Welcome to the Mariners Church Life Group leader podcast. This weekly conversation is designed to equip and resource you to build a healthy life group community that studies God's word, practices spiritual rhythms, and changes the world together. Welcome to week two of From the Cross. We are looking at the words of Jesus that he shared while on the cross.
There are seven phrases that he uses, and we're taking six weeks to look at those. And this week we are going to look at woman, behold your son. And this is gonna be an interesting conversation, but before we get too far, let's take a second here, just look at this lean in. Jeremy, I'm gonna tee you up.
What are some famous last words that come to mind when you think about this? Yeah, so I love this question for whatever reason. I think a lot of us are intrigued by people's final words. I think there's something that we're hoping that people will reveal something profound or meaningful, especially if they have time to choose their last words carefully.
I know one of my favorite movies of all time has been Tombstone and one of my favorite characters. Holiday, as his final words, he kind of looks at his feet and he says, this is funny. And there's just so much mystery around, like it kind of fits his character, but there's mystery around it. But I researched this a little bit, and there's some fascinating, there's just all these lists of famous people's last words.
Like Harriet Tubman was, she was singing a swing low sweet chariot. Steve Jobs apparently was just like, wow, wow, wow, wow. Leonardo, famous artist and brilliant engineer in mind, apparently lamented that he had grieved God that his work never achieved kind of what it could have been in his eyes. So just the, you see kind of his heart for the desire to do the most and the best that he could.
And so I think there's something intriguing about people's last words that we hope will tell us something about who they are and who their character, like more about their character. And so that's one of the things that I love about the series that we get to look at these different accounts, these different gospel accounts and see what were the different sayings of Jesus before his death. Yeah, and I think as a group, it could be fun for us to focus on this third question of just why are we so intrigued by people's last words and memories, like to really consolidate that down to it. Why is this such a fascinating part of our culture?
But then to pause and to look at Jesus's last words, these are his dying words on the cross. He then is resurrected and there's many other words, but these are still critical nonetheless, right? But to look at these and go, okay, we have these individual phrases that happen during his six hours or so on the cross. And I think that there's a lot of takeaways for our group and for our life application today.
And so Jeremy, if you could sort of summarize this week's main point as we look at this idea of Jesus speaking to his mother, what's the big thing that we wanna take away from this week's discussion? I think this week, we see very clearly in the work of Jesus on the cross and in these words that we see this week that he cares about our eternal destiny and what he's doing is ultimately to secure us a place for us as part of his family, eternally, but also we see his care for his mother. So we see this love for God and love for people expressed perfectly in these final words of Jesus from the cross, is he's gonna instruct John to take care of his mother. Right, and in this conversation for leaders, I think it's important for you to note that we're gonna enter into a conversation that kinda has two sides to it this week.
There will be a familial type of conversation where we're gonna discuss the family relationship of Jesus, but we're also going to then turn and see how that informs our relationships with others and for the end, most specifically towards the vulnerable among us. And so, you know, Jeremy, how can we prepare as leaders for this conversation, especially knowing that for many of us, the family discussions can be some of the most emotionally supercharged, the most raw, the most difficult, how can we prepare this week? One of the things that I would encourage leaders to do is to think about this question. When have we been treated like family?
Like who has God used to really bless us, to really change our lives, someone who is not family, not family by blood, so to speak by birth, but someone has just been that kind of person in our lives that the Lord has used to love on us, to provide wisdom, maybe to provide in very tangible ways for us and think about how your life is different because of that relationship. And in any words of wisdom they may have shared, you know, for many of us, there's idea of being haunted by what the last thing maybe we said or did in a relationship was and I wish I could go back and not have said that or not have done that. I wish I had one more chance to say or do something differently. But on the flip side, what are those relationships where maybe we didn't get to say or do everything we wanted to do, but they've really blessed us by using the time that they had in a meaningful way?
This would be an example of a week that I'd say, let's try to really stick to the leader guide. I know, Jeremy, that it could be very possible for us, even as we looked at, as we looked at these verses in John chapter 19, that we might start to find ourselves speculating around the relationship of Jesus and his own mother. Do you want to unpack that for us just briefly here? But one of the things that I think we need to be aware of, that as leaders, we want to make sure we don't get into this realm of speculation, like you said, is that we see something very interesting happen, not only on the positive side, which we'll get to in a minute, we see Jesus provide and take care of his mother.
As he's about to die, we know that Jesus is the oldest son. He was the first born of Mary, right, born of a virgin. But what we don't know is the Bible is quiet about Joseph after Jesus is a young boy in the temple. There's no more mention of Joseph, scholars have speculated about what happened to Joseph.
They assume he probably passed away. But we don't know, the Bible doesn't tell us. We also know that Jesus had brothers. We know James, the half brother of Jesus, would later become a believer.
Wrote the book of James, the Bible tells us in a couple verses, uses the word brothers, plural. So there were other sons in Jesus' own family. So what's interesting about this that we need to be aware of, but we don't need to run too far in drawing any kind of conclusions about is that the typical custom in this Hebrew culture, in this Jewish culture, would be that the oldest, if the husband has died, or is no longer in the picture, then it's the responsibility of the oldest son to take care of his family. So if Joseph is out of the picture, that means Jesus would be the one to take care of the family.
Now with some of his final words before he knows he's about to die, what would follow would be the next oldest son would then be in charge of caring for his mother and the rest of the family. But what Jesus does is he points to John, one of his closest disciples and says, a woman behold your son and then talks to John, and says behold your mother. And so he charges John with caring for his mother instead of one of his own brothers, which is interesting. We don't know why, the Bible doesn't tell us why.
So I share that just so that we're aware of the custom. I think it highlights the fact that what Jesus is saying here is really unique. That's why it kind of draws our attention to what's happening. And so when we understand how out of the ordinary this is, it should raise our awareness to, okay, what is happening here, what can I learn from this?
But we don't need to speculate and run down the rabbit hole about why would he not just follow the norm of the culture to the next oldest son now being in charge of Mary. It's very common throughout all of the Gospels to see Jesus's teaching. He took what was common in customary of the day and he flipped it upside down. This may be one of those examples as well, but one thing that we do know, and I think there's again, a fun surprise that takes place as if you read the book of James.
He's very explicit about caring for the courts out of the vulnerable, which one of those is the widow. So kind of a fascinating take on that. But we also see that Jesus is very clear that his primary concern is not his earthly family, but it's actually the spiritual family. And so then what does it mean for us as believers, as followers of Jesus, to think about, in this phrase, woman, behold your son, really that mean, beholding is a very intimate act of providing care, being with, it was a sense of comfort, safety, security, a sense of identity, even that comes in that phrase.
What does it mean for us to be charged with, the responsibility to behold, the people who have no one to hold, right? We have to care for people who are not being taken care of. And so, Jeremy, as you are kind of taking us through this, I think we've touched a little bit on the look in section, on just where have we been provided for, cared for, and really what does that mean for us? But take us for a second here into this lookout section.
What are you hoping will be kind of the result from this part of the guide? So as we see Jesus care for Mary, his emphasis on the spiritual community, kind of ultimately what will be the church's responsibility to care for those in need. Like you pointed out, James later gives one of the most explicit reminders in all of the New Testament, pointing back to Old Testament, where he says, pure and undefiled religion is this, to care for the widow and the orphan, and to remain unstained from the world. We see Jesus teaching on the least of these, near the end of his ministry in Matthew 25, where he talks about the way we treat the least of these brothers and sisters, the poor and the hungry and the naked and the imprisoned.
That's the way that we view and treat Jesus. These are image bearers of God. And so what I would hope that our conversations, our group time, we would see Jesus care for the spiritual family, but not in a detached kind of spiritual way, meaning that all he cares about is, can we get someone's soul to heaven and some abstract way, but he cares for very tangible, real needs. And so we as the church, we as those who have the spirit of Christ within us, are we aware of the needs of the people around us, their relational needs, their physical needs, their mental and emotional needs?
What are we doing to extend the love of Christ and treat people as the family of God, as brothers and sisters in the faith? Are we focused internally on getting kind of on our own lives? Or are we looking up and looking out at the world around us to see those in need and thinking, how can I share the love of Christ and the care that we see here in this text to other people who are vulnerable or hurting or in some kind of need? Amazing.
Well, I think if our life groups haven't done a serve experience or engaged with our outreach ministries in a while, life de bleeder, this is an easy opportunity for you to consider what it might look like for us to practically transition from just discussing, Jesus has cared and concerned for the least of these, to us saying, let's get off the bench and onto the field and actually do something about this. We have great resources and places that you can serve, things that you can do. But I would also encourage us that if the schedule overwhelms us and trying to get one of those things on the books right now, I understand don't use that as an excuse, but let's instead or maybe not instead, but rather than not doing anything, to then stop and say, okay, where do I interact with the least of these somewhere in my life, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the foreigner? Where do I interact and then what might be, I'd be able to do something this week, might be a good, a good follow up.
And then next week, start with that. Hey, did anybody take a step this week? Did we do anything? Did it change your awareness?
Did you take an action step, stuff like that? So Jeremy, any final thoughts for us as we get ready to close out week two? The emphasis that we see here on how the love of Christ is both for our spiritual and our physical, there's, for the Christian, there's not a distinction where it's just physical, just spiritual needs, that God cares for the whole human. And hopefully we can see that this week in this text, that God cares about all of us.
Our spiritual need, our physical need, and he puts us in relationship to meet all of those needs. So we're praying for you. We hope that you have a great discussion this week, and we will see you next week for week three. Take care.