Every day is a good day to consider the cross. But Holy Week especially draws us to Golgotha. Each year, we join the church around the world, and through the ages, as we set apart Good Friday for focused contemplation of Jesus’s crucifixion. We recall Jesus’s haunting question in Gethsemane: “Simon, are you asleep? Could you not watch one hour?” (Mark 14:37). We don’t want to snooze through the annual remembrance of his suffering. It mattered to Jesus that his disciples would keep watch with him in his agony — not only in the garden but all the way to the end. He longed for their attentive company and their supporting prayers.
Could that longing offer a clue as to what Christ desires from us this year? What if we used our imaginations to enter the scene described by Scripture? Perhaps we could walk alongside John and Mary, who stayed close to the cross while others fled. Maybe then we would feel the meaning of Good Friday more deeply and so love Jesus all the more.
Entering the Scene
To find my way to Calvary two thousand years ago, I begin by imagining the street outside our church building. North Boulevard is the main thoroughfare into downtown Baton Rouge, divided by a wide median of live oaks and a shaded walking path. This would be a shocking place for a worldly power to display its control.
Next, I imagine a cross set up there for one accused of defying the sovereignty of the state. I see him there: a beloved colleague, a gentle soul and passionate believer. I hear sounds unlike the sharp reports of movie violence — the sickeningly soft tearing of flesh. As I inch closer, I hear his rapid and ragged breathing. His face contorts not just with the pain of his physical trauma but with sorrow for those he loves and is leaving.
I want to move closer; try to get him down. But soldiers prevent me. I want to run away. This scene makes me desperate. No! This must not be. But I cannot leave him. I am helpless to do anything but listen, smell, watch, wait, and pray for it all to end.
Beloved Disciple
Through this disturbing lens, I can better imagine those who stayed with Jesus on Calvary. First, I see John the fisherman, burly from years of hauling nets. His love language includes gutting fish and toting them to market. He needs to do things. This standing by the cross makes John a caged eagle who can neither fly nor strike an enemy. I feel his distress. His face cries, Please! How can I stop this, change this, make it different? I can’t stand it!
Jesus, amidst his agony, notices his beloved disciple. With the sins of the world piled upon him, Jesus regards John’s need. He relieves John by giving him an assignment. “Behold your mother!” (John 19:26–27). From the cross, Jesus gave John and Mary to each other. I hear him saying, “This, John, is what you can do for me now. Take care of my mother from this moment forward.”
Forever bonded by being with Jesus in his agony, and then later in his resurrection, John and Mary would live as family. While Mary seems to have withdrawn from the public eye, John would publish the story of Jesus with unique majesty. Imagine what it would have been like to pen, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) while the woman who birthed the Word sat at your table! When he wrote of Good Friday, I wonder if John recalled a look he exchanged with Mary the moment Jesus cried, “It is finished” (John 19:30). I try to feel the strange interplay of crushing defeat tinged with undying hope in this last moment. I marvel at the fierce, indefatigable love that impelled John to stay by the cross.
Mary, His Mother
Next, to consider Mary at the cross, I cast my thoughts all the way back to Christ’s presentation as an infant at the temple. The old man Simeon blessed the young family and said almost as a private word to Mary, “And a sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35). Mothers know many heart-stabs in the years of rearing a child. A mother’s love does not waver, even when her soul gets crushed by what her boy says, does, or experiences in the cruel world. But to lose a child! When the natural order is reversed, and the mother must see her child depart before she does — oh, there are not adequate words for the sword-thrust to the soul. Mary knew it was coming, and still she stayed.
How can we imagine Mary, so near the cross, enduring the agony of Jesus? Artists offer help. In Rubens’s famous Coup de Lance, Mary buries her face in John’s shoulder, turning away from her boy’s body even as she stays close by. She can’t look, but she can’t leave. Other artists have depicted her in a full swoon following Christ’s last breath — overcome with sadness. Paintings and sculptures following in the footsteps of Michelangelo’s Pieta imagine Mary cradling her son in her arms, hugging him against her, loving him just as fiercely after his body has expired. Considering all these, I wonder, Did Mary cling, somewhere down deep, to her son’s promise that this death would not be the end?
Look and Love
Imaginatively standing with John and Mary by the cross at Golgotha, I enter the scene more viscerally than I usually do. I feel the sorrow and the courage as I look through their eyes. They stayed with him, though each suffered acutely for such loyalty. Today we count them blessed. But still, I have to wonder on this Good Friday, Would I have stayed with Jesus?
I don’t know if I could have done it. But I am striving this year, through imagination, to stay with the distress and sorrow of that day — to stay as close to the cross as I can — until my heart overflows with renewed love for the Savior. I pray you will too.
