June 6, 2021 – Second Sunday after Pentecost
“Who, ultimately, is considered ‘family’?”
Let us pray. Holy and gracious God, we thank you for your presence in this time and place and within each one of us in the many locations we have gathered. Help us now to open our minds, our hearts, our whole lives, to receive the gift of your living Word for us this day; and may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
So we have thoroughly finished celebrating the Easter season. Last Sunday, on Trinity Sunday, we celebrated the fullness of the revelation of God as being triune, and now our focus shifts onto ourselves – as developing disciples of Jesus Christ. If I were to give this sermon a title, which I don’t normally do, it would be this: “Who, ultimately, is considered ‘family’?”
Today’s Collect Prayer hints at this when we pray these words, “Oh God, you have assured the human family of eternal life through Jesus Christ, our Saviour.” The human family – eternal life – open to all. And then it continues, “Deliver us from the death of sin and raise us to new life in him.” So, clearly there are still what we might call “implementation steps” – intentional choices to be made.
I want to explore this further under two headings: to whom do you look as ‘leader’ of the collective you consider to be ‘family’ – who do you look to as the leader of that family? And then, who do you consider to be included in ‘family’? Who do you see as your family?
Now, let’s look at the First Reading from the first book of Samuel. This event takes place toward the end of Samuel’s life, about 150 – 200 years after the Exodus. The tribes of Israel have made their way into the Promised Land and Israel is emerging now as a nation. And there’s a kind of interesting transition in the type of leadership that is happening. Israel is emerging from a kind of regional elder leadership, like Samuel, into a centralized monarchy. In many ways it’s like the kind of things that countries were transitioning from as monarchies to democracies in the late medieval and early modern times. So there’s a kind of cosmic shift that’s happening in the polity of the country. And as we read this morning, before Samuel dies, some of the younger leaders come to Samuel and they request to transition to this new leadership. They say to him “appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.” And Samuel has real problems with this request because the traditional understanding in Israel is that God is Israel’s King; and that human leaders serve as king of ‘princes’ or ‘assistants’ under God. This new request for a king begins to dethrone God as Israel’s king. So Samuel shares his duress with God about this request. And then God reveals what’s really happening in their request. “The Lord said to Samuel, ‘Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you. For they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being King over them.’ God tells Samuel then to explain what life will be like living under a human king with all the challenges that the king puts on the citizens. But the people are not dissuaded. The people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel. They said, “No, but we are determined to have a king over us so that we may also be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.” The people have shifted their gaze from being the People of God as divine king, and want to be like other nations who have human kings. God is supplanted as the leader of their family.
So let’s move now to the Gospel Reading from Mark. Mark records Jesus’ early ministry successes in the northern region of Israel. It’s his home territory and he’s almost being ‘too successful’ in that ministry! And Mark introduces these words – he says, “And the crowd came together again so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it they went out to restrain him, for people were saying ‘he has gone out of this mind.’” It’s something like how we might react if someone we care about went off to join a fanatical cult. And the other thing too, is that in this era of ancient history, the reference to being “gone out of this mind” is important because craziness or mental instability in those days was viewed as demon possession. So when the scribes from Jerusalem accuse him of having the prince of demons inside him. Jesus fights back and constructs a little analogy to show the fallacy of their reasoning. He says it’s ludicrous to suggest that Satan is in him casting out his own demons, and follows that up with a statement about having first to tie up the strong man before you could take away his property. Now that’s not just an aside – a little kind of ‘residential robbery 101.’ He’s alluding back to the book of the prophet Isaiah in the 49th chapter where God promises to subdue Israel’s captives – the strong man – in the Exile and free them and enable them to return home from that Exile. And then Jesus adds a sobering truth, “If one blasphemes against the Holy Spirit (who obviously is in Jesus) they can never be forgiven. For the Spirit is the one who convicts us of sin and moves us to repentance. But, if you ignore the Spirit’s promptings and view them as evil, then you shut yourself off from the only path to forgiveness.
Mark then returns us to the main story – Jesus’ family coming to restrain him and take him home. Now imagine the scene: Jesus is inside a packed house. He’s engaged in preaching and healing and casting out demons – going in full stride – and suddenly one of the onlookers shouts out ‘Hey Jesus – your Mom and your brothers are outside. They want you to come out to them.’ And what is Jesus’ reply? ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ and looking at those who sat around, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Ouch! You can almost imagine his mother Mary crestfallen – starting to cry – comforted by Jesus’ brothers. But this reply is not about honouring or dishonouring your father and your mother. Jesus is redefining ‘family’ – anyone and everyone is potentially family to him.
Today’s Prayer over the Gifts refers to it in this way, “In Adam’s fall we were born to death”, in our flesh we have a nuclear family, but ultimately it still leads us to death. The Prayer continues, “in the new Adam (who is Jesus Christ) we are reborn to life.” This spiritual family in Jesus Christ gives us eternal life and this is the family Jesus is referring to in Mark’s Gospel. It is not that this family of Jesus excludes his mother and brothers – far from it. It’s just that it includes everyone else. Do you see where this is going? Initially yours and my definition of family was our nuclear family and then perhaps our extended family, and over time it might expand to include a few close friends. And indeed, we learn a lot from our relationships in that family. But then Jesus invites us into his family of disciples. We identify, or should identify, ‘family’ as the Church. This family expands and stretches us because we’re thrown into relationships with people very different from us. And our vision of family expands with God as the Leader and provider of that family. So now, we’re seeking to mature and perfect that church family. And our Offertory Hymn, “Thou, who at thou first Eucharist” is essentially a prayer to make that happen. You may wish to turn to it. It’s on the 8th page in your service bulletin. Right at the top we read in the first verse, “Thou, who at thy first eucharist didst pray (and of course, it’s referring to the Upper Room scene in the Gospel of John) that all thy church might be for ever one … O may we all one bread, one body be.” Parish, diocese, Anglican Church, ecumenical church around the world. The prayer continues in the next verse, “For all they church, O Lord, we intercede; make thou our sad divisions soon to cease, draw us the nearer each to each, we plead, by drawing all to thee, O Prince of Peace.”
We need to become that family that Jesus speaks about in Mark’s Gospel. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother – one family. And it means thinking, speaking, and acting together as one family. But it doesn’t stop there. We learn a lot from this enlarged family, and we grow in transformative ways by living authentically as a church family.
But in the Collect Prayer we pray, “Oh God you have assured the human family of eternal life through Jesus Christ our Saviour. In Jesus Christ, God calls all of humanity to be family. Now to us, that seems bewilderingly impossible. We certainly cannot do it. But we can let God do it through us, and that is the prayerful thrust of our Closing Hymn “Where Cross the Crowded Ways. It’s on page 11 in your pew leaflet. We start out by singing, “Where cross the crowded ways of life, where cries of tribe and race resound, amid the noise of selfish strife, O Christ, your word of love is found.” Tribe and race – identities that separate us into “us and them.” Continuing in the next verse, “The cup of water given for you still holds the freshness of your grace; yet long the multitudes to view the strong compassion of your face.” Little by little, even a cup of water given to one in need, in the name of Christ – little by little the barriers are overcome. In the 5th verse, “Oh Jesus, from the mountainside make haste to heal these hearts of pain. Among the restless throngs abide; O tread the city’s streets again.” Build unity in this family in the midst of daily life. And finally, “Till all the world shall learn your love, and follow where your feet have trod.” The whole family is Christ’s family. This is the goal. This is the end result of the reborn life.
So who do you and I consider to be family? Initially we expanded to include the Church but ultimately the whole human family. Can the 215 buried in Kamloops be family? It doesn’t work to label them as Indigenous or Roman Catholic. Each time we try to distance ourselves from a part of humanity, we are breaking up God’s family, and we are undoing the reborn life in Christ.
I’m sure at this point, like the astounded disciples in the Gospels, we’re tempted to ask, “Then who can do this?” And Jesus smiles and answers, “For mortals it is impossible. But for God all things are possible!”
Amen.
