John 19:16-30

Jesus is Executed

John 19:16b-18     Carrying his own Cross and Crucifixion

The author’s concern was to paint the inner reality: an upright, self-possessed Jesus, freely and deliberately embracing the price of unconditional and vulnerable love. For that reason he drew him as carrying the cross by himself. The weight of human reconciliation and redemption would be shouldered by Jesus unaided and alone.

Detail was minimal. The author did not focus on the brutality of the whole procedure since it did not suit his theological purpose. Besides, it was only too clearly recognised by every contemporary. 

John 19:19-22     King of the Jews

For Pilate, the inscription of Jesus’ crime was intended as an act of mockery of Jesus, but, even more so, of the Jewish establishment (as would be immediately evident). 

Crucifixions were always carried out in public view, their purpose being to deter all temptation to rebellion against Roman might. The location called the Skull was a short distance from one of the city gates, in clear view of pilgrims going to the temple to have their paschal lambs killed. The three languages used for the inscription illustrated with supreme irony the universal reach of Jesus’ true kingship: through his death, Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not only for the nation, but so that he might gather into one all the scattered children of God [11:51-52].

The previously humiliated Pilate revelled in his little game with the leadership, delighting in reminding them of their impotence.

John 19:23-25     The Priestly Garment – Jesus as High Priest

Nakedness instinctively horrified every Jew. Jesus’ hanging naked from the cross was one further expression of Rome’s callous determination to dehumanize its victims. 

The scriptural reference was taken from Psalm 22. Though the author made a deliberate point of distinguishing the tunic from the rest of Jesus’ clothes, the scriptural text did not intentionally differentiate the two. The wording was simply an instance of a common Hebrew literary convention where a phrase was repeated using different words but conveying the same meaning.

Cosmic Reconciliation

The reason why the author chose to interpret the text as he did was because he wished to highlight the fact that Jesus’ tunic was seamless. (The Synoptic Gospels made no mention of the fact.)  

Some recent scholars have interpreted the reference to the seamless tunic worn by the high priest at the annual Feast of Atonement. On that occasion, the high priest, wearing a seamless tunic under his ornate external robes, would sprinkle the inner temple precinct with the blood of a goat “of God”. The priest represented God; the blood represented the life-force of God; the inner temple represented creation. According to the ritual, God, by means of his own life, purified, restored and reconciled the whole of creation.

The Disciple, after years of prayerful, Spirit-led reflection on the meaning of Jesus’ death, had come to understand Jesus as the authentic high priest. He not only represented God, he revealed God; he was the Word-made-flesh. Bearing his own blood, he made possible the definitive experience of human and cosmic reconciliation, and brought about “at-one-ment” between God, sinful humanity and sin-scarred creation – gathering into one the dispersed children of God [11:52].

John 19:25-27     Mother and Son

This gospel is the only one that clearly mentioned the presence of the mother of Jesus at the crucifixion. It is hard to know whether this is to be taken historically or theologically (or both). Certainly its theological implications were crucial for the Disciple.

The theological connections began from Jesus’ use of the word Woman to refer to his mother. Immediately the reader was referred to Jesus’ first sign at Cana in Galilee where, for the first time, he revealed his glory to his disciples. There, also for the first time (and before his hour had come), he had addressed his mother as Woman [2:4]. Cana, with its overtones of vitality, new creation and the revelation of divinity, was the sign pointing forward to its fulfilment at Golgotha.

Woman (later to be given the name Eve) was the Genesis title for the female person fashioned from the gender-neutral humanity of “the Adam”, partner with him in transmission of life (Eve means “mother of all the living”), and, sadly, accomplice with him in the first act of sin. Mary would be the new Eve, associated with Jesus in giving new life to the world and in overcoming the sin of the world. Jesus, the new Adam, constituted a new human community, with his mother Mary as the new Eve.

In the narrative, Jesus said to Mary: Woman, this is your son. To which son was he referring? The text would immediately suggest the disciple whom he loved. Tradition has generally understood the text in that light; and the interpretation is confirmed by the comment immediately attached to it.

However, as has often been the case in the Gospel, the words: Woman, this is your son may have carried a further meaning. Jesus may have intended that the words refer also to himself, paralleling Pilate’s words: Here he is, the man himself, and cryptically suggesting a further rich insight.

Here is the Man (2)

Mary’s motherhood affirms and confirms the humanity of Jesus. This is Jesus, the son of Mary – human – hanging on the cross, redeeming the world precisely through his dishonoured humanity. The scourged and crowned Jesus paraded before the chief priests, the tortured and crucified Jesus hanging from the cross, is the personification of the new creation. 

Adam, who was gifted by God to be like God (made in the image of God), but who was not God, had sought to step beyond his limited humanity and, through his own action, to make himself “like God”. In doing so, he became subject, unnecessarily, to death; and with himself, drew humanity away from God. 

The Beloved Disciple was convinced that Jesus was uniquely “of God”. But, unlike Adam, Jesus deliberately accepted the limitations of his humanity, freely faced suffering and death, and, in the process, became the source and exemplar of faithful, obedient (and redeemed) humanity. 

Like the high priest, the representative of God in the atonement (reconciliation) liturgy, Jesus, who was sent by the Father to the world as the source of eternal life [3:16-17], absorbed in himself the hostility of the world’s sin and re-established the cosmic covenant of creation broken by sin. This would be more than new wine – this would be renewed creation. 

And Mary collaborated with her son in this new creation precisely by her being his mother and, thereby, providing him with the humanity through which humanity would be saved.

Precisely because of her collaboration with her son in his work of salvation, Mary became, like (and unlike) Eve, the mother of all the truly living (those alive with eternal life). That is why the text “This is your son” also referred, and (more immediately), to the Beloved Disciple. In this instance, the Beloved Disciple became the symbol of every disciple.

The phrase translated as from that hour could also mean because of that hour, and could refer to the mystery of Jesus’ hour, and the process of salvation achieved through that hour. The Beloved Disciple took Mary as  his own, the same phrase that had occurred in the Prologue to the Gospel, where it was translated as he came to what was his own [1:11].

By associating the Beloved Disciple [symbol of every disciple] with the woman who was the mother of his vulnerable humanity, Jesus associated every disciple with that broken humanity.  After the transforming experience of his resurrection, disciples were mysteriously enabled to share in Jesus' now risen humanity and in his unique relationship with his Father. When Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene after his resurrection, he referred to those disciples for the first time as my brothers, and associated them in the same relationship he now shared with his Father: Go to my brothers, and tell them, “I am returning to my Father and to your Father, and to my God and to your God" [20:17]. 

Because of the in-gathering power released through Jesus’ hour, a new family – a new community – came into being, symbolised by the relationship of Mary and the Beloved Disciple.

At the cross, Mary became the New Eve; she became at the same time the Mother of the Church – which is the community of all disciples who believe in his name [1:12].

This is Your Mother

It is interesting to explore further the Genesis symbolism. There God had said to the serpent: “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will strike your head and you will strike his heel” [Genesis 3.15]. With the murder of Jesus, and the salvation it would accomplish, the “heel” of the “woman’s” offspring had been “struck”; and the “head” of the serpent’s offspring had been “struck” in the process. God had then said to the “woman”: “you shall give birth to your children in pain: ...your husband will lord it over you” [Genesis 3.16]. The price of Mary’s universal motherhood (symbolised in the disciple’s new relationship to Mary) had certainly been “pain”. (With the work of salvation once accomplished, could the text suggest that “woman’s” former subservient relationship to the male had been removed once and for all?)

John 19:28-30     Jesus Dies on the Cross

Completed says too little. The original Greek word means more than that. It means that Jesus’ purpose had been achieved; the work that he had come to perform was complete. It had reached its climax: Jesus had been glorified; God had been glorified. Jesus had expressed to the world his limitless love for the world. By means of his love, he had revealed the God who had sent him into the world to reveal the truth of God as the God who loves.

The Beloved Disciple had shown Jesus praying at his final supper: I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed [17:4-5]

The work was completed. Jesus had loved to the end [13:1]. His faithfulness and integrity showed, for the entire world to see, the grace of the Father at work within him. Through his faithfulness, his unshakable love and integrity, he had revealed to the world the heart of God. 

The narrative added yet more symbolism to confirm what had already been said.

Jesus’ remark: I am thirsty, recalled Jesus’ earlier dialogue with the Samaritan woman. He had been thirsty, then, too [4:7]. And his thirst became the occasion for him to talk of the living water that he would give to her and to the world. Jesus, indeed, still thirsted. He had performed the task he had been sent to do; but, without human cooperation (without people believing in him), the life he was sent to bring would remain pure possibility. Jesus thirsted for people to learn to trust him (as the Samaritan woman had done) and to entrust themselves to him and to his Father, so that possibility might become reality. 

The reference to the stick of hyssop was deliberate. In fact, the guards would have used a spear to lift the sponge to his mouth. But hyssop stick carried recollections of the blood of the first Passover lamb smeared on the door-posts of the homes of the Hebrew slaves in Egypt [Exodus 12:22].

The wine in question would have been the sour wine, the daily ration issued to every Roman soldier. The sour wine given to the dying Christ contrasted to the new wine of the new creation, the fulfilment signified at the start of his ministry by the abundant and best wine of Cana.

Jesus, handed over to death by Judas, the chief priests, by Pilate, by humanity (and, ultimately by Satan, the father of lies), now handed over to a waiting world the Spirit. In fact, the make it even clearer that the author meant more than that Jesus expired, the actual text has the spirit, the Spirit of whom Jesus had spoken so beautifully during his Supper Discourse. Jesus had done what he had promised the twelve he would do (and, in the process reversed the world’s treachery and hostility): it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you [16:7].

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