Tuesday of the Twenty-fifth Week in Ordinary Time
In our parish year of "Being the Church at Home, and Home at Church," scriptures like today's gospel passage (Luke 8:19-21) become really good places to focus our attention. A statement like the one Jesus makes here ("My mother and brothers are those who hear the word and act on it.") would have seemed rather shocking in his day and culture, because of the centrality family had. As we've seen in many scriptures, family is important to peoples' livelihood, especially for women. One of the reasons why Paul tells Christians over and over to care for widows and orphans is because those are the most vulnerable, the ones most cut off from good sources of income. And here, Jesus even seems to be callous: he won't even bother to say hello to his mother? He seems to dismiss her out of hand, perhaps even implying that she is not a disciple???
For that reason, this passage may even seem a bit shocking to us, as we also live in a time and culture where family is valued. Even into the twentieth century, Catholics used to privilege monasticism, celibacy and virginity almost to the exclusion of marriage. A 1930s pamphlet on encouraging women to enter religious orders suggests that women who choose to be married are choosing not to follow Jesus. These days, that would be emphatically not true: all people who are baptized are called to be disciples of Jesus Christ.
These days, perhaps we've gone too far in the opposite direction - suggesting that virginity, celibacy and living a life alone means you aren't following Jesus. The implication is that those who live alone, who vow not to have sex, are people who do not "live" in the real world. Even worse is when we link many of society's problems specifically to celibacy. The underlying assumption in some recent televisions shows like Jersey Shore, for example, is that we'd be a freer, happier society if we all just had sex.
Jesus' comment directs us to two main points, though: the first is that this is one of the several scriptures where we find Jesus expanding his (and his followers') view of family. Family is not just a biological link. For Christians, family becomes much more broad, because it becomes Church, composed of all of us who are children of God. There's a reason why evangelical Christians call each other "brother" and "sister" - it's a recognition of their new family relationship because they've been baptized as children of God. What this means on the ground is that Jesus calls us to respond to people who are not related to us by blood ties, but who have claims on us as new family members nonetheless! So, single people, as well as married people, are all part of this family. Acts 2 describes the way this new family in Christ interacted: they cared for each other, making sure no one went hungry, and they prayed together (among other things - read the whole passage for more).
The second point is that what it means to be part of Jesus' family is to be his disciples, to follow him. Jesus paid attention and special care to many, many people who were not his "blood relatives" - but he treated them as his family members by healing them, by giving them a sense of new life and new purpose. We are asked to follow in his footsteps and take up that particular cross, by having relationships with each other that go beyond mere acquaintance.
Today's first reading (Proverbs 21:1-6, 10-13) also asks us to respond to others' needs in depth. We are asked to care for the poor, have pity on others, and not to think our our way as the one right way. All of those are pretty tough to do without having relationships that are a bit more intimate than mere acquaintances would have.
I think today's reading convicts me. How often do I encounter people at church as just like anyone I would meet on the street? Jesus asks us for a still more radical kind of relationship. Today, may we respond to our brothers and sisters in Christ as family.
- Jana M. Bennett