The beloved doesn’t know so he falls back to ask.
Now Jesus could simply answer the question, but this is something he does not often do in the Gospels. Instead Jesus plays a kind of game with the beloved.
But this game by no means gives esoteric knowledge to the beloved. He knows a short time before anyone else the identity of the betrayer.6 This foreknowledge scarcely constitutes a theological “big deal.” Indeed the only importance which the narrator attributes to the identity of the betrayer is that he is “one of the twelve,” something already announced at 6:70. The interaction between Jesus and the man he loves simply underscores the intimacy of Jesus’ relation to the beloved. Jesus tells him a kind of secret, but one that is unimportant. The secret is simply an expression of intimate affection, precisely the sort of thing that Jesus could share with his beloved without compromising the basic unity of this band of comrades.
Jesus discloses important concepts in the discourses that follow: the meaning of love, the destiny of Jesus and the followers, the role of the Paraclete, and so on. These topics are certainly weighty, but none of these are directed to the beloved. In these matters, he remains on exactly the same footing as the others. Jesus does not play favorites when it comes to theologically important matters.
The introduction of the beloved makes clear that Jesus’ love for him is different from the intimate friendship that characterizes his relationship to all other members of this band. This love for the beloved is expressed in physical intimacy among friends. The least forced reading of the text is that in addition to loving his disciples, Jesus also had a beloved for whom he was the lover.
Acknowledgment
The beloved is not singled out again until Jesus’ death on the cross. He is not identified as one who participates in the dialogue with Jesus concerning where Jesus is going (13:36ff), nor is he singled out from among the other disciples when Jesus discourses on the nature of love and unity with him, nor is he singled out at the scene of Jesus’ betrayal in the Garden, nor does he seem to be identified as one of the disciples who witness Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (18:15ff).7 When our attention is next drawn to him, Jesus is already on the cross.
The passages where we are reminded of the presence of the beloved are as significant as are the passages where we are not. He has no special role in terms of the handing on of Jesus’ teachings; he is exactly on a par with all the others. His “specialness” lies elsewhere. Nor is he ever the only witness to any of the important events of this fateful twenty-four hours of Jesus’ passion.
Even here at the cross he is not the only witness. He is present with a number of women.
Four of Jesus’ followers witness his execution: His mother, his aunt, Mary Magdalene, and the beloved (19:25). Jesus’ aunt is not mentioned before or after. His mother has been associated with him before (2:1–5). Mary Magdalene has not been mentioned earlier but will appear subsequently (20:1–18).
John’s narrative of the cross is quite different from what we find in the other Gospels. Here we have three sayings of Jesus that are not found in the other Gospels. Two of these are quite brief. One, “I thirst,” is treated as a fulfillment of Scripture. The last (“it is accomplished”) serves to designate the end of Jesus’ mission as well as the achieving of that mission’s goal.
But before we come to these sayings so weighted with theological significance for the author and reader of this text, we find something quite remarkable. Jesus is said to notice the presence of the beloved and of his own mother. He addresses them each by directing them to one another: “Woman, behold your son,” and to the beloved: “Behold your mother.”
At a subsequent point, we will have opportunity to develop at greater length the question of the relation between Jesus and his mother in this text.8 Here it should be noted that she is identified by the narrator as Jesus’ “mother” but is addressed by Jesus only as “woman.” This shift in terminology also agrees with what occurs in the earlier story of the wedding in Cana (2:4). Jesus uses for Mary exactly the same form of address that he uses for other women that he encounters: the Samaritan woman (4:21), the woman taken in adultery (8:10), and Mary of Magdala (20:15). That is, Jesus is not at all given to a kind of “Mothers’ Day” sentimentality in the Gospel of John or, still less, in the other Gospels.9
But what is the true meaning of this scene at the cross? Some imagine that Jesus deflects attention from himself here in order to tell his followers that they are to care for one another. Whatever the merits of this edifying reflection, they have no basis in this text. For if the author wanted to make this point, leaving out Jesus’ aunt and Mary of Magdala hardly seems appropriate. Surely a simpler approach would be to say to the group as a whole: Look after one another.
If we cannot read this episode either as an edifying reflection on the care of the disciples for one another or as depicting Jesus’ sonly sentimentality, what does it mean?
If we assume that Jesus and the beloved are lovers, the action becomes a transparent acknowledgment of the special relationship between Jesus and the beloved, an acknowledgment that has the same effect as a kind of betrothal. Our interpretation would be easier if Jesus had singled out, say, Mary the Magdalene instead: “Woman behold your daughter,” and to Mary Magdalene, “Behold your mother.” Had Mary of Magdala been depicted as having a particularly close relationship to Jesus characterized by physical intimacy, we would read the text quite easily. Because Mary of Magdala is Jesus’ lover, she is therefore his mother’s daughter (in-law). Especially does this relationship come to the fore with the death of the son of the one and “husband” of the other. In such a case for the sake of the dead son, the mother takes as her daughter the one who had been closest to him in life. And the lover takes the husband’s mother as her own mother. That is, they adopt one another. We already possess a beautiful model for this sort of relationship in the story of Jesus’ ancestress, Ruth, and her mother-in-law, Naomi. That story of love and loyalty between two women has even become a staple of marriage ceremony texts (Ruth 1:16–17) in spite of the same-sex love that the story actually depicts.
The mutual adoption of mother-in-law and daughter-in law would be the natural reading of the text if Mary of Magdala were the other. But she is not. Instead the man Jesus loved is now placed in an adoptive relationship with Jesus’ mother. So why should we permit the feature of the disciple’s gender to hide the plain sense of the narrative?
The plain sense of this episode is to buttress our hypothesis that Jesus is to be understood as having a lover or, in the more precise terminology of antiquity, as being the lover of a beloved. The relationship is depicted by the text as a homoerotic one, which is here acknowledged as entailing a loyalty that has consequences even beyond the death of Jesus.
We should notice that the relationship of adoption that Jesus indicates is one of mutuality. His mother and the man he loves adopt one another on account of the love they apparently have for Jesus. The man does not simply adopt the mother in order to look after her and comfort her in her grief. The reverse could also be true. The mother is to “mother” the beloved. The character of this adoption makes clear that we are not simply dealing with a concern for the mother (as in Mothers’ Day rhetoric) but a concern for the beloved.
This aspect of the episode is strengthened when we recall that the way of identifying this disciple stresses the fact that Jesus loves him. Thus this scene should be read as underlining not Jesus’ love for his mother (which is suggested nowhere in this or any other Gospel) but Jesus’ love for his beloved. The mother’s role and responsibility is expressed first: “Woman: behold your son.” Only then does Jesus relate the responsive role of the son: “Behold your mother.”
Jesus’
