Title: Small Mission, Big Mission
Contents
At the moment when Jesus was crucified and died, some people who loved Jesus were there. “Mary the mother of Jesus, her aunt, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene”. And there was another important person, the apostle John. While the other disciples ran away when Jesus was crucified, John the Apostle was witnessing the site of Jesus' death on Golgotha Hill.
The Lord, who was crucified, left seven words and died. The text is the third verse among them, and he gives two verses. The first was to say to his mother Mary, “Look, your son”, and the other was to the apostle John, “Behold, your mother.”
There were brothers of Jesus, but they were not there, only the disciple John. John may have trusted and entrusted you with taking good care of your mother Mary, but it seems that he entrusted it for John.
John, who was entrusted by Jesus, had a mission given to him to live with Mary, the mother of Jesus. According to tradition, there is no report of John doing much of his ministry after that. However, he lived with Mary, the mother of Jesus, for a long time. So, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the apostle John did not preach the gospel actively like the other disciples, did not establish a church, and merely took care of an elderly man.
Wasn't the Apostle John receiving Jesus' mother Mary and receiving a good influence through Mary? Who is Maria? Even if it is not the ideology of worshiping Mary like Catholicism, if a woman was enough to conceive and give birth to Jesus, what would be the depth of his spirituality and how rich would his personality be? While living with such a Mary all her life, how much must Mary have prayed for the apostle John and how many good counsel must have been given? It is undoubtedly true that the most important turning point in life that made John John was the life he lived with Mary.
When John was called to be a disciple, Jesus gave him the nickname “Boanerge”. It means “son of thunder”. How impatient would you say you are the son of thunder? While serving Mary throughout his life, John became an apostle whose fiery temper was cut off and who showed the richness of his personality, so he was given the nickname “Apostle of Love.”
An apostle who had experienced what love was, and received a lot of love from Jesus, and an apostle who realized what true love was while serving Jesus' mother, Mary, while the corners were cut and polished throughout his life. An apostle of love who was reborn as a great apostle while writing the Gospel of John and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd books of John, and finally being exiled to the island of Patmos and writing the Revelation...
Who can say that the mission of serving Jesus' mother, Mary, is small? According to human judgment, the mission of being beaten and stoned in the field of the gospel and rising up again to witness the gospel and build the church seems like a much greater mission, but the mission to live well with Mary is by no means a small mission. is telling us What is the big mission and what is the small mission? There is no big or small mission. You only know the given mission as valuable, and whether you are loyal or disloyal to that mission - that is all.