Whaley Bridge Parish
Sunday 6th June 2021
My family and other Christians
A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal and the common cold. So said the poet Ogden Nash. I think Nash was right about the common cold being the great universal of family life, but in the seventy or so years since he was writing family life has changed beyond measure – some of us have been brought up in single parent families, for example and in my ministry I’ve been happy to welcome for baptism children where there are two Mums and no Dad, or the other way round. Divorce means that some family units are becoming bigger. It’s often the case that couples who remarry bring children from their previous relationship, and then they have another child together. In Britain in 2021 the shape of family life is increasingly varied.
Until modern times family meant the extended family, which was large and sprawling across the generations with most family members continuing to live near and support one another. British families of Pakistani origin still tend to operate in this way.
The model of family in Jesus’ time was much more like this. Families lived close together, they often operated as a business unit and depended on each other for support. In biblical times, to be a widow or an orphan with no family to fall back on for support– think of the Naomi in the biblical story of Ruth, for example – was to be in a position of life-threatening vulnerability. Family was the only safety net around.
In our gospel reading today we see relationships between Jesus and his birth family cast in a rather surprising light. We can easily sentimentalise Jesus’s family life, and some Victorian hymns encourage us to do this. Mark’s gospel gives us evidence of a rather more complex picture.
Jesus grows up in Nazareth in Galilee, but his main base seems often to have been the town of Capernaum. In Mark chapter 3 we see Jesus back in his family’s town of Nazareth. On his home turf you might expect his message to be embraced: As he preaches the good news of God’s coming Kingdom, some people dismiss his words as the ravings of a madman. Even his family members seem to want to restrain him on the basis that he is “possessed by a demon” or as we would say, suffering mental-ill health. Jesus reacts with righteous anger: this is blasphemy. Jesus’ healings are the works of God, and to wilfully misinterpret them as the works of the devil: this is sin of the highest order.
Yet Jesus carries on and later in the passage we see him teaching inside someone’s house with a crowd gathered round listening to him. But then an interruption: he’s told that his mother and brother are outside and asking for him. What should Jesus do? Should he drop his teaching session and find out what the family want – or carry on? What would you do?
I’m reminded of a time when my Mum was very ill and came for a respite stay in a residential home near to us in Sheffield. The care staff were excellent, warm, personable and attentive – but at times my Mum would say she wanted me to do things for her, and not the care staff. I remember once calling in when I was on my way to the local school where I was leading assembly. She kept finding things for me to do. Eventually I said, look I’ve got to go now, or I’ll me late for assembly. She said, “Well I don’t care about your assembly – I want you to put me in the bath!” I was genuinely torn – it’s hard to say no to your Mum. But I knew the headteacher was expecting me and not to turn up would make me appear unreliable, and potentially damage the church’s reputation.
Anyone who has been a working parent, or who has held down a job while caring for a family member knows that feeling of being pulled in two directions simultaneously. It’s stressful!
What does Jesus do? Does he carry on preaching and teaching the Kingdom, or does he break off to placate the family?
For Jesus there is no hesitation. This is not simply a job, it’s his God -given vocation to fulfil his calling as Messiah, God chosen one: to preach the good news to the poor, to set free the oppressed. Just as he would not be diverted at the temptations in the desert, he is not going to be diverted now.
Never mind the fact that Mum and siblings are hanging around outside the door.
Instead Jesus looks around at the gathered crowd, listening to him teach and says: Who are my mother and brothers? It’s you lot. Yes, all of you here. Whoever does the will of My Father in heaven- that person is my mother, my sister, my brother.”
I can imagine the ripples of shock running through the room. Into a traditional society where family loyalty was all important Jesus is turning family values on their head. Jesus is saying that God’s authority is paramount and even the powerful bonds and ties of family take second place to this. If there’s a mismatch between the family’s will and God’s will, then it’s God’s will that needs to be done. This was a radically new way of thinking about family ties.
There’s also a positive and liberating side to this. Jesus is saying that his followers, those who are eager to listen and respond to the Father’s will – they are a new community, a new kind of family. In the family of Jesus’s followers we will have lots of new brothers and sisters.
We often talk about “Church family” but that is something that only became a reality for me when we became parents. Because Steve and I had elderly mothers and no siblings in this country, we had little family support as new parents. It was the love and care of our church family that got us through those demanding early years. More than anything that experience crystallised my calling to parish ministry: the sense that the parish could be the place where God’s love is expressed in the small scale and the local, the cup of tea when you’re at the end of your tether.
You are my brother, and my sister and my mother, says Jesus, if you do the will of the One who sent me.
At university I met Carrie, whose family were farmers and committed Quakers. Visiting her family on the farm was wonderful. Around the farmhouse table at meals there was always a variety of people – cousins from America, young people helping out on the farm, Quaker friends from near and far. Meals always began with a silent prayer of grace which preceded a warm buzz of conversation. It was the most open and hospitable family I had ever met.
If we are a church family then this is the kind of family we are called to be – not a small and closed off unit, but open, hospitable and growing.
We heard in our reading how Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians how God’s grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God. There’s that sense of grace not as a finite resource but abundant and growing. As we start to come out of lockdown we have the opportunity to reflect on the quality of relationships in our church community – to look at how we can be the growing, hospitable community that is the family of God’s people.
There is a resource that Steve and I have used called the Start Course, which is a simple introduction to the Christian faith in a six-session small group format. It’s video based and assumes no previous knowledge. It’s been used to help churches up and down the UK to grow, and I am sure it could help us to grow. Over the summer I’d like to being to run some Start Course groups with those of us who already part of the church community here, so that we can all understand what it is and how it works. If we decide we like it then can look at offering it on a more regular basis.
“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
Let us pray:
God of community
Whose call is more insistent
Then ties of family or blood;
May we so respect and love
those whose lives are linked with ours
that we fail not in loyalty to you
but make choices according to your will
through Jesus Christ.
Amen