Was Jesus Lonely?

People were standing all around me on the day of my crucifixion, but only at a distance. The days that I wandered from city to city there were crowds of people shouting for me and when I came to Jerusalem this last time, people lined the streets and waved palms. Where did they go? They were like sheep scattered when a wolf arrives. “Every man for himself.” Where was Peter, my Rock?

I kept thinking about the name people called me from the time I was young: “Mamzer.” A mamzer is the name for a child born outside of wedlock. It comes from the Law, from Deuteronomy. It says that any child conceived outside of a recognized marriage is “mamzer” and is prohibited from worshipping in the assembly. I snuck into a Synagogue one day when my parents were at the market in the neighboring town. Those people didn’t know I was a “mamzir”. But everybody in Nazareth knew it. They teased me with the name “mamzer”. I couldn’t even play with them. And the law says that if I ever had children, that they would be “mamzer” too. That is part of the reason I never even thought about getting married and having children. Who would want their children to go through what I did? Before my crucifixion soldiers spit on me and teased me. It was just like I was eight again being called “mamzer.” You may wonder how I endured that feeling of loneliness at the time of my death.

You may not know, because the Gospel writers didn’t write about it, but my dad died when I was a teenager. Joseph, my step-father, was a “tecktoon”—what your scholars have often called a “carpenter”. Really, we were construction workers, not carpenters like the cabinet-makers you sometimes imagine. We didn’t have wood for such things. When I was young dad had to leave family farming and walk five miles to the town of Sepphoris on a construction site started by the local governor Herod Antipas. Huge project. When I was twelve, I left home to work with him. Eventually we just stayed in Sepphoris in a work camp similar to the shacks where your modern day migrant workers stay. Construction work was dangerous. Guys were hurt and killed every day. Dad died when I was seventeen. I didn’t go home. I kept working for my family. So you see I left home when I was very young. I learned how to survive without family when I was pretty young. That is why one day, when my followers came to get me telling me that my mom and brothers were in town I pointed to my friends and said “These are my mother and brothers—however joins me in this mission, these are my family.”

Was I a just a drifter, a loaner? A drifter, yes. A loaner? Not at all. I love people and befriended everyone with whom I came in contact. They became my “family.” So at the time of my death, my heart was so open to people that everyone standing there was my family. Even the Roman guard at the base of my cross. When you are a “mamzer,” an outcast, you make your own family. And of course you know I always experienced God as “My Daddy”. I had a loving Father and hundreds of brothers and sisters! So do you, my brothers and sisters.. In fact you may call me brother! I am your brother! You are in my family!