Good Friday: The Women at the Cross

 

 

When we talk about Jesus we often talk about Jesus and his disciples, and usually when we say “disciples” we mean the men called “the twelve disciples.”  And the four Gospels certainly spend a fair bit of page space on them.  But the crucifixion highlights a whole other group of followers of Jesus, one that remained faithful to him even when the twelve abandoned him.

 

When Jesus was led off to be crucified, none of his inner circle of twelve were to be seen, except for maybe one—but I’ll come back to him later.

 

The followers of Jesus who did not abandon him were the women.  Let me read for you what each of the Gospels says about who was at the cross when Jesus was crucified.

 

[Besides the soldiers and those mocking Jesus...] There were also women there looking on from afar who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, and the mother of the sons of Zebedee.  (Matthew 27:55-56)

 

There were also women looking on from afar.  Among them were Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James the younger and of Joses, and Salome, who, when he was in Galilee, followed him and ministered to him; and also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. (Mark 15:40-41)

 

And all his acquaintances and the women who had followed him from Galilee stood at a distance and saw these things. (Luke 23:49)

 

But standing at the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene.  When Jesus saw his mother standing near, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold your son!”  Then he said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!”  And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19:25b-27)

 

As you can see, there is a certain amount of disagreement about just which women were there, not to mention John alluding to the unnamed disciple.  Also, the three synoptic Gospels say that the women stood at a distance while John has the three women he names standing immediately at the cross of Jesus.

 

Now there are all kinds of reasons that these accounts could differ as they do.  I think it has to do with the intersection of several factors.

 

First, the crucifixion played itself out over six long hours.  I would guess that people came and went during that time, and that maybe, toward the end, a few of them dared to come closer.  I think the descriptions in the Gospels should be seen as snapshots.  Take the picture at different moments over those six long hours and different combinations of people will be present.

 

Second, ancient authors were pretty negligent about telling women’s stories.  Mostly, they left women out of the picture even when we know that there would have been women in the mix.  So, it is noteworthy that all four of the Gospel writers chose to emphasize that while the inner circle of male disciples had all gone into hiding, the women stood by and held vigil.  When the stories of that day got retold later on, each teller probably emphasized the women he or she knew and left out the ones who weren’t familiar so that in the end, although there are said to be a lot of women there, we have the names of only a handful of them.  Luke doesn’t name any of the women at this point, but later in the resurrection account he names Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and “the other women,” (Luke 24:10), again suggesting that we’re talking about a fairly large group of women who were followers of Jesus.

 

Third, Mary the mother of James and Joseph, Mary the mother of James and Joses, and Mary the wife of Clopas all seem to refer to the same person, who also turns out to be the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus; or to put it another way: Jesus’ aunt. (see Mark 6:3 to connect the dots; some of this has to do with the inconsistencies of rendering Hebrew names in Greek)

 

Fourth, John is the outlier in his account. He ignores the large crowd of women and highlights three women, two of them close family of Jesus, namely, the mother of Jesus and her sister, which is to say, Jesus’ aunt.  Again, thinking in terms of snapshots, John may be highlighting a particular moment.  Now, Jesus’ mother seems to have been alienated from her son during his ministry.  For more on this see the unique passage Mark 3:19-21 and the parallel passages Matthew 12:46-50, Mark 3:31-35, Luke 8:19-21.  John includes her only at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11) and then here at the end.

 

Despite this apparent distance between mother and son during his ministry, for me it is not out of the question for Mary to appear at the crucifixion just before Jesus dies.  We know that every year, large groups of Galileans travelled together for the Passover in Jerusalem.  We know that the family of Jesus were part of this annual pilgrimage (see Luke 2:41).  It is likely that while Mary may not have travelled with the group of disciples and other followers who went with Jesus, she is still likely to have come for her own religious reasons with other relatives, such as her sister Mary and brother-in-law Clopas and maybe their sons and their families who would have been cousins to Jesus.  Where Luke says that “all his acquaintances” were there watching from a distance, the word he uses for “acquaintances is “gnostoi”, which means people who knew Jesus personally: a group that is likely to have included some of his relatives.

 

If word got to Mary that her son was being crucified outside the city, she would have made her way there to see Jesus, and her sister would not have let her go alone.  It is also possible that if Mary Magdalene (who seems to have been there throughout the day) saw Jesus’ mother and aunt making their way to the cross, she would have left the larger group and gone to join them.  Nothing here is unreasonable or not easily accounted for in the reality of a city chaotically bustling with thousands of pilgrims, including many from Galilee.

 

The last notable difference with John is the presence of “the disciple” or “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”  This mysterious figure first appears beside Jesus at the last supper in John 13:23-25 and is then mentioned seven more times.  His appearance here at the cross is the third one; the fourth mention of him takes place later when the soldier pierces Jesus’ side.  The last appearance of this “disciple whom Jesus loved” includes these words:

 

This is the disciple who is testifying to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true. (John 21:24)

 

In other words, the disciple whom Jesus loved, or sometimes just, “the other disciple,” is the author of John’s Gospel, and so he is understood to be John.  But the particular way that John is using himself here is as a literary device to insert the hearer or reader into the action, specifically during the events from what we call Maundy Thursday through to the resurrection appearances after Easter, what are arguably the most important events.  The emphasis is that he was there; that he saw what was going on; that he is relating these memories to us, but in doing so he lets us participate in the action.

 

So, back to the cross: here too it is possible that John may have initially kept his distance from the crucifixion but later found himself joining Jesus’ mother and aunt and the ever-faithful Mary Magdalene at the cross near the end of the ordeal.

 

Calamities and crises have a way of revealing what we are made of.  Some of us rise to the occasion and even become heroes, even if we don’t think of ourselves as heroes.  And some of us just fall apart.  But the amazing thing about the grace of God embodied in Jesus, is that our personal failures do not spell the end of our relationship to God. There is room to pick up the pieces and try again.

 

But somehow, amazingly, God always seems to provide for some people to carry the ball for us when we just can’t.  On the days of Jesus’ crucifixion, burial, and on the morning of his resurrection, most of those people were the women who had followed Jesus and weren’t quite ready to give up, even if others already had.