Pentecost 2: The Relativizing Gospel

Genesis 3:8-15

Psalm 130

Corinthians 4:13-5:1

Mark 3:20-35

Driving north on Highway 99, and relatively close to the 198 turning for Hanford, there’s a billboard advertisement for one of the many local churches – I am guessing it’s something like Valley Christian Church.  The billboard depicts a very nuclear-looking family: mother, father, daughter, son – quaternity strikes again, if you can think back to last week’s sermon; and the tag-line? – Building Strong Families.  I have little doubt that Valley Christian Church or whatever its name may be considers itself a “Bible church”, and so  I wonder what it does with the words from today’s gospel when Jesus appears to be hardly pro-family: “ ‘Who are my mother and brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers!  Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’ ”? (Mark 3:33-35)  I am sure that no matter what they may make of them, they are verses that would not sit well with fundamentalist “family theology”.  Yet they appear in the earliest strata of the Jesus tradition, and while scholars may disagree as to whether the historical Jesus said exactly this, most concur that “ideas contained in [the verses are] close to his own”.  Moreover, both the authors of Matthew and of Luke, who used Mark, the earliest of the Gospel, as a source, also seemed to feel a ring of authenticity clinging to the words and included them each in their own gospel.  At the same time both Matthew and Luke include an even harsher saying which scholars – at least in the Lucan version – generally agree that Jesus himself said something very much like it: “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” (Luke 14:26)  And While Matthew softens the sentiment somewhat – “Whoever loves father or mother more [emphasis mine] than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.” (Matthew 10:37) – it still carries a harsh tone. 

For those who have wedded the Gospel to socially conventional constructs of the family, or have irresponsibly used the Gospel to bolster their own status quo world-view, to them the passages present particular challenges, even obstacles; indeed, such challenges and obstacles that many see fit to ignore the passages altogether.  However, for those who wish to engage with the passages more authentically they still present challenges.  They highlight the fundamental and absolute call of the Gospel life – a call so definitive that it relativizes to it everything about our lives, absolutely everything and without reservation.  It relativizes and transforms gender relationships, as well as ethnic identity.  It relativizes social ranks and status, social divisions created by wealth and power.  It relativizes tribal identity; and in the ancient near-east – as it is still is in many places in the world – family allegiance is a kind of tribal identity.  In fact, the Greek of the New Testament has no word for family at all.  In both Classical and New Testament Greek the word usually translated as “family” in English is oikia and actually means “house” or “household”.  A household would include not only those immediately related by blood, but also more distant relatives, as well as servants, slaves and other hangers-on.  Think more Romeo and Juliet than Ozzie and Harriet.  The relativizing call of the Gospel demands that everything be seen, understood, lived and experienced within its radical commitment to God and God’s kingdom, and to the love of neighbor; and by neighbor is meant everyone, not only our friends or the members of our household or people we like or even people like us.  All conventional constructions, affections and alliances are to be sublimated to the Gospel call, the kingdom call, the call to service and justice beyond the tight circle of the familiar.

Sometimes, in my years in the Church I have got the sense that for many Christians whatever their stripe, when push comes to shove family comes first.  In the United States particularly it feels we have created almost an idol of the family in which not only does family come first but we have convinced ourselves that families – in their most modern construction – are the building blocks of the Church.  We forget that for the earliest Christians – and still for many in varied places of our world today – following Christ meant leaving their families, it meant answering a call considered to them more pressing, more important and more real than the ties of biology or kinship.  It hardly signified the “building of strong families”, but in fact the breakdown of familial ties and even the rise of hatred and violence between household members.  This experience of the early Church was reflected in Jesus’ words in several Gospel passages.  This one from Luke stands as representative: “Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?  No, I tell you, but rather division!  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.”  (Luke 12:51-53) 

Now, for us living the United States in the 21^st century we will probably never directly experience that sort of inter-familial violence over our commitment to follow Christ.  However, Jesus’s words about family and family allegiance still have an important message for us, because they bring to the fore this question of the extent to which we genuinely relativize all things by the measure of the Gospel call, by the measure of God’s kingdom perspective and not our own.  Whatever we may or may not think Jesus is saying about family, the passages about family themselves beg questions of us: “When the pedal hits the metal, where do you put your trust?”  Are all our relationships and undertakings really subordinate to the doing of God’s will in our lives?”  “Do we love those closest to us, or do we love God through them?”  The latter question poses an important but powerful distinction.  Think about it:  “Do you love simply those closest to you, or do you love God through them?”  At the end of the day, for Christians the primary call is to God’s vision of the kingdom, God’s vision of a renewed creation.  All of our relationships, all of our actions have to point toward that reality, they become the vehicles through which God’s vision is recognized.

I recently read a short interchange between a young boy and his mother.  The boy – about 10 or so – asked her, “Mom, do you love me more than you love God?”.  She answered, “Of course I do.”  “Well”, he said, “I think that’s your problem.”  For Christians, any sort of love – love of family, love of work, even love of neighbor – has to find its source in the love of God and of the Gospel call, of the kingdom vision.  If it doesn’t then we are heading down the road towards a dangerous sort of idolatry.  Personally, I am not sure I want to belong to a church who makes its tag-line Building Strong Families; Building the Kingdom makes much more sense, and is simply – whether we like it or not – far more biblical.