Listen to the audio of today’s Reflection:
https://soundcloud.com/hapearce/reflection-for-october-30-2023
Matthew 12:46-50
Jesus’ Mother and Brothers
46 While Jesus was still talking to the crowd, his mother and brothers stood outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Your mother and brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.”
48 He replied to him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 Pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”
This passage can seem a little troubling, because it seems to show Jesus being disrespectful and dismissive to his mother and brothers. They show up where he’s teaching, and Jesus seems to leave them at a distance, instead of having them shown in.
But it seems to me that the point of the story isn’t that Jesus rejected or dismissed his family. If you look close, the passage doesn’t really say Jesus sent his family away or that he refused to see them. I’m thinking he just said something to his followers first.
I can’t help thinking what we have here is a case of Jesus seeing the arrival of his mother and brothers as a “teachable moment” – as a chance to make a point to those who were gathered around listening to him. And the point he was making, it seems to me, is one that we usually include in our liturgy for the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper: that everyone who follows Jesus is adopted as a member of God’s own family.
People tend to read this story as though it’s about Jesus excluding his biological family, but it seems to me it’s actually about including those who follow him and live by his teachings. “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven,” Jesus said, “is my brother and sister and mother.”
It seems significant that God chose to use family relationships to symbolize the nature of our relationship with him, and with one another. God could have chosen to describe us as his employees, which would have suggested that our relationship with him was primarily economic. So the point of our relationship with God would have been to earn something. We do something for God, and we earn something in return. And personally, I suspect that quite a few people who call themselves Christians actually do think this way about their relationship with God – they try to “be good” and so they earn a place in heaven. But Jesus doesn’t use that kind of economic language to represent our relationship with God.
And for that matter, God could also have used the metaphor of soldiers for those of us who follow Jesus. If he had, our relationship with him would have been as people willing to kill and die for him. And there are some people who consider themselves Christians who really like that vision of their relationship with God. But God didn’t use that kind of metaphor, either – he didn’t say, “Call me ‘General’.”
Instead, God invites us to call him ‘Papa.’ And in today’s passage, speaking to us in the person of Jesus, he says that anyone who does his will is family to him.
Obviously, this metaphor sounds different to people who come from dysfunctional families. But presumably, Jesus intended us to think of healthy families – of families as they’re intended to be. And when you think about that, there are some powerful aspects to this metaphor.
In a healthy family, the children are nurtured to grow into people with their own gifts and characteristics. They’re not intended to become cookie-cutter versions of one another – or of their parents. A healthy family doesn’t think in terms of dictating every move of its members. Instead, it tries to instill in them a set of shared values, then encourages them to live out those values.
And I think you could make the case that it’s within healthy families that we most clearly see grace operating in the world. Healthy families are the closest most of us ever come to getting ‘unconditional love’ from other people. We’re loved because of who we are, not because we’ve earned that love. Grace, as the Bible uses the word, means “un-earned favor,” and most of us encounter that grace in our families more than anywhere else.
Most of us are also more likely to find true forgiveness in our families than anywhere else. In our emailed morning prayers each Friday, we use a version of the Lord’s Prayer based on scholarship into the Aramaic language Jesus spoke. And some scholars think that in the original Aramaic version of the Lord’s Prayer, what Jesus really taught the disciples to pray was, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those we love.” That seems closer to what Jesus actually had in mind in teaching us the Lord’s Prayer than the common wording. I say that because the way we traditionally pray the Lord’s Prayer has us praying only for the amount of forgiveness we earn by forgiving others. And the idea of earning forgiveness seems inconsistent with the other teachings of Jesus – it seems inconsistent with grace. But forgiveness given out of love is an important ingredient in the glue that holds a healthy family together.
Following Jesus isn’t just about warm feelings. But discipleship isn’t meant to be totally without feeling, either. Jesus said that he intends his followers to share in his joy – and we can experience that joyful feeling in large part from sharing in the love of the holy family that is the Trinity. I think that’s one of the things this passage communicates.
But I don’t think that’s all. I think this passage is also meant to say something to us about how we relate to one another in the community of faith. We can get so wrapped up in our own theological opinions and agendas that we treat one another in ways that no healthy family would accept. So this passage should probably serve as a reminder that our Master expects us to offer one another the grace and freedom and forgiveness that are the hallmarks of a healthy family – just as he offered those things to each of us, in accepting us as his brothers and sisters.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you that you have welcomed us into the joy of your own family circle. Help us to live in such a way that our thankfulness is evident to everyone we meet, and in a way that makes them want to experience that family feeling, as well. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
(The other readings for today are Psalms 59 and 60; Jeremiah 45:1-5; and Revelation 1:4-20. Our readings come from the NIV Bible, as posted on Biblica.com, the website of the International Bible Society.)
Recent Comments