Text: John 19:25-27
Readings: Ezekiel 43:1-7a, Galatians 4:22-31, John 19:25-27
26 When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” 27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
“For the kingdom is not being prepared, but has been prepared, while the sons of the Kingdom are being prepared, not preparing the Kingdom; that is to say, the Kingdom merits the sons, not the sons the Kingdom.
So all hell merits and prepares its children rather than they it.”
― Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will
With Christ’s second word, "Woman, behold your son! … Behold your mother," we see the bondage between who we are and who we become.
Slave and free.
Paul asks the Galatians in his letter: 21 Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?
He then compares and contrasts the two alternatives using their mothers as an object lesson. Both bore children by Abraham. Both had sons.
23 But the son of the slave [woman] was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise.
Abram before God’s promise had a son by the slave girl Hagar who bore him Ishmael.
Paul tells us that:
23 the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, that 25 Hagar is one covenant which gives birth to slaves, Mount Sinai in Arabia; she also corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children.
That says something about Jerusalem and those who are there today and look to it as the holy city and set apart for salvation.
Now, we know of this city and its value and use by God in history for us who believe in Christ. But this city this Jerusalem Paul says is a city of slavery under the law.
We are slaves
Now we know that we who are brought forth in inequity, born in the natural way in sin and under the Law are also slaves. It is who Luther in his debate with Erasmus in the Bondage of the Will calls God’s enemies saying:
“The truth of the matter is rather as Christ says, "He who is not with me is against me." ... He does not say "He who is not with me is not against me either, but merely neutral.”
― Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will
We are not born neutral to God but are born his enemies, born against God and his will. We in fact are sons of the devil, as Jesus says and it is his will that we want to do and in fact do.
In John 8:44 we read:
You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44
So, just as Jesus pointed out to the Pharisees that those who were against him were children of the devil Paul too points to those silly Galatians who wished to be back under the Law – our guardian as he calls it - and back in bondage. They didn’t understand freedom rightly.
There is a promise.
For Paul also says that there is a free woman: while the son of the free woman was born through promise.
So the promise is that freedom comes through the promise and that is from the free woman. Hagar is the covenant of slavery but Sarah the covenant of promise and freedom, for freedom comes through her son Issac whom she bore, as we read in Matthew 1:2
2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and so on down through the genealogy in Matthew until we read, 16 and … Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. Matt 1:2,16b
Slave or free … Law or promise.
It had been the habit for the Galatians through the teaching of others to point to the Law and its requirements and their falling back into bondage.
We too see this as we minimize sin and elevate self.
But there is a different problem today in some Lutheran churches and teaching within our synod … that there is no Law at all … but only Good News and freedom without real change.
Repentance is not just knowledge of sin and the freedom Jesus paid at the cross for the sins of the world, but it is a willful turning away from sin and a turning back to God by faith. Slavery and Law bind us and leave us without hope but freedom and promise without change give false hope that sinful ways can continue without consequence. We deceive ourselves to believe that we are really pretty good people in the eyes of God ... and that he is well pleased with us.
There was a story about a pastor’s wife who worked at an abortion clinic and she said, “God forgives me.” Yes, God forgives our sins … but also says “Go and sin no more.”
6 What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? 2 By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Rom. 6:1
But for John here in the gospel reading and for Mary the mother of Jesus the reality is different. Mary’s son is dying - his outstretched arms are on the cross. His mother has to be dying too. Who could endure to see their son die in this way? The reality of sin and the work of redemption is no half way measure. God didn’t think your sin was no big deal because It required of God his full commitment – the life of his son - for the life of the world broken by sin.
What better place to hear this then under the cross. It is here where Jesus finished his work of redemption. “Woman behold your son,” he says to the mother who gave him birth, loved and cared for him, and is now by his death caring for her and the whole world as he pays the full price for sin.
27 Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” John’s, mother is our mother as well and by faith we are children of the promise and have forgiveness in his name. He will care for her physical needs and spiritual needs as well. The gospel will comfort her as it does us. She will grieve her son’s death but will rejoice in the forgiveness he won that the sins of the world have been paid for and that by faith in his work we receive what he won which is victory over sin, death and the devil.
“Woman behold your son,” … “Behold, your mother!”
In birth the child of the promise was born in a manger
In death the child of the promise hung on a tree
You are no longer slaves to sin in this life
By faith in Jesus Christ … God has set you fee
In the name of the Father, + Son and Holy Spirit
Amen
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