“Mother, Here is Overwhelming Love”

SHAMA Good Friday Service 2026
Sermon on Jesus's "Third Word" from the Cross, John 19:23-27
"Woman, behold your son."

My friends, I speak to you today in the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I’d like to start my brief sermon for you this afternoon by admitting, confessing, that I am personally overwhelmed by Good Friday. See, I’m the priest at the Episcopal Church here in town, the Church of the Epiphany, Father John, nice to meet you. We Episcopalians have earned at least one accurate stereotype: we do not love talking about sin. It’s not that we don’t believe in sin, in the brokenness of the world, I mean, look around us this year, read the news.

It’s not that we don’t believe in Christ’s redemptive act on the cross either, we very much do… but we Episcopalians do just really love talking about love, about God’s love, about the life of light and love we can live as a result of the incarnation at Christmas, in light of the resurrection coming on Sunday. We don’t – or maybe it’s just that I don’t – love talking about the crucifixion, about the brutality, about the suffering and the death we encounter today. It’s tough. We encounter a lot of death, suffering, and brutality already in this broken world. Don’t we?

But being overwhelmed on occasion, being overwhelmed by this day, it is not a bad thing. We should all be overwhelmed by all that happens on Good Friday. It’s a lot to handle. This text, this story, this entire season really, it is weighty. And, here in this ecumenical service, you all will listen to seven sermons, which is nearly two months’ worth of sermons for normal people. It’s all a lot, but rightfully so.

My portion of scripture this afternoon (John 19:23-27) brings us the casting of lots, the soldiers who callously divided Jesus’s possessions while he still holds breath, while he looks on. And, it brings us Jesus seeing his mother Mary (and a handful of other Marys) and Jesus seeing the author of this gospel account, the disciple John.

In the midst of this earth-shattering, reality-defining event for us today on this Good Friday, we have people. We have a mother and her son. We have two good friends. We are brought down from the heights of academic discourse around possible atonement theories, around what really happened here, brought down from the heights of political calculations with Pilate and the High Priest… and, we are brought down from the big picture to the small but nonetheless heartbreaking, to the soldiers doing the killing, who could not see these people as people but as threats and orders, eager to do their job and then make profit from their dirty work. That part is sadly all too consistent today too. 

We are brought, though, from these weighty things into the more familiar, the more personal, into family and good friendship. Family, friendship. Jesus says, “Woman, here is your son,” to his mother, Mary. Jesus says, “Here is your mother,” to his friend John, who then cares for Mary like one of his own. These are real relationships, not academic or political considerations, not threats on a map that need to be eliminated so we can hold self-congratulatory press conferences or addresses to the nation, but real people with real feelings, real lives with real beating hearts.

And what do we learn from these real people today? Mary, who has not been mentioned in John’s gospel account since the wedding at Cana (one of the Epiphanies), when Jesus is revealing himself as the Son of God… Jesus told his mother then in John chapter 2: “Woman, what concern is their lack of wine to me? My hour has not yet come.” Now, seventeen chapters later in John 19, the two encounter each other again. In the final moments of his life, Jesus addresses her for just the second time in this gospel, echoing his statement at the beginning of his ministry: “Woman, here is your son.” We may assume rightly that Jesus is connecting Mary and John, creating a new family of God on Earth, one that we are still part of today… but this is literally Mary’s son saying these words. And he is dying on the cross. His hour has now come.

Mary now sees fully what her son is here to do: not miraculously bring wine to a wedding, not just teach and preach, not just heal those he encountered like another one of the prophets. But all that and so much more: Mary’s son was up on that cross showing her – and showing us – the most sacrificial love the world has ever known. Mary’s son is on that cross to lay down his life for all of us, in humility, in service, in unbelievable love. “Woman, here is your son!” Mary will be family with John in this still-growing-today family of believers which we are all a part of, yes. But Mary also sees her own son, born in a manger to her and Joseph so many years ago, dying, brutally, for all of us. Mary sees God’s selfless love incarnate, saving the world on that cross.

Today, we read, “Woman, here is your son.” Mary could have heard, “Mother, here is overwhelming love.”

Amen.