Sons and Mothers

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day about what it meant to say that Jesus was like us in all things but sin, when he said, quite unexpectedly, that Jesus cannot have been without sin because he was disrespectful towards his mother.

What my friend had in mind was the passage from scripture where someone told Jesus, while he was preaching to the crowd, that his mother and his brothers were outside, wanting to speak to him, and where Jesus is said to have replied by asking 'Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?' and then to have gone on to have answered his own question bt sating that 'whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother' (Mt.13.47-50, cf. Mk.3.31-25, Lk.8.19-21).

Now this, my friend said, was a very evident breach of the Sixth Commandent whereby we are commanded to honour our fathers and our mothers (Ex.20:12, Deut 5.16): Jesus, he said,was acting towards his mother in a disrespectful way by refusing her admittance to his presence, and by putting before her others who had less claim on his duty and to his attention.

My friend is a jewish convert to episcopalianism, and I was naturally struck by what he said: everybody knows of the powerful bond between jewish sons and their mothers, and I remembered, too, that there are other passages in scripture where uneasy words passed between Jesus and his mother.

There is, for example, the occasion on which the twelve year-old Jesus went missing and was found after three days in the Temple debating with the masters of the Law. 'My son!' says Mary, 'why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been at our wits end looking for you!' To which Jesus replies 'Why have you been looking? Didn't you know that I must be about my Father's business.' (Lk.2.41-50).

A contemporary sensibility will be particularly struck by what seems the unnecessarily pointed contrast between Mary's reference to her husband, Joseph, and Jesus' use of the same word to refer to an altogether different 'father'.

Similarly, at the time of his first miracle at the wedding feast at Cana, Jesus' initial response to his mother seems, at the very least, to lack delicacy: 'My son,' says Mary,'they have no wine'. 'What is that to you and me, woman?' says Jesus, 'my hour is not yet come.' (Jn.2.4). This too seems unnaturally harsh, although the effect is palliated by the fact that Mary takes her son's utterance completely in her stride, instructs the caters to do what Jesus says, and then watches as he changes the water into a wine of better quality than that which had previously been served - to the amazement of the cynical old Master of Ceremonies.

That Jesus was mindful of the significance of the Sixth Commandment is proved by the emphatic way in which he referred to it when dealing with the rich young man who asked him what he must do to win eternal life (Mt.17-18, Mk.10.17-19), and the anger with which he referred to a legal device whereby children might avoid supporting their parents by claiming to dedicate to God what might otherwise have been paid for that purpose ('Corban' - Mtt.15.3-6, Mk.7.9-13).

What then, lies behind Jesus' apparently dismissive treatment of his mother in the various contexts cited above?

Jesus spoke of the greatest of the commandments as enjoining us to love God, and to love our neighbours and said that on those two commandments 'hang all the law and the prophets.' (Mt.22.40). Faced with a conflict of duties, the priorities are clear: 'I have come' says Jesus ' not to bring peace, but a sword' and whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me' (Mt.10,34,37).

It is only necessary to think about some of the manifestations of family loyalty in Mediterranean culture to see how easily the prioritisation of family feeling above all other claims can become a dangerous form of idolatory, and how it can be used to sanction the neglect not just of the greatest commandments, but of the lesser, too.

Yet our duties to God and our duties to our families are not, or should not, be in conflict with one another: it is worth remembering that one of the last things which Jesus did before her died upon the cross was to commend his mother to the care of St. John saying to her 'Woman, this is your son' and, to the disciple, 'This is your mother' ( Jn.19.26), and that in making provision for his mother, soon to be without a son, and his disciple, soon to be without a beloved master, he showed in practice the love and forethought which is so primary, if abstract. a characteristic of God as represented in the Books of the Law (Ex.22.22, Deut.10.18).