Tuesday of the Third Week in Ordinary Time
We all know how important families are. For most of us, they are the primary set of relationships into which we are born, raised, come of age, and so forth. They shape us in profound ways, whether by genetic information that is shared in our very bodies or by choices parents make regarding where a family might live or children may go to school or by everyday habits of the family (eating together, talking about the day, watching sports or movies, hugging one another, doing chores together).
We take into our adult lives powerful ways of being in the world that we developed growing up in our families. Older siblings may grow into adulthood with expectations about themselves as models for younger siblings and others. Younger siblings may come of age accustomed to bending to the will of older siblings and others too. Or they may all grow up used to engaging in a whole lot of rivalry. In any case, we are deeply shaped by our families.
And if our family suffered from deep challenges like divorce or a parent losing their job or someone in the family falling gravely ill or abuse in the family of this or that sort or neglect—the impact is also deeply profound. Whatever our families were/are like, they leave marks upon our souls. Many may be great resources for our own character. Others may leave deep wounds from which we must work hard to heal and recover.
Our culture puts a lot of emphasis on the nuclear family. And as a culture, we have these ideas about the family—what it looks like, who it consists of, what sorts of things it’s supposed to do, what it is supposed to feel like when one is in it, and so forth. A lot of those ideas are good—like ideas about caring for the little ones, nurturing young people so that they may realize their gifts, loving one another unconditionally. But some of them are not so good. When a certain idea of family communicates expectations to a son that he will play football no matter whether he likes it or not or to a newly married couple that if they do not have children soon and often something is suspect about them or to a daughter that her role is to be always subordinate to the men in her life then the idea of family can cause great harm.
In the text from Mark in front of us today, Jesus raises real questions about how we think about family. The people around Jesus in this story alert Jesus to the fact that his mother and brothers are waiting outside. They want access to Jesus. Instead of telling them to come in, Jesus asks “who are my mother and my brothers?”
What a curious question. Of course, Jesus knew perfectly well who were the members of his nuclear family. Unlike most of us, Jesus isn’t thinking of the nuclear family as the family. For Jesus, “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
There are at least two striking things about what Jesus says here.
The first is perhaps the most obvious one—for Jesus “family” is not a matter of blood. It is a matter of doing the will of God. And if we’ve listened carefully to Jesus elsewhere we know what that means—that we love our neighbor as ourselves. Thus, Jesus seems to be saying that whoever loves themselves (which is by no means an easy thing especially if one grew up in a less-than-nurturing family setting) and loves the other (which can also be very challenging if we have come to believe that the other is a threat to us) then we are among Jesus’s family. Jesus claims all of us as his family. . . if we love.
That is good news to all of us and especially to those of us who did not grow up in the most life-giving and/or supportive families. With Christ and the church, we have a chance for another family. We have a chance for giving and receiving care, nurture, and unconditional love. Now, of course, it’s a chance; it’s not a guarantee. The church has its problems too. Thus, it falls on all of us in the church to make it such place—not just for families or for certain ideas of families but for the church as family—a set of relationships within which we understand ourselves to be brothers and sister to one another. A place wherein we love one another.
As I write this I am reminded of the Amish. When they go to church (at the home of one of the members of their church) they don’t sit as nuclear (or even extended) families. The adult women sit together. The adult men sit together. The teens who are coming of age sit together (boys with boys and girls with girls). And small children sit with adult women or men, depending on their gender. Of course, I’m not making the case that we should sit in this way in the Catholic Church. But the contrast between how we tend to sit for mass and how the Amish sit for church is notable. In their manner of sitting through a (typically) four-hour worship service they are saying something with their bodies that matters. They are brothers and sisters in the family of Christ first and members of nuclear families second.
Something to think about and pray about. How might we be more like the family Jesus calls his own? How might we be mothers and brothers and sisters in the family of God?
- Sue Trollinger