delivered on 4 October 2009
by Rev. Dr John Evans
Early in the service of baptism, Jeff and Sue were asked the question, what do you want of God’s Church for Lucy? Their answer was: “We ask that she be baptised into the faith and family of Jesus Christ.”
Among the many dimensions of baptism, baptism is a sign, a symbol that Lucy is also joining the church. She is being baptised into the faith and family of Jesus Christ. The family of the church.
Today I want to reflect on families. . . and indeed what does it mean to come from a particular family, and what it might mean to be part of the family of the Church.
The word “family” has however, become problematic. Families themselves have become problematic. The current statistic is that in Australia 43% of all marriages will end in divorce. There would seem to be a lot of fractured families within our community and also in the church.
And then the word “family” gets used by sects and other extreme groups. They mockingly, or perhaps deliberately, call themselves “family”. In very recent times we have been reminded again of the Charles Manson’s murderous group known as “The family”. Particularly more sectarian churches like to give themselves a “family” title.
Families have also become politicised. One of the most powerful conservative religious lobby groups in the US is Focus on the Family. In Australia we now have a political party Family First.
Even in the church we find “family talk “difficult, and perhaps rightly so. We used to enthusiastically display on our notice boards – Family Service at 9.30 am – or whatever. But how did that impact on the widowed, or the divorced, the single, or the gay? I think it was Hugh Mackay, the social commentator, who observed that a family had just become any group of individuals who shared the same wheelie bin.
Families have become problematic – however, for all of that they are still enduring. What is it that makes them tick? Is it just the commitment of marriage and blood – or is there something else?
Our gospel reading today is also indirectly about families – our own families, and the family of the church. Jesus is again in conflict over his understanding of the law: a perennial theme of his ministry. This time it was some Pharisees who sought to trap him. The topic, the hot topic, was divorce.
At the time there was a raging debate on whether there should be a stringent reading or a more liberal reading of the law. Was divorce to be easy and, I might say, just for the man? Or was it to be hedged around with great conditions and restrictions?
As with all these encounters over the law, like about dietary laws, or questions of Sabbath observance, Jesus saw the legalistic approach unhelpful. He always wanted a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. What was really important was how one, within one’s heart, related with God.
So again here, with regard to this particular legal controversy over divorce, Jesus turns the question, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” on its head. He pushes past the law; past any renderings one may make of the law, say in Deuteronomy 24, and on to the story of Creation in Genesis 1 and 2; onto the ideal of what it means to be human. He comes to what marriage is about, and not just when one can divorce. So he says:
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
These were quite subversive words about the very nature of our humanity. They were words which offered hope, especially to women, in the face of arid legalism of the then divorce law. Sadly, of course, these words themselves also became arid legalism. He came to be interpreted [as meaning] there could be no divorce whatsoever.
However, I believe Jesus certainly saw that there had to be more than just “the covenant of marriage” and blood relationships for there to be appropriate, God given, family life. Something more was required than just the bald assertion “we are family” – there is the marriage, there are the kids, and that is just the way it is.
Early in Mark’s gospel, at the start of his ministry and his burgeoning fame, Jesus has a troubling encounter with his own family. To begin with, his family thought he had gone stark raving mad, all of this healing and his teaching. They had come to retrieve him. So let’s take up the story at the end of Chapter 3 of Mark.
“Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you.” And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
This is not to say his family — Mary included — was not “doing the will of God”. However, a family and the understanding of “family” required deeper understanding of each other and, in turn, their relationship with God. Simple blood ties were not a sufficient basis for all relationships.
This is in fact shown more dramatically in readings that come from Matthew and Luke. These passages are particularly jarring to our sensibilities of what is family and what in fact is the Christian ideal. So we have Matthew 10:34:
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Blood relations are attacked here because they do not give life, and necessarily show the love that Jesus shows towards us on the cross. What Jesus is saying is that his offer of new life can in fact be subverted, lost, by the dominance of family and culture.
You will notice in this reading the division of which Jesus speaks is between the generations: a son against his father, a daughter and her mother, a daughter-in-law against a mother-in-law. All of these relations are power relations within a strict hierarchy of family life – within the patriarchy of the time. Families, and also gatherings of families into clans, were then the basic social structure. They were however, more like the mafia (whom we euphemistically call ‘the family’) than a mutually respecting and supporting group of people. They were full of obligations and responsibilities. Jesus is dramatically, even dangerously, calling such families oppressive and inimical to the will of God.
To overturn such a structure so close to your own kith and kin, would not be easy. It would be virtually impossible – indeed it may not be peaceful. Families can be oppressive – leading to a whole social structure which does not give life, hope and love.
However, back to our reading from Mark. Jesus offers his new teaching about marriage – tellingly not about divorce. He then immediately, in the context of people bringing little children to him and they being shooed away by the disciples, says:
“Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.”
As I have indicated, children were not significant within middle eastern family structures at the time of Jesus. Some commentaries baldly assert children were not important. Children had no status and no rights. Their presence was a nuisance. Jesus overturns that thinking – he places them front and centre. He overturns a culture of family, and infuses family life with a different set of values and a different order of priority. Respect the least.
Often this particular incident in Jesus life has been interpreted from a psychological perspective. Children may see the world differently to us adults. The point is we should also have that childlike wonder; that out of the mouths of babes, quality. Now that should be important – and we perhaps don’t acknowledge the child within us often enough, especially in worship.
But far more awkwardly, Jesus is confronting a family structure that is not built on the humanity of all, including the least of God’s children. By building up the little children, Jesus is saying the same thing as he said to his mother, brothers and sisters, or in his gloomy prediction that there will be discord between the generations if they truly understood his teaching.
So to conclude – families are important. And the family of the church is particularly important, for indeed it should be the model for our own family life. Martin Luther touchingly called his family, “my little church”. So indeed it is sad that families around us are breaking down – because they are a powerful counter balance to our rampant individualism. As Hugh Mackay again observes, it is in the family unit we learn to balance that tension between individual rights and the common good. Since the 1960s we have come to think that the social unit is the individual. Marriage and family places the emphasis on ‘we’, and not just on me.
So Jesus was affirming our need for community “from the beginning of creation” – on the importance of marriage; however, he was also reminding us, that in our families, and I guess particularly in the family of the church, that “unless we receive the kingdom of God as a little child” we have missed the fullness of God’s life.
Today it great celebrate that Lucy comes from a loving family; and as the family of the church, here, we are challenged to welcome Lucy and treasure her presence among us.
