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But standing by 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 and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, 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 19:25-27

As I travel around the country on my preaching rounds, I learn a lot about the church. Once, during Holy Week, I stayed with a husband and wife who, like me, were in their late middle age. A young woman named Luba was living with them. While I was there, I learned her story. She was a young Pentecostal Christian from the Ukraine who had been brought to America as a child in the 1980s to escape Communist oppression. The grandfather of the family had been imprisoned for his Christian faith; the parents and their children had lived in mortal dread that their Bibles would be taken away from them. They arrived in America with one suitcase apiece and no English at all except one phrase: "Thank you very much." They settled in Pittsburgh with freedom to worship openly in the Slavic Pentecostal Church there.

Later, Luba traveled to another American city to be a baby-sitter for a few weeks, and during that time my hosts observed not only her quiet intelligence and skill with the neighbors' children but also her developing Christian faith. They invited her to come and live with them and go to college, an opportunity she might otherwise never have had. By the time I met her, she had become like their adopted daughter.

Here is another story. In the 1990s I was invited to preach in a Roman Catholic Church in Greenwich Village. I stayed four days and nights in the spacious, comfortable rectory. Every day I ate a sumptuous meal, with wine, at the rectory table. This repast was prepared and served by cheerful, energetic women who would have been named Bridget and Eileen a generation ago, but today are named Carmela and Pilar. I don't know when I have ever enjoyed anything more than those lunches with the priests and nuns in that rectory. There was a continual stream of bishops and teachers and clergy coming in to spend a few days or weeks—from Ireland, from Italy, from the Philippines. The conversation ranged back and forth between high theological matters and joyous story-telling. I felt that I was part of them and they were part of me. It was really amazing. Here I was, an ordained Protestant woman, yet made to feel perfectly at ease. It felt like the Kingdom of heaven to me. I will carry that memory around with me to the end of my days. My heart aches for the pain of the Catholic Church today. The Protestant churches are not free from these same sins. May God deliver the whole Church of Christ from the bonds of sin, both the sins of commission and the sins of overlooking and excusing those commissions.

But now what do these stories about Luba and the lunches in the Catholic rectory have to do with the third saying from the Cross? Saint John tells us that Jesus, looking down from the Cross, said to his mother, "Woman, behold thy son!" And to the Beloved Disciple standing with her he said, "Behold thy mother!" And, from that moment, "he took her to himself."

Virtually everyone who is reading these words has probably heard this saying from the Cross interpreted in the following way:

• Jesus cared deeply for his mother.
• Jesus was worried about his mother's future.
• The saying therefore illustrates Jesus' love for his mother and his dying concern for her welfare.

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March (Web-only) 2005, Vol. 49