Hello and welcome today to Trinity Sermons. Here at Trinity Church, Streetsville, we're
a church where we want to love Jesus, live like Jesus and lead others to Jesus. Thanks
so much for listening to our sermon podcast today. Today we are going to be continuing
our sermon series where we have been reviewing Jesus' famous last words and we are going
to be hearing about the time where Jesus on the cross speaks to his mother and says,
Behold your son and speaks to his beloved disciple and says, Behold your mother. We
hope you enjoy the sermon today and find it interesting and inspiring. God bless.
A reading from the Gospel of John chapter 19 verses 25 to 27. Near the cross of Jesus
stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas and Mary Magdalene. When
Jesus saw his mother there and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to
her, Woman, here is your son. And to the disciple, here is your mother. From that time on, the
disciple took her into his home. The word of the Lord.
I'm pretty sure that all of us at one time or another have uttered these three little
words. They're three little words that just come off of our tongue so, so easily. And
yet they really are. They can be quite hurtful words. And those words, of course, are the
words I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Now, of course, on the one hand, they
sound like, you know, kind of harmless words. But when you think about it, you know, I don't
care what she thinks. I don't care what he says. I don't care about you. I mean, they're
some of the most hurtful words you could ever imagine. People can even text these words
to each other. They just use the letters I, D, C to say, I don't care. And although we
might use these words all the time, we have to realize that they're hurtful because as
human beings, we relationships are so, so important to us. And if someone says that
they don't care, I mean, we need the care of other human beings, right? We need people
who care about us. So that's why saying I don't care is so extraordinarily hurtful.
You know, it signifies a sense of rejection, right? If someone says, I don't care to you,
it's a way of saying, you know, I don't value you. I don't value you as a person. I don't
put a lot of worth in who you are. I just don't care. You're kind of like useless to
me. It makes you feel unimportant and unwanted. But it's also, it leads to this sense of feeling
disconnected, right? We have this innate need to be connected to community. And if someone
says, I don't care for you anymore, especially if it was someone who you thought did care
for you, man, you could feel isolated and alone. And then of course, thirdly, when someone
says I don't care, there's a kind of a hopelessness that comes along with that because you might
really want that relationship to work or you may really want to fix that relationship.
But when someone says, I don't care, it means they're not into it. And their heart isn't
into the relationship like yours is. I just don't care. I'm going to let it go. Now, if
saying I don't care to someone actually hurts so much, then I think the opposite is also
true. Some of the most life-giving and transformative words we can say to another person is I do
care. And one of the most important actions we can take in our relationships is to do
things that show people how much we care. You know, Margaret Mead had this very famous
quote where she said, never believe that a few caring people can't change the world,
for indeed, that's all who ever have changed the world. Caring for each other can change
your life. Caring for each other can change the world. Now, I want to suggest to you,
I think you'd agree, Jesus was the most caring person who ever walked this earth. And yet,
people still looked at him and said, I don't care for this Jesus fellow. And today we see
a situation where Jesus is in a place where I think he's probably feeling the least cared
for as anybody possibly could. He is totally rejected. He is totally disconnected from
his community, totally hopelessly hanging from the cross. And yet, even in that moment,
we hear Jesus utter some of the most famous last words anyone has ever spoken. If we look
at that scene, you will see that Jesus, even now, is so full of care for other people,
compassion and concern for others. You know, very few people seem to care about Jesus in
this moment. And yet, Jesus was still caring for others, which is actually amazing because
if we found ourselves in Jesus' situation, probably the only person we'd be caring about
is ourselves. And yet, here is Jesus still reaching out, still extending care and concern
to those who need it most. And today, I want to suggest to you, as we look at these famous
last words of Jesus, we see Jesus urging us to care and to extend care to three groups
in particular. And I'll suggest to you that today I want to look at how Jesus urges us
to care for women in particular, to care for mothers. And when he gets around to it, what
he's really challenging us to do is to find a brand new way to care for everyone and to
care for each other. There's a lot in these famous last words. Let's begin by taking a
look at Jesus' care for women. You know, women were some of the most marginalized people
in Jesus' day. I mean, if a woman had something to say, if a woman walked into a room, if
she had an opinion, a lot of people in those days would just say, I don't care what you
have to say. You don't belong here. And yet, women were so drawn to Jesus because Jesus
clearly cared for them. Even in this scene when the men had fled for their lives and
they were hiding out to make sure they didn't end up on a cross as well, who was it that
pushed through the crowd to the foot of the cross to be with Jesus as he was crucified
in his last moments? It was women, brave, courageous women. Let's take a look at who
these women are. Who were these brave women? It's a little confusing because they all have
the same name. There were three women there that day. There was a man, John the disciple,
but there were three women and they all have the same name, Mary. Well, first, the first
Mary, let's call her Mary number one, was Jesus's mother, Mary. And this is the Mary
that we know the best, that she was the one who said to the angel, yes, here I am. Let
it be to me according to your word. And she gave her life. She sacrificed everything to
bear the son of God, to give birth to Jesus, to raise him, to bring him to adulthood. She
is probably the most favored human being in all of human history, with the exception of
Jesus himself. So Mary, we know that's Mary number one. She was there at the foot of the
cross that day. But there was another Mary there that day. Her name was Mary of Magdala
or Mary Magdalene. And she, we know, Mary number two, she was one of the women who traveled
around and followed Jesus throughout his ministry. Now, over time, this rumor got associated
with Mary that she was somehow a prostitute, but that is almost certainly not true. What
we do know about Mary Magdalene is that she was healed by Jesus of some diseases and that
she then followed him with the rest of her life right up into the end of Jesus's life,
as we can see. So that was Mary number two. But then there's a third Mary there at the
foot of the cross that day. And that is Mary, the wife of Clopas. Now this one's a little
harder. Maybe we haven't heard of this Mary before, but what you need to know is that
Clopas was the brother of Joseph, Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus, Joseph, who took
Mary to be his wife, that Joseph. He had a brother named Clopas. And what we can probably
think happened is that eventually Joseph died, probably when Jesus was a young man. And as
a result, Clopas then stepped in to take care of his sister-in-law, Mary, and Jesus, and
the other children. And you can imagine then that these two women became very close, right?
Mary, the mother of Jesus, and Mary, the wife of Clopas, became very tightly connected through
that relationship. And so there you have it. You've got Mary number one, Mary number two,
and Mary number three standing there in this hostile crowd. And when they're all standing
there together, I think it's a good moment for us just to take a look at how important
women were to the ministry and in the ministry of Jesus Christ. I mean, the place of women
in the first century, first century Rome, and even first century Judaism was not great.
You know, often women were regarded as second class citizens. It was a patriarchal society.
So women were often seen to be the property, the possession of either their fathers or
their husbands. They were marginalized. They were restricted in all sorts of ways, in social
ways, in political ways, even in religious ways. They were restricted. Karen Armstrong
writes that the cultural norms of Jesus's era relegated women to roles of domesticity
and subservience, denying them access to education, leadership positions, and public influence.
But here's the thing. Jesus's regard for women was so, so different. Jesus's care for women
was so radical. You could even say that the way Jesus treated women in his day was revolutionary
compared to how the society at large regarded women. I'm reminded there was a time when
Jesus in doing some teaching and talking to some of his opponents, he said, Hey, hey,
do you remember that in the beginning God made them male and female? That's from Matthew
19. But, but in that little phrase, what Jesus is kind of saying, Hey, do you not remember
that both men and women are made in the image of God? And for that reason, Jesus saw women
as co-image bearers equal with men. And in fact, Jesus treated women the same that he
treated men. I want to give you kind of a top 10 list of, I just did a little summary,
a little scan. Where do we see Jesus in his relationship with women being elevated? Let
me give you 10 quick examples. One, we are told that many women traveled around with
Jesus, which is important and kind of scandalous because these women were not, it's not like
these were the wives of his disciples. These were, these were other women, women who were
independently going around with him, learning from him like the men did. Secondly, we know
that Hebrew men at the time of Christ were not to speak to women, especially strange
women they didn't know in public directly. And yet Jesus was constantly speaking to women
directly and in public. In fact, one of the longest conversations we have of Jesus having
a conversation with anybody is found in John chapter four, where, where Jesus has this
extended conversation with a woman at a well in Samaria. Thirdly, that woman at the well
actually becomes the very first missionary, if you will, because she gets sent off back
to her people to tell them about what she just experienced hearing from Jesus. Fourth,
in Luke chapter eight, we're also told that women supported Jesus ministry financially.
We don't hear a lot about that, that Jesus ministry had a financial cost to it and he
was funded by many, many women. Five, this is interesting, our fourth person named Mary,
Mary number four, somewhere in the gospels in the gospel of John, we read that this Mary
was found sitting down and listening to Jesus taking on the posture of a student as if she
too were a emerging disciple of Jesus. That was unheard of in those days when Mary sat
at Jesus feet. Six, Jesus was often using women in his illustrations and in his parables
to make points about the kingdom of God, you know, the persistent widow or the woman who
had a lost coin and so on like that. Seven, it was women, a woman rather, who anointed
Jesus feet in preparation for his death. Eight, it was the women as we saw today who were
the ones who were most present at Jesus's crucifixion. Nine, a woman was the first one
at the tomb of Jesus on Easter morning and 10, and this I think is the most important
one. It was a woman who was the first to see the risen Christ and the first to tell others,
which means the first person who ever preached the gospel, whoever preached that Jesus Christ
is risen from the dead was not a man. It was a woman. All this and much, much more leads
us to believe as Amy, Jill Levine says here that Jesus interaction with women demonstrate
a radical inclusivity and a concern for social justice. He elevated their status. He affirmed
their dignity and challenged societal norms that marginalized them. I have to tell you
as a father of four daughters, I like this Jesus. I really like this Jesus to know that
that God and Christ have this care and inclusion of women. You know, one of the guys I listen
to a lot, Andy Stanley, he once said he says he thinks every woman should be a Christian
because of the radical compassion and inclusion that Jesus showed to the women of his own
day of his own day, which was very restrictive. You know, there are studies that show how
in most churches there are more women than men and people try to figure out why this
gender gap exists and so on and so forth. But I just wonder if part of it is still that
women feel affirmed and they feel elevated in the presence of Jesus in ways that they
don't feel in their homes or in their workplaces. Perhaps now is a good moment to say I give
thanks to all the women in this church from the youngest of you to the oldest for the
way that like these women you serve and give and faithfully just contribute to the life
of this church. And I also give thanks for all the women on our staff team who week in
and week out. We all benefit from their gifts and their energy and their talents. It is
true. And some of you will say, but Rob, all of Jesus disciples were men. Absolutely. It
was true. Jesus was still in some ways a product of his time. You know, in those days only
men could be rabbis in that way. And so yet Jesus, some of what he did was a sign of the
times. But you've got to see the way he was pushing against the grain and how he recognized
the giftedness and courage and the commitment of women. And I am very thankful that at least
in the Anglican Church, I'm very thankful we live in a day where those kind of cultural
norms are no longer in place today. Some of the most effective preachers and some of the
most effective teachers and some of the most effective leaders in the church are women
and we should rejoice in that because these women, like the women of this church are following
in the footsteps of these biblical women who stood with Jesus during the final hours of
his life. So that is the first thing I think that we see in these famous last words is
in this moment that Jesus is elevating the care that is needed to be given to women.
Now, the second thing I want to say that you can't read this story and not also see the
care that Jesus is giving to his mother. And I think by extension to all mothers, which
are a another group of people who in Jesus day and in our own day need special care and
concern. Now I know that mothers are kind of like a subset of women, but I still, I
want to just say a couple of things. Just this, it's really important to know that as
Jesus hung on the cross, dying in pain, he was concerned and he was caring for his mother.
Even as his life was ebbing away, he wanted to ensure that she was going to be looked
after once he was gone. And so then he said, that's why he turns to John. He encourages
John to take his mother into his care and he encourages his mother to allow John to
provide that care to him, to her. How did this happen? Did it work? Did John take Mary
into his care? The answer I think is yes. We don't really know what that looks like,
but there was this ancient document from the year 431 from the city of Ephesus, where it
was said that the city of the Ephesians, where John the theologian and the virgin mother
of God, St. Mary lived and are buried, which means it is possible that Mary may have lived
out her days with John in a place called Ephesus, a city called Ephesus, which is in present
day Turkey. In fact, if you go to Ephesus today, there's even a house there that pilgrims visit,
which is said to be the house that John built for Mary and the place where she lived until
the end of her life. So it's interesting. I don't know if it's legit or not, but whatever
was going on, Jesus was clearly trying to live out the fifth commandment of the Ten
Commandments, the fifth commandment, which says you should honor your father and your
mother and surely honoring our mothers and fathers. It means taking care of them in their
old age. You know, Sally and I, we talk about caring for our own parents when they get into
old age. They already are in old age and are they going to need financial help? Will they
need companionship? Will they need medical care? You know, those are some important questions
people ask, especially in Canada. Right now we live in what is called the sandwich generation,
which is where you have an aging population on the one hand, where life spans are increasing.
And yet these very same people with aging parents also have children that they need
to take care of. And so they're sandwiched between these two important relationships
in their lives and they want to care for both sides of it. And managing that care, having
that dual role actually creates some pretty big challenges, relational challenges, financial
challenges. I'm probably preaching to the choir. You guys probably know this better
than I do. You may be living through this right now where you're trying to balance the
care for your parents with the care for your children. Our parents need help when they
get older. That's just the truth of it. Let me show you, for example, there's some studies
recently, just past week, CIBC did a poll that found that 32% of Canadians nearing retirement
have nothing saved for retirement, nothing. How are they going to survive? H&R Block did
another study a little earlier and they found that 52% of Canadians are unprepared for retirement.
So how will our aging parents make ends meet? Many of them will be fine, but there are others.
Today, I was not today. What am I saying? This past week I went for a dentist appointment,
no cavities. Thank you very much. But the dental hygienist who was cleaning my teeth,
she was a retired lady who had come out of retirement and she was taking all the shifts
she could get because she couldn't make ends meet. All that's to say, Jesus is modeling
something for us here. I think that we need to care for our parents. This is something
that has occurred throughout most of human history. Perhaps recent generations have kind
of started to forget about this, but caring for our parents, caring for our mothers, we'll
care for our fathers too. Sure, whatever. But it's really, it's about our mothers, right?
John was asking, Jesus was asking John to care for his mother. All right. So these famous last
words, they impress upon us two things so far. One, the care Jesus had for women. Secondly,
the care Jesus had for his own mother, both of things we have to kind of think learn from,
but many people believe, and this is where we're going to enter. Many people leave that though
the point of these words that are written for us. So the reason they were passed down to us,
the reason we have them is not just to give us a simple instruction about how to care for your
parents or even how to care for women. But what it actually Jesus is doing here is something far
more radical. He's actually trying to teach us a brand new way to care for everyone, a brand new
way to care for each person, pretty radical stuff. But to understand this, you're going to have to
kind of read between the lines of the text. So let me just show you a couple interesting things.
First of all, I don't know if you know this, but in the gospel of John, John never calls Mary by
name. He never uses Mary's name, which is very interesting. The other gospel writers will use
the name of Mary, but not John. You probably noticed this in the reading. There's Jesus said to her,
woman, here is your son. And you might think that's a strange way to address a woman. It's actually
not a strange way to address a woman, right? You could speak that way to a woman. It was totally
acceptable, but that's not the way you would speak to your mom, right? If you were really going to
speak to your mother and if Jesus primarily was trying to say something to his mother, he would
have used a more intimate word that the Greek word or the Aramaic word for mother. But actually
he uses this word woman. And that is because the word woman is kind of expanding who it is we're
talking. We're not just, we're not just talking about Mary. Now we're not just talking about
mothers. Now John is using Mary almost as a symbol, a symbol that's not just about one person. This
is not just about one woman. There's something bigger going on here. He's, he's using her as a
symbol for something bigger. What is the bigger thing? We're going to get to that, right? And then,
and then consider this that we just heard that John took Mary into his own home. But actually,
if you read the Greek, I've told that what he's really saying there is he brought Mary to his own,
to his own, not his own home, but to his own. If I take you into my home, then yes, I'm going to care
for you. But if I take you to my own, well, now it's not just about me being nice to you. I am
actually taking you to my own. I'm creating a new community with you, a new, I'm actually kind of
merging you in with my family, my own life. Now I'm sharing that with you, my own family, my own.
You see what Jesus is doing in these famous last words. He's connecting. He's taking Mary over here.
He's taking John over here and he's connecting them in a new way that they were not connected
before. Jesus is creating a new kind of family. Right now he is. He's creating a new kind of
community. It's a community based on care, right? I found this great quote from Fleming Rutledge.
Fleming Rutledge. This says it all, right? The disciple, John, and the woman, Mary, again,
neither one of them are named. They're symbols kind of something big. They are not just individual
people here. They are symbolic. They represent the way that family ties now are being transcended
by the ties of the spirit, the ties of the spirit. He's creating something new. When a church is
working the way that it should, when Trinity Church is working the way that it should, when life groups
are working the way they should, when youth group, when Sunday school, and all these things are
working the way that they should, then what's happening is people who aren't related to each
other, people who have nothing in common with each other, people who may have very different
beliefs from each other in many ways, they're being connected. They're being given to each other.
And the result is Christ is making a new family, a family of care, a community of compassion.
I mean, in our culture, we talk, we talk a lot about independence and autonomy, but in the church,
we're connected. We're connected in a way that's different from the other groups you belong to in
the community, even different from the blood relationships that you have out there. That's
why Jesus calls Mary woman and not mom, because he's setting aside his blood relationship in order
to create a wider family of care, a new family, family that transcends race and transcends,
you know, class and gender and theology and all that stuff. In Trinity, we have this saying,
we say here, we want to be where the whole church is caring for the whole church. You see,
Trinity has these care ministries. Yes, we have a care fund. Yes, we have a care coordinator,
Eric and Elijah, Eric and amazing care coordinator. But the kind of care that we see happening here
or the kind of care where the whole church is caring for the whole church is not when you,
you get to care for your favorite people, but it's when you care for all people. It's not when you
just care for some and say, I don't care for those other people. No, no, no. It's when everyone
is caring for everyone because we're connected through the blood of Jesus. So you see,
these last words, man, they have so much there for us. They're just overflowing with care and
concern as Jesus was in life. So in death, he's caring. And let's just recap. First of all,
he's showing us how to care and have concern for women because in Jesus time, as in our own time,
in many places and situations, women were rejected and they were excluded. And Jesus in both his life
and death shows this amazing care and concern for women. And secondly, in these famous last words,
Jesus is showing care and concern for mothers and parents because in his time, and as I've said,
in our time too, aging parents need special care from their children. And then finally,
and most importantly, in these famous last words, we see Jesus calling into being a new spiritual
family, the church, if you will, where people take each other to their own. And this means as you look
around this room today, you don't just see strangers, you see mothers and fathers,
brothers and sisters, sons and daughters, people we've taken into our own. And as such, we're a
family, a family that has been called to care for each other. And that's what Jesus is trying to
press upon us in these famous last words. So thanks be to God. Amen.
Thanks so much for listening to our sermon today, and we hope that you found it inspiring. Make sure
to come back next week as we hear yet another message from the sermon series, Famous Last Words.
Today's sermon was taken from the March 3rd, 2024 service at Trinity Church, Streetsville,
in Mississauga, Ontario.