“Family Values”
Jesus said: “Who are my mother and my brothers?”
In an election year especially we hear a lot of talk about “family values.” It’s a bit like motherhood and apple pie: everyone’s in favor of good family values. Defining that term is a bit more difficult; certainly more difficult than defining either motherhood or apple pie.
By the way, the next time you hear someone mention Biblically-based family values ask them if they mean the polygamy, the misogyny, the abuse of women including wives and daughters, the treatment of all children as the property of the parents or perhaps the parts about brothers killing brothers or sons waging war against their fathers.
Sometimes we talk about “functional” and “dysfunctional” families. I once saw a t-shirt in the window of a bookstore in Tampa Airport. I have often regretted not buying that t-shirt. It had a picture of a solitary person sitting in a large and empty auditorium with a banner above the stage that declared “First Annual Meeting of the Functional Families of America.”
These days we can’t even agree on what constitutes a family. I think that we would all agree that there is no such thing in reality as the “perfect family.” In the best families you will find people struggling to do good and be good, strengthening themselves by listening to each other, paying attention to other families, and encouraging each other to be fair, honest, and kind. The key word there is “struggling.” I guess that’s not a bad list of decent family values though, and even a single parent can strive to do those things.
I live in a community that probably as recently as just one generation ago defined family as a large extended group of relatives all living within fairly close geographic proximity to one another, possibly on land that had been owned by “the family” for several generations. Now the families often must choose between helping their children carve out a life for themselves away from the communities of their birth and trying to maintain that same sense of multi-generational emotional closeness and support that geographic proximity made so much easier.
I think that most of the population of this nation has been facing that reality for the past 50-60 years, but even in rural Minnesota it will be the dominant situation in no more than another 10 years. If you want to trace the loss of the multi-generational family unit in rural America don’t look at the general population statistics: look at the school populations over the past 50 years. They continue to shrink yet today and if and when new growth comes in that population it will most likely come from an influx of “outsiders.”
As is often and appropriately the case, Jesus turned many popular notions of His day upside down. Even the idea of the family didn’t go unscathed. To His listeners the question “Who are my mother and my brothers?” would have appeared pretty simple to answer.
As is always the case, the context of this story is very important if we are to understand it. The story opens by saying: “21When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” Jesus’ birth family had been hearing some pretty strange stories about Him and His behavior. They thought that maybe He was losing it. Jesus had been performing remarkable healings. Great crowds had gathered, and everyone was talking about him. The Bible says he was so busy there was no time for meals.
The scribes were saying that Jesus' power to heal came from demons, therefore he must be possessed. His family is understandably worried. Apparently, his family didn't know that the power of the Spirit of God was the power that Jesus’ called upon. It is sad that his mother and brothers, who should have been closest to him, do not understand.
So when the crowd expects that Jesus will listen to and respect His mother and brothers, Jesus says His true family are those who do understand and do the will of God. That is a radical pronouncement in a society in which blood kinship and birth order and gender determined all that there was to know about a person. Even today I have been told that the first question a stranger may be asked here in Minnesota is “Where are you from?” and what the question means is what part of northern Europe is your family from and to whom are you related in this community?
Jesus is threatening the most foundational structure of society, the human family. Jesus is saying that blood ties mean nothing, nor do family values. According to Jesus what really unites us is spirit and truth.
The social and economic realities of the Twenty-First Century have blown apart the multi-generational family that could live close to one another on the old family homestead. I recently read a meditation in the little devotional booklet “Upper Room” that addressed this issue: “Without grandparents, aunts, and uncles close by, children have fewer close role models and less of a buffer from the stresses their parents cope with. The sense of being part of a large network of caring people is lost. Yet a basic yearning of all humans is to belong, to find an anchor in a group identity. … These realities call believers to work with God to create a new kind of family … [with] roots that go much deeper than any roots our biological families could ever create.” 1
Do you recall the last baptism in which you participated either as a member of the baptismal family or as a member of the congregation? In baptism, you – the congregation – acknowledge the adoption of the child into your household, that is, the household of God. We pray, “Help all who have been baptized in your name to live in peace and unity as sisters and brothers in the household of faith, and to serve others in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Our real family, as Jesus said is, “Whoever does the will of God.” Everyone seated in this sanctuary is a member of God’s eternal and infinite family. Jesus isn’t bad-mouthing the existence or the usefulness of the biological family. What He is saying is what He said so many times. He has come to bring about something new. He has come to usher us into the family of God, and it is to God’s family that we owe a primary allegiance.
Unfortunately we remain human. Being a part of God’s family is not any easier than being a part of our human family and the stakes are much higher. At its very best, God’s family – and this congregation is a unit of God’s family – gives shelter and nourishment to one another and teaches and supports one another in the pursuit of God’s will. AT ITS VERY BEST. We have the opportunity to love and accept one another as God has loved and accepted us and to show the outside world the style of living that God wants for us all.
Sometimes we fail to meet that challenge. Sometimes we fail to love one another. Sometimes we gleefully spread rumors (what the Bible calls “false witness”) about one another. Sometimes we refuse to speak the truth about the universal nature of human failings, and we refuse to acknowledge the truth of God’s unfailing love. The model that comes from God is that if we fail, we speak the truth about our failure and God helps to pick us up and start again. That is how life in God’s family is supposed to look.
And the good news, the wonderful news is that God through Jesus always offers us a chance to start again, to remain active in God’s family. And our family – all of you – can help one another by reminding one another that we all do fail every now and then but the promise of God’s faithful love and forgiveness remains new for us every day. Reminding one another of that may be the most important responsibility of a family member. We need to support each other and that means telling each other about God’s love and what it means for our lives.
In his poem “The Death of the Hired Man” Robert Frost wrote: “Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” Unfortunately that doesn’t always turn out to be the case in human family structures. Sometimes parts of God’s family – some congregations – forget that as well. If you would continue to understand and do the will of God – the hallmarks of God’s family – then at the very least you need to remember that following God’s own model we must to take one another in.
No matter what we do, we cannot break our tie to God’s family because that tie is not rooted in anything that we have done or will ever do. It is rooted in the love and commitment of God for us, and God has told us that He will never give up on us. As that little article in Upper Room puts it: “When we set our hearts to love as God loves, the Holy Spirit strengthens us so we can refuse to give up on one another. We can choose to claim our family name, which is love.”2
Who is my mother or my sisters or my brothers? “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Amen.
Notes:
1 Redding, Mary Lou; A New Family; The Upper Room, May-June 2012; P. 40.
2 Ibid.; P. 41.
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