Just one big family of God, warts and all!
Second Sunday after Pentecost, June 6, 2021
Genesis 3:8-15 • 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1 • Mark 3:20-35
We don’t often get a chance to see Jesus with his family do we? They don’t usually show up in the Gospel stories. We of course have Mary and Joseph at the time of Jesus’ birth, and of his naming and presentation in the temple. We hear of Joseph taking the family to Egypt for safety. There is the story of Jesus, aged twelve, being left behind in the temple. We know Mary was close by at his crucifixion, and that Simon Peter takes Mary into his home after Jesus’ death. In the book of Acts we hear of Jesus’ brother James, who takes an important leadership role in the early church in Jerusalem.
When I went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land three years ago, we stayed a couple of nights in Nazareth, in northern Galilee. Nazareth, where Jesus and his brothers and sisters grew up. I had many powerful experiences on that trip, one of the most moving was being led down into the cellar of the Sisters of Nazareth’s Convent, through the remnants of a Byzantine cathedral to the excavated cave of a first century home. No ordinary home, indeed. Whose else could it have been but the home of Jesus. It’s hard to imagine there was another first century family in Nazareth whose home would have been preserved in such a way.
I like thinking of Jesus with his family. We are very used to hearing stories of his ministry. We are accustomed to hearing of Jesus traveling through Galilee, preaching to large and small groups, healing as he went. We know that he was accompanied by his faithful disciples who had left their families and work to learn from him, and support him. It’s easy to forget that Jesus has his own family! Some of that is intentional: theologians over the centuries believed that it would diminish Jesus’ divinity if his humanity was brought up in any way. Mary had to be a virgin, Joseph needed to disappear, and Mary’s womb couldn’t possibly be contaminated by any other merely human babies.
But today in our Gospel passage, Jesus’ family show up. While it doesn’t make it clear, Jesus and his disciples must be in Nazareth. It sounds like it was a pretty crazy scene. There was that time if you remember when Jesus ,at the beginning of his ministry nearly gets thrown off the cliff at Nazareth because his audience is incensed at his presumption. After all, they know him. Who does he think he is? Things don’t seem to be going much better on this visit: has he gone out of his mind? His family arrive ‘to restrain him’. That doesn’t go well either. He is told, and retorts, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’
There are a number of occasions in the gospels where Jesus responds harshly to any claims of family. Responses that can be challenging for us to hear. And while, not everyone has had the experience of a nourishing, sustaining, loving family, family connections have meaning and are not to be discarded lightly. I don’t however believe Jesus is asking this of us.
Interestingly, in the early dangerous years of the church, it indeed was the case that a Christian convert might have to completely abandon their family. Either the whole household would convert, and be a closed unit trusting there would be no betrayals that would lead to certain death, or an individual would leave to join a Christian household where they would be safer.
We are fortunate that in this country at least, life as a Christian is not so dangerous!
The lesson we can consider though is that the love and connection that Jesus is living and preaching goes beyond the circle of family and friends: way, way, way beyond. That the work of raising God’s kingdom of love and inclusion is ours to live and do, as is the work of casting down ‘Satan’s kingdom of cruelty and exclusion’.
I have been much heartened this week as I’m sure you have been by the centennial commemorations of the Tulsa Massacre. A horrific tragedy, made all the more so by the attempts to obliterate any records of the event. That the centennial could be commemorated with so much publicity, and a presidential visit is a sign of the changing times. We cannot undo past violence, but acknowledging the horror is a vital step in the healing process.
Our collect for today uses the phrase ‘life’s distortions’, and aren’t they the source of all the cruelties and violence in our world, whether to other living creatures or to all of creation: that there are those among us who have a distorted view of the supposed superiority of their own rights and power?
Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom, the Kin-dom of God, is all about how, despite our superficial differences, we all belong to the one Family of God. Perhaps the biggest distortion in our lives has always been that is that there exists a ‘we’ and a ‘them’. This is not to say there are no differences between us: even in the closest family, there are differences. But that which connects us is of far greater significance.
It’s not easy work. We know we have the capacity to empathize and grieve with victims of violence and injustice. We can feel with them the urge to stand up to their oppressors. We know all too well the pain of loss and injury. However we also need to recognize that each of us has the capacity to be an oppressor. No, we’re probably not making active policy decisions against another group. But aren’t all of us in one way or another taking unjust advantage of others or our environment? We could start with our tacet acceptance of the unjust treatment of most of the farm workers in this country. And perhaps what’s most important about that recognition, is that even we, trying to be good people, have things in common with those whose actions offend us. Each one of us has the choice to abuse any power we might think we have, or not.
Jesus invites us to recognize that we are all in this together, all capable of abusing our power, and all with the potential to be victims. It is only by living into the reality of our commonality can we begin the work of casting down this evilly distorted kingdom of cruelty and exclusion. And Jesus tells us that the only way we can do that is by choosing to align our lives with the will, and I would add, the love of God: no easy task, but is there a choice?
To close in the words of this morning’s collect:
Difficult God,
whom the world judges mad or worse:
reveal our life’s distortions posing as normality enlarge our sense of family
beyond those close to us;
and cast down Satan’s kingdom
of cruelty and exclusion
through Jesus Christ, the one who is accused. Amen.