John 19:25-27 - The Care of Mary

There they stood. Aghast. Shocked. Numb. Was this real? Certainly surreal. Her Son was hanging there, treated like a traitorous criminal. 

It had all happened so fast. The oppressive Roman soldiers had already taken out their vengeance on Him, whipping and scourging His body. Pilate, it seemed, in some kind of dark humor, had baited his anti-Semitic troops with that tongue-in-cheek charge plate over His head: KING OF THE JEWS. The crown of thorns they had used to mock Him was still stuck on His head. And He hung up there, bloodied, exhausted, exposed, humiliated. They listened to the public shaming and cursing. Her first-born Son.

Now it felt like
time stood still. They stood – watching – waiting for the inevitable. Counting His breaths. Watching for His slightest chest movement. Everyone it seemed had run, scared they’d be next, but His mother wouldn’t run. And her family was there to support her.

What would her future hold? Her Eldest Son, the One responsible for her, was dying a painful, slow death of dehydration, strangulation, blood loss, and congestive heart failure. And that was only what was seen in the natural. He was actually bearing the sin of the whole world. As a widow without her eldest Son, she would be destitute, empty, void. 

As she stood there with the women who were brave to join her, all those happy memories came back, the morning the angel startled her with the news He was coming, those days of holding Him as a little guy, that hard night He was born with nothing to dress Him in and nowhere to lay Him but a feed trough, those days He toddled around the house while they were refugees hiding in Egypt, His first day of synagogue school in Nazareth, his bar-mitzphah when he turned twelve, the day he finished memorizing Deuteronomy to finish his primary education. 

How He had taken on the hard work of His father, trained under that honorable man Joseph who had kept her from embarrassment and married her even though it didn’t make sense. So glad he didn’t have to see this. What will happen next? Where will she live? How will she eat? Her sisters and friends who stood with her couldn’t do much. The questions lingered in the air much like the approach of death did.

Over nearby was the young John, (“beloved of YHWH”), the youngest Apostle from Bethsaida in Galilee. John was in his early to mid-twenties, a full decade younger than His Lord whom he watched dying. His father, Zebedee and mother Salome was Mary’s sister (Matt. 20:20; 27:56; Mark 1:19-20; 15:40; John 19:25; 21:20-24). Therefore, John was one of Jesus’ first cousins and Mary’s nephew. The Zebedees ran a good fishing business (Mark 1:20) out of Capernaum. 

Young John, the beloved, as John describes himself, making a pun on his own name, (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20), suddenly listened to the Word Himself speaking from the cross to His mother, “Dear woman, here is your son,” nodding toward him, then the Lord spoke directly to him, “Here is your mother.” It made sense. Mary was his aunt. A dying Man’s command. John took responsibility that day. Mary stayed at John’s house that night and from then on.

With his brother James, John bore the sobriquet, Sons of Thunder, humorously dubbed on them by the Man he stood watching die. That “Son of Thunder” had been greatly influenced by the Man on the cross, and in time it would show. Jesus’ life poured into John’s life had already begun to mellow him from that fiery zealot who wanted to call down fire on people with whom he disagreed (Luke 9:54) to one who one day would write, “Beloved, let us love one another” (1 John 4:7-8).

In Acts 8:14, John was associated with “the apostles who were at Jerusalem,” and Paul called him one of the pillars of the Jerusalem church in Galatians 2:9. Later his brother James would be martyred by Herod (Acts 12:2). When the Jewish Revolt began in A.D. 66, many church leaders fled to Asia Minor, including John and those whom he was mentoring, and he took with him Mary the mother of Jesus, John’s aunt. John made their home in the great coastal city of Ephesus where he took the pastorate of the church there. 

A few years later (A.D. 70) the Roman General Titus would destroy the Temple and city of Jerusalem. Later in the reign of Domitian, John was banished to the Isle of Patmos where he had the prophetic visions of The Revelation. After Domitian’s death, John returned to Ephesus and, though of advanced age, continued as pastor of that great church. 

It is said that his Aunt Mary, the mother of Jesus, died in Ephesus under John’s care, care which went all the way back to Jesus’ dying desire from the Cross. Today there is a tomb of Mary in Ephesus, a testimony to John’s faithfulness to His Lord’s command.