Those Who Were Closest

Sadly I heard some distortions of scripture while growing up.  Evangelists in particular loved to stretch the truth to fill the altars.  There was the claim that Jesus went to the cross alone as everyone abandoned him.  Excuse me, no sir.  You are correct if you’re referring to the Peter taking off but check again at the foot of the cross. Not one, but three were there.  It was his BFF John, Mary Magdalene, who Cynthia Bourgeault describes as “the woman at the heart of Christianity” and who I believe offered Jesus the human experience of a female companion (don’t jump ship too quickly).  Thirdly, his mom, Mary was there too.  

The last few words He spoke were not some profound cosmic, theological  statement about saving mankind or about the horrid reality of being nailed to a cross.  They were spoken to the three people he dearly loved asking them to take care of one another when he was gone.  The sweetness of those moments even now brings tears to my eyes.  They are the three I want to meet, to sit and linger with for a while.  Of all the people in the world at the time, they deeply knew this man better than any others, the God who’d walked the earth for thirty-three years.  They were tight.  And unlike all others, they risked their own lives to walk to the end with Him.  What love, what absolutely amazing love.  Why them and no others?  Because they too had been recipients of amazing love. They were phenomenal people who to me stand out in the whole Biblical story.  

Some bristle when I refer to John as the best friend of Jesus, saying ‘God does not have favorites!”  Again, read the book.  God is rather like my maternal grandmother who multiple times told me I was the favorite of her five grandsons.  Decades later when I was talking with my cousin Stuart, he said she told him the same thing.  My hunch is the other three heard the same.  Is it that unsettling that one can have multiple favorites?  When I’m standing in front of the Blue Bell ice cream freezer at Publix trying to decide, I have multiple favorites.  Back in my seminar days when evangelism was so important, after we were taught to button hole someone into salvation, we gave them a pocket version of the gospel of John.  Have you ever thought, why John?  My take is because there an intimacy in his gospel not in the others.  My ‘favorite’ scripture is at the beginning of his gospel when he said, “The very fullness of the Godhead dwelt therein”.  It was not ‘just’ Jesus, the son of God that John spent all that time with. It was very God who came down to earth.  Mankind has attempted to ‘explain’ the trinity for centuries.  Well, good luck.  All I am saying, what John knew, what he experienced in hanging out, was more than just a man.  What an unbelievable position to find him in.

Then there was Mary Magdelene.  In the paternalistic culture of the day the recorders of the Christian story had a tough time trying to marginalize her.  She was everywhere—in the upper room, at the foot of the cross and the first one Jesus revealed himself to at the tomb.  This woman held a special place in a male dominated culture.  I personally do not deny Jesus, the man/God the experience of a relationship with a woman (I’m not talking The Da Vinci Code nor do I go quite as far as Bourgeault).  Just the experience as a man to know the companionship of a woman.  You don’t have to go down this road with me, but just think about it.  For some, in seeing Jesus’ humanity detracts from his divinity.  For me, it elevates the wealth of all Jesus came to live out before us. 

Then, there was his mom.  Talk about another wow of a woman.  The Catholics have taken that ball and run with it!  But gee, this teenage girl meets an angel telling her this wild story.  In this drama she plays mother to God and in her mid-forties is at the foot of a cross watching him slowly die.  Talk about a Steel Magnolia!  And, for you feminists, the ratio there at the foot of the cross is two to one.  Just sayin’.  Having grown up protestant (one of the ‘protestors’ many of whom never quit) I’m ready to say the Catholics do have some things right about His mother, Mary.  Just to be in her presence would be enormous.

So in one of the realms to come, I’d be more than glad to fry up some breakfast by some seashore for the four of us to sit a spell…and just listen to the stories of these three.  What were their lives like after that horrible day?  

In a world so in need of great love, I know such an occasion would be—will be—awash with it.