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New Testament Reading—John 19: 23-27
I want to begin with an exercise for your imagination. First, I invite you to look around at the people in this sanctuary. Try not to stare at anyone in particular. I don’t want people feeling uncomfortable. Casually look around. Think of how well you know some people and how little you might know others. Perhaps, there is someone you have never gotten a chance to really engage or chat with. Next, I want you to imagine that you have just been given the following news: as you were casually looking around, the person who you knew the least or perhaps did not know at all will be moving into your house as soon as worship is over. They will be living in your home, sharing your meals, using the same bathroom that you use day after day. Further imagine that this is how things will be for the rest of your life. From now on, this person is going to live as a member of your family. For all you know, this person could be the nicest person ever and you will be delighted to have them as a family member, but in truth, you don’t really know much about this person. Once you have let this imagined set of circumstances sink in, you can return to the present reality. I hope that I didn’t just ruin coffee hour for people. I don’t want everyone trying to avoid whoever they imagined to be their new family member.
I wanted to do that exercise in order to help us think about the scene at the foot of the cross in our scripture for today. In this scene, Jesus introduces his mother to her new adopted son. He does it as if they might be meeting for the first time. He says, “Woman, here is your son,” and to his follower, he says, “Here is your mother.” These two, who appear to be complete strangers to each other, are suddenly discovering that they are to be family. And, this isn’t the kind of family that you only see at Thanksgiving. The last verse in our reading says that Mary immediately moved into the disciple’s home. And, it wasn’t like the disciple could say no. Your friend and teacher, who also happens to be the Messiah, tells you his last wish just before he dies. The disciple didn’t have much of a choice. There was no avoiding Jesus’ mother. She was going to be there to stay. The disciple could only hope that she would be a pleasant enough person to have around.
Aside from a sip of sour wine before his death, this adoption pairing of Mary and the disciple was Jesus’ final act, according to John. In fact, if we were to read the next verse, it says that “after this…Jesus knew that all was now finished.” He had done everything that he needed to do before he took his last breath. For me, there are a couple of interpretations of this last act that resonate with me. In our Bible Study class, a number of us related the scripture to stories of loved ones who were more concerned about their children or spouses in their final days and minutes before they died than they were about their own selves. I think it makes sense to think of Jesus in a similar light. Here you have this man whose entire life was devoted to loving and caring for others. In a way, it is fitting that even after he has just been crucified his basic character and essence doesn’t change. He’s still focused on others. He wants to make sure his mother is cared for.
At the same time, I think this story can be read as additionally having another level of meaning. What if the significance of Jesus’ final act for those in the Gospel of John community and for us has to do with what it says about how we are to live and function as Christians? Maybe the final act of Jesus is a signal for us to realize that we are to be family, that we are to care for each other, that we are to be one another’s keeper, even if we might want to avoid each other in coffee hour today. Now, we might wonder what’s so important about us being like family to each other that Jesus would make it his final act. I think there are a couple of possible answers. One is ethical, and the other is spiritual.
On an ethical level, I believe thinking of others as part of our family can play an important role in why people do the right thing. This past week I was reading about an organization in Chicago that provided food to people with HIV/AIDS back in the 1980s when no one else cared about them. City officials in Chicago went so far as to say they were all out of money and couldn’t help people with HIV/AIDS until activists broke into city offices and discovered that in fact the city had $2 million dollars in unspent health services money. During that time, it would be an understatement to say that many simply didn’t care about people with HIV/AIDS. In fact, as many of you remember, people with HIV/AIDS were openly despised and denigrated. Lori Cannon, one of the co-founders of the food program, recalls how many persons lived “in isolation, in shame, shunned by family, friends, [and] their church.” There was no one to care for them, and a group of people who were already caring for their own friends decided that they would broaden their circle of care by doing the one thing they knew they could do which was feed people. In essence, the group soon took on the caregiving roles that a biological family would often assume for someone who was sick. They became a non-biological family for those suffering. Amid the devastation of HIV/AIDS, adaptive and adoptive families such as this cared and cared and cared until most of our society was compelled to care as well. When we expand our circle of love, our sense of family, we find ourselves acting in compassionate and just ways that we might not have otherwise.
That’s the ethical level of why it is important to have this broad and expansive notion of who counts as family. The spiritual level of why this is important didn’t occur to me until I reflected upon a PBS documentary that aired a few years ago. It was a documentary about the ups and downs of a Long Island Jewish family that adopted an 8-year-old girl from China. There are a lot of heart-wrenching scenes in the movie as it touches upon international adoption issues that can provoke strong feelings and opinions. A salient theme in the movie is “the family’s belief…that love can overcome…the obstacles of adoption, even [a very] complicated cross-cultural adoption.” One particular segment of the movie stands out to me. The Jewish family who adopts the girl already has three children: two are biological sons and another is an adopted daughter from China as well. One of the sons explains that when his friends ask him why his family is adopting someone from China, he replies that it is because they felt as if something was missing in their family. I found this to be a large-hearted way for a child who was probably 12-years old at the time to think about his new sister. In a way, he was saying that she wasn’t just some kind of unusual foreign addition to his family, an exotic add-on. She was instead someone who was meant to be there. The family felt incomplete without her. She was the missing piece of the puzzle. She was exactly what they needed and wanted at the deepest of spiritual levels.
We might not be ready to invite a stranger into our home after worship today, but maybe as humans, we are designed for each other. Maybe we are meant to adopt each other as brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. Maybe we are all meant to be in families of love, because that’s what makes us complete. As we dedicate the gift of our pledges today, let us dedicate them to the love of God. Let us dedicate them to the love that unites us all, that makes each of us children in one family, brothers and sisters in Christ. Amen.