In a public facebook post, Dr. Robert Gagnon (author of the must-read book, The Bible and Homosexuality: Texts and Hermeneutics [Abingdon Press, 2001]) wrote the following about John 19:25-27:
Jesus' Words to Mary and the Beloved Disciple in John 19:25-27: What Does It Mean for High Mariology?
Prof. Robert A. J. Gagnon, Ph.D.
8/21/2024
I will be winding down the discussion of Mary this week. However, it is first necessary to comment separately on the significance of Jesus' words to "the beloved disciple" regarding Mary in John 19:25-27, since I keep hearing it being cited in comments as a support for a high Mariology. Many are taking the story to mean that Mary is "the mother of us all" and that we should give ourselves over to special devotion to, and honor of, Mary. There is nothing in the text supporting that claim. This is what the text says (my translation):
"Now there stood, nearby the cross of Jesus, his mother and the sister of his mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene (i.e., Mary from the town of Magdala). [v. 26] So Jesus, on seeing the (i.e., his) mother and the disciple standing nearby whom he was loving, says to his mother, 'Woman, look, your son.' [v. 27] Then he says to the disciple, 'Look, your mother.' And from that hour [or: moment], the disciple took her into his own things (i.e., home)."
The text does not say, nor does it intimate, that Jesus is telling the beloved disciple that everyone should regard Mary as their mother. That does not even make sense in the context. Jesus directs his remark solely to the beloved disciple. He does not direct his remark also to the two other Marys (the wife of Clopas and Magdalene), which he could easily have done, and say to all three, "Look, your mother." So we must understand his remark as specific to the beloved disciple (as indeed the "your" of "your mother" is singular in the Greek [sou]).
What is the point of the story? Many take the story out of its context and seem not to realize that it is specific to the Johannine community. The competition between the beloved disciple and Peter reflected in the empty tomb and resurrection appearance stories (20:2-10; 21:7, 15-19) is reflective of competition between Petrine communities and the Johannine community, where the latter claims deeper insight into Jesus' identity as the Man from heaven.
Here at the foot of the cross is a touching scene where the beloved disciple's intimacy to Jesus is undergirded by Jesus charging him, the beloved disciple, with the care of his mother. It is not an injunction for all Christians to be devoted to Mary or a statement that Mary is the mother of all believers. It is an apologetic for the community of the beloved disciple, not for developing Mariology.
Jesus would naturally entrust the care of his mother to the disciple most intimately associated with him. The story is told in the service of the Johannine community's claim to a founder figure who was Jesus' closest disciple, which in turn buttresses the distinctive portrait of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel relative to the Petrine Gospel of Mark (and Mark's Gospel was a common source for Matthew's and Luke's Gospel, in addition to "Q" sayings, hence Petrine influence on all three "Synoptic" Gospels).
One should note too Jesus' address of his mother as "woman." This is not a "new Eve" motif, as many commonly misunderstand. It coheres with the same address of Mary in the Cana water-to-wine episode in John 2:1-11 (the first of Jesus' "signs"), specifically in v. 4, where Jesus' response to Mary's statement ("They have no wine") comes in the form of a rebuke: "What to me and to you, woman? My hour has not yet come" (for a defense of this interpretation, see my recent post on that text).
"Woman" in John 2:4 was a way for Jesus to communicate that, when Mary's mind is set on purely earthly matters rather than spiritual matters, she is to him as any other woman. This is consistent with Jesus' treatment of Mary in Mark 3:31-35 when she is susceptible to reports that Jesus is out of his mind and comes with her other sons to "restrain him." Jesus' response: "Who is my mother and brothers? ... Whoever does the will of God, this is my brother and sister and mother." This saying clearly relativizes Mary's significance as Jesus' biological mother, as does the special Lukan saying in Luke 11:27-28.
Now at the foot of cross Jesus addresses her as "woman" again, but not because she is the new Eve (which didn't fit in the context of John 2:4). Perhaps the reason is partly because Jesus has relativized family kinship dynamics (Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother ... he cannot be my disciple").
Yet this must be understood in a still deeper way that takes into account the theological context of John's Gospel. Unlike in the Synoptic Gospels (Matt, Mark, Luke), Jesus is repeatedly portrayed as the Man from heaven. The cross is his moment of being "lifted up" (3:14; 8:28; 12:32), a double entendre for literally being lifted up on the cross and metaphorically being “exalted" (same Greek word, ὑψόω) as the indispensable life of the world through his atoning death and singular obedience to God on the cross. Jesus is returning to the place whence he came, the Logos or "reasoning faculty" of God back to God (1:1-18), now as "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world" (1:29).
John's Prologue (1:1-18), in discussing Jesus' preexistence and incarnation, doesn't even allude to Mary. The sphere of existence in which Mary functioned as Jesus' earthly mother during his incarnation in an earthly body is over. It was but a fraction of Jesus' existence, and was important only insofar as Jesus came to redeem his own. She is now no longer his earthly mother, except in an historical sense.
Jesus still provides for her care, as an earthly son should, by entrusting her to the disciple whom he loves most, who may be able to lead her into a deeper understanding of her son. Moreover, the fact that Mary was Jesus' earthly mother retains enough significance to bolster Johannine claims regarding their patron disciple being the most loved and trusted by Jesus.
That said, while Jesus' humanity was real (this is not a case of incipient Docetism or Gnosticism), his specific connection to Mary as son of an earthly mother (as opposed to the critical fact of an incarnation) was, for John, not of major concern. More important is the fact that Jesus is the Son of God who came down from heaven. That's why there is no mention of the virgin birth in John. A virgin birth pales in significance relative to an incarnation of the preexistent Logos from heaven. A virgin birth story simply says too little.
Added to this Man from heaven motif as an explanation for "woman" is that John may be signaling that Mary has not changed much since the last time readers met her in John 2. Her spiritual dullness with respect to the nature of Jesus' mission, a mission that was so much more than resupplying wine to a wedding celebration (except as regards its symbolism for something more transcendent), remains.
The form in which that spiritual dullness remains is perhaps now an inability to grasp that Jesus is returning to his heavenly Father (which is a common motif in John's Gospel). There remains a disjuncture in interests and thought, with Jesus operating "from above" rather than Mary's "from below," from the realm of the Spirit rather than Mary's from the realm of the flesh, with concern for heavenly realities over Mary's concern for merely earthly matters.
In short, rather than being a story that fuels a cult of Mary, the story in John 19:25-27 fuels the contention of the Johannine community that the beloved disciple knew Jesus more intimately than did Peter who stands behind Petrine communities (who incidentally had denied Jesus three times, 18:15-18, 25-27). Furthermore, what it says about Mary, through the repetition of the address "woman," which diminishes the significance of her status as mother of Jesus and is not a "new Eve" motif, does not encourage an especially high view of her place in the course of salvation history from a Johannine perspective.
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