Читать книгу Man Jesus Loved - Theodore W. Jr. Jennings - Страница 17

The beloved is not singled out again until Jesus’ death on the cross. He is not identified as one who participates in the dialogue with Jesus concerning where Jesus is going (13:36ff), nor is he singled out from among the other disciples when Jesus discourses on the nature of love and unity with him, nor is he singled out at the scene of Jesus’ betrayal in the Garden, nor does he seem to be identified as one of the disciples who witness Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (18:15ff).⁷ When our attention is next drawn to him, Jesus is already on the cross.

The passages where we are reminded of the presence of the beloved are as significant as are the passages where we are not. He has no special role in terms of the handing on of Jesus’ teachings; he is exactly on a par with all the others. His “specialness” lies elsewhere. Nor is he ever the only witness to any of the important events of this fateful twenty-four hours of Jesus’ passion.

Even here at the cross he is not the only witness. He is present with a number of women.

Four of Jesus’ followers witness his execution: His mother, his aunt, Mary Magdalene, and the beloved (19:25). Jesus’ aunt is not mentioned before or after. His mother has been associated with him before (2:1–5). Mary Magdalene has not been mentioned earlier but will appear subsequently (20:1–18).

John’s narrative of the cross is quite different from what we find in the other Gospels. Here we have three sayings of Jesus that are not found in the other Gospels. Two of these are quite brief. One, “I thirst,” is treated as a fulfillment of Scripture. The last (“it is accomplished”) serves to designate the end of Jesus’ mission as well as the achieving of that mission’s goal.

But before we come to these sayings so weighted with theological significance for the author and reader of this text, we find something quite remarkable. Jesus is said to notice the presence of the beloved and of his own mother. He addresses them each by directing them to one another: “Woman, behold your son,” and to the beloved: “Behold your mother.”

At a subsequent point, we will have opportunity to develop at greater length the question of the relation between Jesus and his mother in this text.⁸ Here it should be noted that she is identified by the narrator as Jesus’ “mother” but is addressed by Jesus only as “woman.” This shift in terminology also agrees with what occurs in the earlier story of the wedding in Cana (2:4). Jesus uses for Mary exactly the same form of address that he uses for other women that he encounters: the Samaritan woman (4:21), the woman taken in adultery (8:10), and Mary of Magdala (20:15). That is, Jesus is not at all given to a kind of “Mothers’ Day” sentimentality in the Gospel of John or, still less, in the other Gospels.⁹

But what is the true meaning of this scene at the cross? Some imagine that Jesus deflects attention from himself here in order to tell his followers that they are to care for one another. Whatever the merits of this edifying reflection, they have no basis in this text. For if the author wanted to make this point, leaving out Jesus’ aunt and Mary of Magdala hardly seems appropriate. Surely a simpler approach would be to say to the group as a whole: Look after one another.

If we cannot read this episode either as an edifying reflection on the care of the disciples for one another or as depicting Jesus’ sonly sentimentality, what does it mean?

If we assume that Jesus and the beloved are lovers, the action becomes a transparent acknowledgment of the special relationship between Jesus and the beloved, an acknowledgment that has the same effect as a kind of betrothal. Our interpretation would be easier if Jesus had singled out, say, Mary the Magdalene instead: “Woman behold your daughter,” and to Mary Magdalene, “Behold your mother.” Had Mary of Magdala been depicted as having a particularly close relationship to Jesus characterized by physical intimacy, we would read the text quite easily. Because Mary of Magdala is Jesus’ lover, she is therefore his mother’s daughter (in-law). Especially does this relationship come to the fore with the death of the son of the one and “husband” of the other. In such a case for the sake of the dead son, the mother takes as her daughter the one who had been closest to him in life. And the lover takes the husband’s mother as her own mother. That is, they adopt one another. We already possess a beautiful model for this sort of relationship in the story of Jesus’ ancestress, Ruth, and her mother-in-law, Naomi. That story of love and loyalty between two women has even become a staple of marriage ceremony texts (Ruth 1:16–17) in spite of the same-sex love that the story actually depicts.

The mutual adoption of mother-in-law and daughter-in law would be the natural reading of the text if Mary of Magdala were the other. But she is not. Instead the man Jesus loved is now placed in an adoptive relationship with Jesus’ mother. So why should we permit the feature of the disciple’s gender to hide the plain sense of the narrative?

The plain sense of this episode is to buttress our hypothesis that Jesus is to be understood as having a lover or, in the more precise terminology of antiquity, as being the lover of a beloved. The relationship is depicted by the text as a homoerotic one, which is here acknowledged as entailing a loyalty that has consequences even beyond the death of Jesus.

We should notice that the relationship of adoption that Jesus indicates is one of mutuality. His mother and the man he loves adopt one another on account of the love they apparently have for Jesus. The man does not simply adopt the mother in order to look after her and comfort her in her grief. The reverse could also be true. The mother is to “mother” the beloved. The character of this adoption makes clear that we are not simply dealing with a concern for the mother (as in Mothers’ Day rhetoric) but a concern for the beloved.

This aspect of the episode is strengthened when we recall that the way of identifying this disciple stresses the fact that Jesus loves him. Thus this scene should be read as underlining not Jesus’ love for his mother (which is suggested nowhere in this or any other Gospel) but Jesus’ love for his beloved. The mother’s role and responsibility is expressed first: “Woman: behold your son.” Only then does Jesus relate the responsive role of the son: “Behold your mother.”

Jesus’ instructions are all the more striking given that the Gospel of John speaks of Jesus having “brothers” (2:12; 7:2–5, 10).¹⁰ One would think that Jesus’ mother is not alone in the world. She has other sons, not to mention the sister at her side at this moment. She has no need of relatives or kin, but now, in addition to those blood kin she already has, she receives another son—one who becomes her son because he is the beloved of her dying son. She is being charged with a responsibility here: being mother to this man for the sake of his lover who was (one of) her son(s).

The beloved thus receives a mother and in this way becomes the son of Jesus’ mother. She adopts him first (as a parent must do) and then he adopts her.

The episode concludes that the beloved did in fact take her as his mother. The passage often appears translated as “took her to his home,” but “home” is not found in the text. The word is added by the translator. He took her “into his own” is more literal. But specifying home or family or anything of the kind here is not necessary. According to the account, he indeed accepted the adoptive relationship, which began “from that hour.”

“That hour” is the hour of Jesus’ death. Thus the relationship between the beloved and the mother of Jesus begins from the death of Jesus. While before their relationship had been to Jesus, now it is to one another. The grief of the mother for (one of) her son(s) and the grief of the beloved for the man who loved him are to find consolation in their care for one another.

This scene is also consistent with what we noticed before concerning Jesus’ relation to the disciple he loved, namely, that it was not clandestine. The relationship was apparent to those people who knew Jesus best.

But why should such a domestic scene be recorded here at this climactic moment in the Gospel? We have to deal with this question again in connection with all the texts concerning the beloved. Here the text itself suggests that the event is recorded because the beloved said it happened and that his testimony was accepted by the writer(s) of the narrative.

The beloved is here also for the first time identified as a source for the recollections that serve as the basis of the narrative (19:35). Specifically what the beloved witnesses is that Jesus’ legs were not broken but that his side was pierced. This account is regarded by the narrator(s) as consistent with Scripture (19:36–37). But behind this fact is the even more important one that Jesus really and truly died. The beloved is certainly not the only witness to this fact, but he is a witness.

But another and more important reason exists for why the episode between Jesus, his mother, and his beloved may be recorded in connection with the account of Jesus’ execution. One of the themes of this Gospel is that the “Word became flesh.” Indeed, on account of the importance of this theme, John’s Gospel came to be accepted as an antidote to gnosticism.¹¹ That Jesus really died was important for countering gnostic and docetic tendencies in the early church. The death of Jesus according to the flesh is the culmination of the incarnation (en-fleshing) of the Word. The scene of his death then is accentuated by the presence of his mother according to the flesh and of Jesus’ beloved according to the flesh. The presence of Jesus’ mother (who is certainly not regarded as an exemplary disciple) and the presence of Jesus’ beloved (who is also not singled out as a model disciple) underscore the bodily reality that is crucial for the death of Jesus as well.

Put another way, the love that is so often the theme of this Gospel is not only “spiritual”; it is also physical, just as the death of Jesus (or his incarnation) is not only a theological symbol but also a physical, bodily reality.

In this way also, the scene at the cross connects back to the scene at the meal where we first encountered the beloved and where his relation to Jesus was marked precisely by physical, bodily intimacy.