not my mother

Jesus said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.”

The outer wall of the citadel in Prejmer, Romania

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John 19.26-27

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.

This statement of Jesus from the cross is viewed as a tender final moment with his mother where makes sure she has someone to care for her after he is gone. The assumption is that “the disciple whom Jesus loved” is John’s designation for himself in his Gospel, and since the synoptic Gospels don’t mention this incident, it seems that John includes it because it was important for him.

There are issues.

The only two times the mother of Jesus is mentioned by John are here and the wedding at Cana. John repeats a statement by the Jews about Jesus being the son of Joseph and his wife, but there are only two explicit mentions of Mary, and never does her call her Mary: only the mother of Jesus.

It could be that the briefest of references to Mary come from the same filter that excludes almost everything else of Jesus’ personal life. We might hypothesize that mentioning Mary at Cana was not because of her, but because of the miracle, but the disciples were there and were named only as a group, not individually, so Mary seems to be a key figure in the wedding story. Why? Why is she mentioned only twice, why is she never identified by name, and why is the wedding and these words at the cross regarded by John as more significant for Mary than any other event in the life of Christ?

First, we must understand that John (and none of the other authors) ran home and wrote down the events of the day in a journal. For the most part, they didn't know the day was important. Actually, they didn't even know Jesus was important, and they certainly didn't know they were important! They all wrote later, after they understood that these were earth-shaking events and that other people needed, and wanted, to know from the people who had been there.

By the time John wrote everything was history. He likely wrote after the others, he undoubtedly wrote for different reasons (there are three synoptic Gospels, not four), and how he regarded himself plays into what he wrote.

An important, but controversial, aspect of this is that the authors wrote to inform people or reply to people, not to add to the canon of Scripture. There was no canon of Scripture. It is a harmful fantasy to imagine John at his desk, his halo softly illuminating the scene, with his quill poised above the parchment as he solemnly awaits the next words the Spirit will give him to write. Nonsense. John wrote because he was an eyewitnesses and wanted to set the record straight. He wrote long after the actual events: once he himself realized it was important. Many other people were writing (both good and bad), and none of the original manuscripts survived. Copies of the writings were sent far and wide, not because they were regarded as Scripture but because the Church was new and people craved information. By the third century letters were being filtered to see which were reliable and which not, and ultimately the ones deemed reliable were "published" for the churches as a collection: so they could be assured of their reliability--and so the churches could disregard what was not considered worthwhile.

It is in 367 that we have the first mention of a New Testament canon. The first official recognition of the canon by the church was in 393. But it was not until 1546(!) that the Catholic church formally recognized the books of the New Testament. Later (1559 for Calvinism, 1563 for the Church of England, and 1672 for the Greek Orthodox) the books of the New Testament were confirmed. The King James version, started in 1604 and completed in 1611, literally could not have been a hundred years earlier, and not because there was no King James: there was no agreement. Even then, it contained the 14 books of the Apocrypha, which many did not consider Scripture and were largely dropped by 1769.

Our intense emotions about Scripture being Scripture are wildly overdone. The King James Version wasn't called the King James Version until 1814: two hundred years later. Not even King James knew he was doing the King James version!

The point: John wrote for a reason (as did the others), none of his writings were regarded as the New Testament because there was no such thing, copies were sent to churches far and wide (copies were sent of writings that were later rejected too), and we are still fine-tuning Scripture as new discoveries are made, which includes strong revisions to John's writings. We'll get to that later.

Regardless, John wrote what he knew, what he thought was important for people to know, and to correct what other people were saying. He filtered and editorialized more than any other Gospel writer, he probably wrote later than the others, and it's possible he wrote after most of the characters were dead (maybe that's why he wrote).

He did not write what he didn't know, what he didn't think was important for people to know, or to repeat what had already been said.

These points are rather self-evident. What should also be self-evident is that there is no evidence he regarded it as Scripture. Don't take offense at that. I'm a strong advocate of the inerrancy of Scripture. I am not saying we can disregard the parts we don't like. Exactly the opposite: I am saying the word of God should guide our every step. Jesus said "blessed are those who hear and do." He strongly reacted against those who heard and did not do. If we insist it is the word of God, we should not venerate it: we should do it.

So, now that the background has been set, why did John regard Mary as he did in his letter? And why did he leave out things other authors thought important?

Interestingly, John includes derogatory information about the brothers of Jesus (including James) that the other gospel writes don't. John 7.3-7:

His brothers said to him, “Leave here and go to Judea so your disciples also may see the works you are doing; for no one who wants to be widely known acts in secret. If you do these things, show yourself to the world.” (For not even his brothers believed in him.) Jesus said to them, “My time has not yet come, but your time is always here. The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify against it that its works are evil.”

This ranks as the most outrageous act by Jesus’ family against him, and John is the only one who includes it. Jesus’ brothers mocks him, saying that if he is who he claims he should show himself in public, and that he was acting like this because he wanted to make himself into something he was not. The hatred of the brothers of Joseph immediately comes to mind. They weren't going to harm him themselves, but if someone else did it, great. John tells us in verses 32 and 44 that the danger was real: the temple police were sent to arrest Jesus.

Jesus' reply to his brothers places them squarely in the camp of his enemies. For Jesus to tell that that "your time is always here" means that they don't matter because they are not in the orchestra. Jesus must hit every note on key, on time, with perfect dynamics and nuance. They can sing any tune or play any instrument: it doesn't matter because God doesn't need them to create something beautiful. For Jesus to say "the world cannot hate you" means they are the world. For Jesus to say that the world hates him says they hate him. For Jesus to say that the world is evil means his brothers are evil.

We can speculate whether James was in the group: John does not say James was there. But that's a problem: John says nothing about James at all. This is strange because Peter, James, and John would be the Big Three. For John to never mention James is puzzling.

Was Mary there? Let's hope not. For Mary or James to be there and do nothing would be a great sorrow.

Family problems that other writers include, John leaves out:

Mark 3.21-22

His family went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “He has gone out of his mind.” And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, “He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.”

Mark 3.31-35

His mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

There are strong passages in the synoptics about a person hating his own family as a requirement for following Christ.

Luke 14.25-26:

Large crowds were traveling with him; and he turned and said to them, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”

John reduces this to include only the part about a person hating his own life.

John 12.25

Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

John never uses the word “hate” in relation to a family member. On his last evening with his Disciples he warns them of treacherous times to come, but the hatred is never theirs toward someone else: it is always hatred of people towards them, and is always true hatred, not the hate Jesus meant in denying oneself.

John 15.18-25

If the world hates you, be aware that it hated me before it hated you. I have chosen you out of the world—therefore the world hates you. Whoever hates me hates my Father also. Now they have seen and hated both me and my Father. It was to fulfill the word that is written in their law, “They hated me without a cause.”

In the synoptics, Jesus warns of a time when a person’s dearest family members will become enemies.

Matt 10.34-37:

Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.

For I have come to set a man against his father,

and a daughter against her mother,

and a daughter‑in‑law against her mother‑in‑law;

and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and who­ever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

John includes only the general portion of this warning. He says nothing about the family turning against them.

John 16.2

They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God.

The point is this: John says nothing negative of Mary in his Gospel. The remark of Jesus to his mother in John 2, “What is that to you?”, it is the same as his remark to Peter in John 21: “What is that to you?” Both are strong statements by Jesus for people to keep their place, but they both are also made to people he strongly loved. Neither was intended to send the person away or to break the relationship: only a momentary annoyance at people saying things who should have known better.

Still, we have to ask why. Not only why John included these two instances, but why he left out the others. John seems intent on portraying Mary in as positive a light as possible.

Part of that might be because Mary ended up in his care for the rest of her life, and John refused to make public anything that would diminish the woman who had become part of his family.

But that does not answer the problem that Jesus was abandoned by his family, and he made it known, publicly, that his true family was not that woman and those brothers and sisters standing out there, but the people in here. These strangers. That statement was not because of what they had done to him, or a desire to hurt them, but he did say it, and he intended to say it, and he intended them to know he said it, and he intended us to know he said it.

The importance to us is that we would not have permission to do such a thing unless Jesus had done it himself, and announced that he expected others to do it also. There is no interpretation a person needs to do to understand Jesus’ actions and statements. He did it. He told us we need to do it too.

Jesus distanced himself from his family because when he left home they didn’t follow. They could have. They should have. They should have been the closest of all. But they stayed home. The religious leaders said he was demon possessed and his family believed them rather than Jesus.

It must have been a keep pain to Jesus to walk away from his house and have not one of them follow. He came back home many times, and not once did they follow. Or even express an interest. When Jesus said, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own country and in his own house,”he was not speaking figuratively. He had no honor in his own house. The monstrous action of Mary and his brothers believing the accusation of the Jewish leaders that he had a demon is mind-boggling.

So, when they come to talk, Jesus says no. He says no because there was plenty of space in the room before it was filled with strangers. They did not follow and so he refused their weight—along with all the other distractions and dependencies that would have spoiled the precise orchestration that God had written for his Son to follow, right up to that final hour. And so the gap widened. Every step he took toward the cross was a step further from them, because they stayed where they were and he wasn’t about to stop or go back.

When they came to talk, it was not about the things of God. He knew that, because he knew the Father and he knew the script, and they weren’t coming to help, but to ask for something that had nothing to do with anything.

When Jesus says to his mother at the wedding, “What is that to you?”, it is the same thing he says to Peter in John 21: “What is that to you?” Jesus was surrounded by people who wanted him to deal with unimportant things. From Mary in chapter 2 until Peter in chapter 21, Jesus was weighed down by people who wanted him to first deal with their concerns.

There is only one thing that’s important, and it’s not you!

Whether the people sitting in that room were actually doing the will of God is not as important as the fact that his mother and brothers had opportunity after opportunity, and did not. The work of God begins with the seed cast upon the soil. The people sitting there were soil. They were allowing the seed to fall into their lives. Some, after hearing the word, would produce a crop. Some would not. But what happened later is not the point. What was happening there was that the seed as being sown, which is always how God begins his work.

Outside were his family. Rocky soil. Disbelieving.

At the cross, the mother of Jesus was heartbroken. We have no idea what was going on in her mind. Certainly she was saying “look what they’ve done to my son.” But to put into her mind some glimmer of belief is too much. She had never believed. She had tried to get him to stop. She had allowed her children to harass him. She might have been thinking what could I have done? What did I do wrong? But she also might have been thinking, that’s what you get for trying to be a hero. Why couldn’t you have just listened to me when I tried to talk?

Jesus looked down to her and said, “Woman, here is your son,” and to John, “Here is your mother.” Why? Because she was left alone? Cannot be. She still had sons and daughters to care for her. Because he wanted her to stay with believing Disciples instead of unbelieving brothers? Cannot be. They weren’t believing any more either, and James and Jude would believe, along with Mary, later. Because he wanted her to be in Jerusalem for what happened next? Cannot be. She did not go to the tomb, and when the women came to tell Peter and John that the body of Jesus was gone, Mary did not follow them to the tomb. (If John took her into his home from that hour, then she would have been with him.) She was never at the tomb, never at any of Christ’s appearances, and Jesus never asked where she was.

This is not a happy story.

Can you imagine Jesus, that Sunday morning, seeing only the women who three years earlier were strangers? Yes, he loved them, and yes, they loved him, but he loved his mother first, and she loved him first. Nevertheless, she is nowhere to be seen. Certainly she was devastated at the sight of her son being beaten and nailed to that cross, but to then leave it to strangers to care for the body of her son... no. Never. When my son reached 33 that uncomfortable thought went though my mind on Easter: what would I do if he died? The one thing I knew strongly is that I would never let strangers touch him if it was in my power to take care of him myself. His wife, his mother and father, his sister: yes. Anyone else: don't even think about it.

If John took her into his own home from that very hour, where was she on Sunday morning when Mary Magdalene ran and went to Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”

If Mary still had a family, why did Jesus give her to John?

If Mary was not going with the others to the tomb to prepare his body, why would need to she stay in Jerusalem? Pentecost was still forty days off. There was plenty of time to get to Galilee and back. Plus, Jesus told the disciples to meet him in Galilee. There was no reason for Mary to stay with John is she was not going to be involved in any of these things and he was planning to meet them up north anyway.

If Jesus refused to go outside to speak with her because she was not involved in the work, why would he saddle John with this problem? Why would he tell John to do something he refused to do?

As the oldest son in the family, Jesus had responsibility for his mother, especially if Joseph had died, as is supposed by many (he is nowhere to be seen in any of the Gospel accounts). But he had already left him and notified her one various occasions and ways that he was not coming back. Mary did nothing for his work. In John 2 he says “Woman, what has this got to do with you?” We want to see something in that (dear woman), but that’s just a refusal to see the situation. Mary didn’t believe and Jesus knew it. At the wedding she made a remark that was based upon her motherhood rather than Jesus' reason for being born. Jesus’ reference to her as “woman” tells her she has no parental authority over him. He had already told her when he was twelve that he had to be about his Father’s business. It is possible he had insisted upon that many times later, and it is possible that she had insisted many times that she was his mother.

Let’s get out of Sunday School. Mary did not believe. Her other children did not believe. She did not follow, she did not sit at his feet.

If Jesus, dying, feels pity for his mother and wants her to know she will be cared for, why would he give her to John? She had family to care for her. This statement accomplished nothing for her and put John in a bad situation. John had a mother. He didn’t need two.

Who does this statement help? Mary? John? Jesus? Someone else standing there? The soldiers? The answer is: no one! No one is helped. Nobody expected it. It was not necessary. 

If Jesus was concerned about her grief, why disregard the others standing there, who also loved him? We say: but Mary was his mother. Yes, but for years she had kept her distance while these others had followed. Plus, in a short time she would know he was alive. It is not like she was going to endure years of suffering.

If Jesus wanted to comfort his grieving mother, why not tell her the truth? The truth was this:

When you were giving birth to me you were in pain, but after I was born there was only the joy of having a new baby. There is pain now, but pain is the way that life is brought into the world. I will see you again. This pain is only for a moment. You will have joy, and one will take it from you.

That was the truth. If Jesus felt the need to relieve her pain, this is what he could have said. But he didn’t. Instead, he said it to his Disciples the night before. He said it to them because it was something they needed to know. They needed to know because Jesus was not going to do the work any longer: they were.

Mary was in pain, but that was not a concern. Pain is the path to glory. Jesus was in pain for a reason: it had to be that way. Jesus told his Disciples they would also be in pain. They needed to know, before it happened, that his death—and theirs!—was part of the plan, not an accident, not a defeat.

Mary was not part of the plan. She had fulfilled her role. The reason she had not heard the words “your pain will be turned to joy” is because she wasn’t in the upper room the night before. The reason she wasn’t in the upper room is because she was never in a room: upper or otherwise. He had told others and warned her: those who do the will of the father are my mother and brothers and sisters. She took herself off the path. She made herself not important.

Jesus’ work was over but for the others it was just beginning. He had spent three years getting them ready for this. John records three chapters of last-minute encouragement and commands, preparing the Disciples for what happened next. Everything Mary needed to know had already been said. She wasn’t there.

It is impossible that Jesus would look down at his mother, who needed no help, and tell John to take her into his home, when Jesus had just put strong demands upon John to do the work. Jesus would not have slowed down the work of God so that John could take care of his mother, who dind't need to be cared for. He who said “let the dead bury their dead” would not given one of the Twelve a task that lost them to the work. He who said “Whoever does not hate his father and mother cannot be my disciple” would not have given John another mother.

There are solutions, but none you will like. The easiest is that “the disciple that Jesus loved” is not John. That solves most of the problems and does nothing to disrupt Scripture. It disrupts our traditions, but that's not important.

The second possibility is that “the disciple that Jesus loved” needed a mother. This goes along with the first solution but swaps the need: from Mary needing a son to “the disciple” needing a mother. John did not need a mother. He had one, he was a grown man, and he had things to do.

Third (and you're not going to like this): it's not genuine. The writings of John had several later additions:

John 4:9 “The Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” Probably not genuine.

John 5.3-4 The angel who stirred the water. Not genuine.

John 7.22 “It is, of course, not from Moses, but from the patriarchs.” A rather scandalous correction of Jesus, which might be genuine, but we hope not.

John 7.53-8.11 The woman caught in adultery. Almost certainly not genuine.

1 John 5.7-8 “There are three that testify in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth.” Not genuine.

baptism, why there are only three synoptic Gospels

2 john 3 john rev

The disciple whom Jesus loved is referred to, specifically, six times in John’s gospel:

• While reclining beside Jesus at the Last Supper, the Beloved Disciple asks Jesus who will betray him.

• At the crucifixion, Jesus says to his mother, “Woman, here is your son”, and to the Beloved Disciple, “Here is your mother.”

• When Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb, she runs to tell the Beloved Disciple and Peter. The two men rush to the empty tomb and the Beloved Disciple is the first to reach the empty tomb.

• In John 21, the Beloved Disciple is one of seven fishermen involved in the miraculous catch of fish.

• After Jesus hints to Peter how Peter will die, Peter sees the Beloved Disciple and asks, “What about him?”

• John 5:21 states that the book is based on the written testimony of the disciple whom Jesus loved.

None of the other Gospels has anyone in the parallel scenes that could be directly understood as the Beloved Disciple. For example, in Luke 24:12, Peter alone runs to the tomb. Mark, Matthew and Luke do not mention any one of the twelve disciples having witnessed the crucifixion.

[so Mark is the Beloved Disciple, not John?

Identifying Mark the Evangelist with John Mark also leads to identifying him as the one who carried water to the house where the Last Supper took place (Mark 14:13), and as the young man who ran away naked when Jesus was arrested (Mark 14:51–52). It makes sense that if he took them to the upper room and followed them to Gethsemane, that he was allowed to stay in the upper room.

The fact that the Twelve were in the upper room does not strictly mean no one else was.

Peter asking “what about him” makes more sense if it is Mark, this straggler. Why would he care about John?

Mark could easily have been in the boat with Peter when they went fishing.

Mark would slip under the radar of the accounts of Matthew and Luke. They could rightly say “none of the Twelve” and take no notice of Mark, but it is unlikely they would have overlooked John.

Mark writing 30 years later was a different man from his earlier Gospel.

Does "the disciple whom Jesus loved" refer to that time or a later time? Paul calls himself the worst of sinners. Could this be John's (or someone else's) term for the same thing? Could it be that the beloved disciple flailed and failed for years until he came back to Christ as the worst of sinners?