,” and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on the disciple took her into his home.

 Mary bookends the gospel of John, as we find her playing a prominent role in Jesus’ first miracle, turning water into wine in chapter two and then reappearing at his crucifixion. Where she stood among several other women, one cannot help but wonder if Simeon’s words when Jesus was only 8 days old ever came to mind, that a sword will pierce your own soul too (Luke 2).

 What Jesus did on the cross was cosmic and history-shattering in that it was the most important theological thing that ever happened. And yet, in the midst of searing physical pain and with the weight of the sin of the whole world upon Him, Jesus thinks about his mother who is going to be left alone. He also notices the disciple John, who refers to himself throughout his gospel as the disciple Jesus loved. At this point, none of Jesus’ brothers were believers yet, so Jesus entrusted Mary to John, the beloved disciple and probably his cousin, as some believe his mother and Mary were sisters. 

 In the words of Bruner, a Bible commentator, Jesus does two things here: He fulfils the fifth commandment to honour your father and your mother, and He creates a new nuclear family based on faith – where water is thicker than blood. Here, Jesus gives birth to the church, creating a family to which anyone can belong. This tender moment between mother and son is so indicative of Jesus, to spot the lonely, the vulnerable, and the marginalized.

May his second words from the cross help us to really see the lonely, the lost and the outcast in 2025 and may we be as practical as Jesus was in addressing their need.

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