Gracious and loving Father, we thank you that by
water and the Spirit you have made us a new family in Christ. Amen.
I’ve
never understood those who insist on maintaining Biblical family values. Have
they ever read the Bible? Jesus said, “From now on five in one household will
be divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided:
father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter
against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law
against mother-in-law.” This isn’t exactly the cuddly depiction of Jesus that
we so often make him out to be.
And
throughout the Gospels, the hits just keep on coming: when told that his family
was looking for him, Jesus retorts, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever
does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Or how about this
one – “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and
children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my
disciple.” Or how about “Let the dead bury their own dead.” Someone needs to
tell Jesus that his family values aren’t very Christian. More than helping us
have a holy home life, Jesus is more of a homewrecker.
As
we continue to consider what the Kingdom of God is all about, I’ll repeat the
refrain that the Kingdom is something that happens, not a place that you go.
It’s why Jesus says that the Kingdom is among us. So living in the Kingdom
isn’t about being in a specific geographical location; instead, living in the
Kingdom is about flourishing in the abundant grace of God. So this means that
every aspect of our lives can bear the fruit of the Kingdom, and through
today’s Gospel text, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom transforms the boundaries of
our relationships.
If
the Kingdom of God had a slogan, one of the ones that we’d have to consider is
“Think bigger.” When it comes to family values in the Kingdom of God, it’s
bigger than we’d typically think. This is why Jesus has such seemingly harsh
things to say about the nuclear family, because the Kingdom is bigger than
genetic relationships. In the Kingdom, there is only one family and it’s called
the Church.
Sometimes
the way that we talk about family it becomes a tool for exclusion, but the Kingdom
would have us to think bigger. The boundaries of the Kingdom are wider than
we’d expect or want them to be. And this, I acknowledge, can be rather
annoying. It really would be more pleasant if the Holy Spirit wasn’t so
promiscuous. But no, the Holy Spirit will just show up in anyone’s life whether
or not they meet our criteria. It seems that Jesus has no standards for who can
be a part of his family – all it takes is a few drops of water on your head in
the name of the Father, Son, and Spirit and you’re in. No entrance exam, no
requirement to be able to stand on your own two feet, no initiation fees, no
probation period to see how you work out – none of that. The doors of the
Kingdom are flung wide open and all sorts of people come in.
There’s
a journalist who has an interesting TED Talk about what it means to be
“family,” and his claim is we’re all family. He’s working on a family tree that
has over 75 million people in it. Whether or not someone is family is just an
arbitrary decision about where to stop connecting the branches. Some people
know their second cousins and their great-uncles and call them family, and for
other people, their family can all fit around a dining room table – but that
doesn’t mean wider relations don’t exist. Who’s in and who’s out isn’t about
the actual relationships, it’s about where we draw the lines.
There’s
a story that comes out of World War II France. There was a group of Allied
soldiers who were serving there and one of them was killed in action. The
soldiers carried his body to a local Roman Catholic Church and asked if he
could be laid to rest there. The priest said that since he wasn’t Roman that he
couldn’t be buried in the church’s cemetery, but he could bury him just outside
the cemetery’s fence. It wasn’t what they hoped for, but at least it was a place
for their colleague to rest in peace. A few months later, as they were
preparing to return home, they went back to that church to pay one last visit
to their friend. They walked the entire perimeter of the fence, looking for the
grave, but they couldn’t find it. They were confused and angry and went to the
priest to ask why their friend hadn’t been given a proper burial. The priest
responded that he had indeed buried their friend, as promised; and while he
wasn’t allowed to bury their friend inside the cemetery, there was no rule
against moving the fence.
That’s a parable about
boundaries in the Kingdom, they’re always expanding. People who we think are
outside the realm of God’s embrace are right in the middle of it. In the
Kingdom, there’s no such thing as an outsider. There are at least two takeaways
from this aspect of the Kingdom. The first is that it’s not our job to build
fences. We are not the membership committee of the Kingdom. What God decides to
do with people who aren’t baptized or who don’t come to church is up to God,
not us.
And secondly, it means
that all of us inside the Church are family. Calling each other brother and
sister isn’t just a metaphor, it is a reality of our relationship in the
Kingdom. As family, we have commitments to one another – to care for each
other, to hold each other accountable, and to be consistent in coming together for
worship and fellowship to build those relationships.
But as we all know from
experience, being family doesn’t always mean that we live in perfect harmony.
Jesus tells us that following him will bring division and that family members
will turn on one another. The reason for this division is that the Kingdom of
God is not an add-on to our lives, it is the totality of them. So many people
are trying to build a meaningful life and they try to craft their own version
of salvation and perfection. A nice house, a Master’s degree, a gym membership,
an interesting hobby, some yoga for calmness, an organic diet, recycling,
buying produce at the farmer’s market – our culture tells us that we can have a
meaningful life if we just cultivate these sorts of things. But Jesus is not an
ingredient to add to a pre-packaged recipe for fulfillment.
We live, and move, and
have our being in the Kingdom. As I’ve said before, in the early church
baptismal fonts didn’t look like birdbaths, they looked like coffins. You would
descend three steps down into the water of Baptism, you would ritually die to
your ego, to your pride, to the forces of Sin and Death, and then you would
ascend three steps on the other side of the font representing your new birth into
the Resurrected life of Jesus Christ and his Kingdom. The lesson was clear –
the old you is dead and the new you is alive in Christ. So the Kingdom is an
interruption into our lives. And this intrusion is going to bring conflict.
Christianity really is an
all-or-nothing proposition because if you’re only halfway in, then you’re only
half dead and aren’t able to be reborn in Christ. You’ve got to be all the way
dead in order to rise with Christ. And this causes a crisis.
The word “crisis” comes from a Middle English
word that means “a turning point” or “a decision.” When we say “Yes” to the
Kingdom, it means that we also say “No” to many other things. And this decision
provokes a crisis. To be clear, you don’t need to make a decision for Jesus
because Jesus has already decided on you. It is decided that you are loved,
that you are redeemed, that you are worthy of dignity. This decision though
presents us with a turning point, with a gift. It is up to each of us to accept
the gift of God’s grace or not. Love awaits our response to the invitation to
flourish in the Kingdom.
Jesus knows though that
as we receive the gift of love that not everyone will see it as a gift. When
you become a part of God’s family called the Church, it might mean that you
start hanging out with the sorts of people that you had been taught to avoid.
Instead of chasing wealth and prestige, your generosity might anger your
children – “why would give my inheritance to the church or the needy instead of
leaving it for me?” When we come to realize that our family is a lot bigger
than we had realized, those who are in our genetic families might feel like
they’re losing their claim on us. So it’s no surprise that five in one household
will be divided.
Because God has adopted
us in Christ, a crisis has been provoked. It’s a crisis around boundaries.
Those who want to keep a tight grip on life will feel threatened, confused,
perhaps even betrayed, by those who recognize the gift of God’s liberation from
fences that exclude. And so there will be conflict between those who build
fences and those who ignore them; it is the tension between the fiefdoms of
this world and the Kingdom of God. When it comes to the family values of the
Kingdom, think bigger.
Our reading from Hebrews
includes that great line: “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses.”
That great cloud is the family of God, and for an ever-expanding set of people
to love and encounter the image of God in, we give thanks to God and pray that
the love with which God loves us might always flow between us as family. Amen.
