Family

(Scriptures: I Samuel 8:1-22, 2 Corinthians 4:1-18; 5:1 Mark 3:20-35)

I’d like to open this sermon by asking you to ponder a bit on the word “home” and what it means to you. When you think of the word “home”, what images come up? Perhaps the house you grew up in, the neighborhood where you grew up – for some of us – though not all - Bridesburg or somewhere else in the lower northeast. Perhaps images of mom in the kitchen making turkey for Thanksgiving, or images of dad or sisters or brothers or other family members. .Or if our memories of our families of origin are more ambivalent, perhaps the world “home” calls up images of the home we’ve made as adults, with a spouse or partner and maybe some kids. We can go on a vacation and have the time of our lives seeing unfamiliar sights, but at the end of it, we’re ready to go home.




Our culture has many sayings about home, some positive, some not so much. We hear that “home is where the heart is.” Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz said, “There’s no place like home.” Robert Frost wrote, in “Death of a Hired Man,” “Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.” On the other hand, the title of Thomas Wolfe’s 1940 book, “You Can’t Go Home Again”, reminds us that though we can return to the geography of our childhood, it may no longer resemble the nostalgic images of home we carry in our minds – and that there’s often little satisfaction to be found in trying to relive the past. Some who grow up in rural areas with minimal economic opportunities or cultural activities leave their villages for the big city, and never look back. While many cultures are accustomed to having two or three or even four generations living under one roof, in our culture, grown children are expected to leave mother and father to set up homes of their own, and adult children in their 40’s who have never left home may get funny looks if they talk with others about living at home with mom.



In our reading from Mark’s Gospel, we watch Jesus come home, after a whirlwind ministry tour, to a very mixed reception from his hometown. Having done numerous healings and exorcisms, selected his disciples, and spent some time with God in prayer, Jesus needs some time to chill out – so he’s homeward bound.



His return home prompts a variety of reactions. The crowds continue to follow him, hoping for healing and release from suffering. His family and neighbors, though, aren’t so impressed. They watched Jesus grow up, watched him help his father in the family carpentry business, and can’t imagine why all these people would want to follow Jesus around. And the things Jesus is saying these days – my, he’s gotten big for his britches. Or so the neighbors think. Actually, they think Jesus has lost his mind – become some crazed religious nut – and so they’re chasing him around with the proverbial big net to try to catch him and restrain him. Their reaction would be comical if it weren’t so typical –when one member of a family behaves in ways that beyond the norm and the others try to get that person back in line - and in some ways, so sad. Some visiting religious scholars from Jerusalem are even less impressed – they think Jesus is demon-possessed, and that what he’s doing is the devil’s work.



As tired – and probably annoyed with family and religious leaders alike – as he is, Jesus tries to use the confrontation as a teaching moment. First he tries to reason with the religious leaders: Why would Satan want to cast himself out of somebody. Why would Satan work against himself, work to defeat himself. As Jesus tells it, the accusation of the religious leaders doesn’t even make sense.



But then Jesus goes on to say something that has had ordinary believers tied up in knots of false guilt, and Bible scholars tied up in knots of confusion trying to explain the verse. “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.” An eternal sin….can never have forgiveness….wow! That’s a heavy statement to ponder. Lots of sincere Christians have lost lots of sleep wondering if some statement hollered in anger or some obscenity uttered in a time of stress constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit and therefore has them locked outside the pearly gates.



This is one of those statements where, I think, context is key. And what is the context? What Jesus had been doing through the power of the Holy Spirit, the religious leaders were attributing to Satan. And what had Jesus been doing – works of healing and especially of exorcism.



There are some words of comfort and of challenge to be found here. The comfort is, that blasphemy against the Holy Spirit – attributing the works of God to Satan – is not something most people are tempted to do. If we’re concerned that some action of ours constitutes blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, the fact that we’re concerned and seeking repentance pretty much rules out any possibility that we’re beyond forgiveness.



The challenge is that the very people who might be tempted to this sin are, ironically, a certain kind of religious person – the kind who think they have everything all figured out, who have all the answers, who make snap judgments about what God does and does not do, who are very quick to attribute unwelcome developments in their life and unwelcome actions of others to the work of Satan. Hear me carefully on this: You really, really don’t want to risk the possibility of taking something that God is doing and say it’s the work of the devil. You just don’t. This is why, when I’m asked about speaking in tongues or being slain in the spirit or other charismatic worship practices that are unfamiliar in our tradition, whether they are the devil’s work – why I refuse to give an across the board ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer. Do some people fake speaking in tongues – I’d imagine that some do. Is speaking in tongues a response to the work of the Holy Spirit – For some people, I’m sure it is, just as it was in New Testament times. Often, when we encounter some religious practice with which we’re unfamiliar and we’re not sure if it’s of God or not, the most honest response and the most faithful response is simply – “I don’t know.” Which is why I say “I don’t know” a lot, and am not afraid or ashamed to do so. The words “I don’t know” keep us humble, which is good for our spiritual development. Often it’s best, if we encounter a religious practice we can’t support, to just let it go and await developments. Sort of like the parable of the wheat and the weeds – in this world, we can’t always tell wheat and weeds apart, so we’re in no position to start yanking plants out of the ground or yanking people out of Christian fellowship willy-nilly. Or like the counsel of the rabbi Gamaliel in Acts: if it’s of men, it’ll eventually fall of its own weight, but if it’s of God, you don’t want to be found in opposition to God. The problem with the religious leaders who opposed Jesus is that they lacked humility, they weren’t willing to say “I don’t know” and leave Jesus alone; they in their pride had to be seen as having all the answers. And that was their downfall.

At that point, Mom and the family are outside the house where Jesus is teaching, and they ask those inside to let Jesus know that Mom and the family want to have a word with him. And let’s listen to Jesus’ response: in effect: “Who is my family? You (referring to those listening to him) are my family! Anyone who does God’s will is part of my family.

At this point, in the very traditional culture of Jesus’ time, and even in our culture, Jesus’ answer to the question “Who is my family?” may sound, to their ears and ours, as if Jesus himself uttered blasphemy against prevailing ideas of family. In Jesus’ culture, family would have included not only parents and children, but grandparents (and great grandparents if folks lived long enough), aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, nephews – the whole extended family. It would have been a large grouping linked by blood and biology, but with boundaries - those not so linked were not family. American culture puts much less value on the ties of extended family, so in our culture, family is mom, dad, two or so kids – and that’s it. To underline this point, I included in your bulletin a photo of a statue in Conshohocken, where I live, in honor of “The Family”. This statue, created by one J. Pavone and commissioned by an Italian-American veterans organization, virtually turns the American model of mom, dad, and two kids into an idol to be venerated.

They say that “blood is thicker than water”, but there are times when blood ties aren’t enough to carry the day. Our reading from I Samuel tells of such a time. Faithful Samuel has been judge over Israel for many years, from his youth until he was old and grey. In his old age Samuel appointed his sons as judges – hoping they would carry on after Samuel had passed from this life - but the sons were corrupt. While the sons shared Samuel’s bloodline, they didn’t share Samuel’s values or the same priorities. Because of the sons’ corruption, the people asked Samuel to anoint a king for them. Jesus said that “A house divided cannot stand”, and in the case of Samuel’s house, his children’s rejection of Samuel’s priorities led to the end of his family line of judges.

In saying “Anyone who does God’s will is part of my family”, Jesus is lifting up a new, broader vision of family, a vision of family defined, not by blood, but by a shared commitment to doing God’s will. In effect, Jesus’ followers become his family, a family of choice, we might say, in contrast with his family of origin.

What might this look like? One comparison arises out of the tragedy of our society’s response to HIV/AIDS in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, before the advent of life-prolonging treatments. Many of the early cases of AIDS were among gay men, and society’s revulsion against homosexuals, combined with its fear of a new, mysterious, fatal disease led many families to disown their gay brothers and sons, to throw them out on the street just at a time when they were dying and vulnerable and in need of support. Out of necessity, many of those thrown out of their homes found that their circles of friends became their new families, families of choice who would look in on them and care for them when their families of origin refused to do so, who would wait by their bedsides as they became sicker and stand by their graves when they died. For many rejected by families of origin, as their bodies – their outer natures - were wasting away, the support of friends, of their families of choice, renewed their spirits day by day.

It’s not that Jesus turned his back on his mom and brothers and sisters. From John’s Gospel, we know that Mary was present at Jesus’ crucifixion, and Jesus commended her to the care of John, the beloved disciple. It was perhaps in that tender moment amid the brutality of the crucifixion that Jesus invited his family of origin to join and become part of his family of choice. We also know that James, the brother of Jesus, was a leader in the early church in Jerusalem. So it’s important to say that Jesus did not reject his family of origin – but it’s also important to say that Jesus was not limited by it.

It has been said, jokingly, that the family ties that bind can also be the ties that gag. Jesus calls us to expand our field of vision beyond the cozy, sometimes cramped perspective of our own households – and certainly to resist the call of many in the church to turn the ideal of the family into an idol to be worshipped – but rather, to follow Jesus’ example in welcoming all who do God’s will as family. May we at Emanuel Church, in the words of Paul, be conformed to Christ’s image, so that we may become members of the large family of faith, of which Jesus is the first-born. Amen.