Family of God
Joshua 24:14-15
Mark 3: 20-35
Families come in different shapes and sizes. Some of them are large and loud and need to
rent a whole park pavilion to have a reunion.
Others are small and quiet, maybe just a mother a child. Some families count as members those who have
no blood relationship at all. You are
family through adoption. You are family because of an especially close
friendship. It may extend beyond race and religion, beyond national boundaries
or ethnic background.
However small or large your family may be, Jesus is here
to tell you it can be larger than you think.
Before we consider his words let us pray:
New every morning is your love, great God of light, and
all day long you are working for the good in the world. Stir up in us the desire to serve you, to
live peacefully with our neighbors and to devote each day to you Son, Our
Savior, Jesus Christ the Lord. Amen.
A couple of months ago correspondent, Laura Moser was
invited to bring her family and share a Passover dinner at the White House with
the President, his wife and other honored guests. She dressed up her two little
girls in their finest and introduced them to the President in the Oval
office. Her three year old Claudia was
not impressed. She was tired and cranky so
she did what toddlers sometimes do when required to act grown-up in adult
situations. She flew into a full-blown
tantrum crying and kicking and falling down at the President’s feet. This, of course, was photographed and posted
on the internet by of all people her own mother, there to live forever. Mom was clearly embarrassed and I think
Claudia will be embarrassed five years from now when her friends tell her they
saw her picture on the web.
So, that prompts the question, Have you ever been
embarrassed by someone in your family?
Do you have a crazy uncle or a goofy cousin? Do you have a picture of your Dad wearing a
yellow plaid shirt and purple stripped pants to your sixteenth birthday
party? Maybe your family has a story or
two about you.
For example, Randy told me about the time when he was 10
years old and played his first concert on the piano. Afterwards there was a receiving line, and
one of the people in the audience shook his hand and said to Randy, “You did a
great job!” To which Randy proudly replied, “I know!” At which point his mother yanked him out of
the line in order to explain to him the concept of gracious humility. (I’m not
sure that lesson ever really took.)
If you’ve ever been embarrassed by a family member or
were and embarrassment to them you’re going to understand why Jesus’ mother and
brothers and sisters showed up one day to take him home. Their embarrassment started the day he put
down his hammer and saw and measuring tape and walked out of his carpenter
shop. He went out into the countryside
talking to people about the kingdom of God as if he knew the mind of God
himself. People were so impressed some
were already beginning to throw around the “M” word, wondering if he was the
long awaited Messiah.
Now to those who grew up with Jesus, who remembered him
when he was young - this was crazy talk.
That’s just the way the Bible puts it.
They said “he has gone out of his mind.”[1] You’d probably react the same way and maybe
you have when one of your children decided they were going to go off and do
something you thought to be dangerous or foolish or reckless. You may have even
said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into that kid.” You just want to get them
back home and into a safe and comfortable routine. You have an idea of what they should be doing
and when they don’t you that you try anything and everything to set them right.
That’s what Mary and Jesus’ brothers wanted to do.
This plan return Jesus to the woodshop became all the
more urgent when people in positions of power began to hear of Jesus
countryside ministry and what people were beginning to say about him. They didn’t think Jesus was crazy they
thought he was Satanic and that everything he was saying and doing was of the
devil.
Now all that Jesus had been doing up until then was
healing people who were sick, giving hope to those who had no hope, and light
to those who were walking in darkness. But
that’s not what the scribes saw. That’s
not what they heard. They saw someone who
challenged their authority and so they believed the authority of God. For them
it was either/or. If Jesus was not of God he must be of the Devil.
C.S. Lewis said the only three answers that make in sense
to the question “Who is Jesus?” is that he was a liar, lunatic or Lord. If he claimed to be the son of God but knew
he wasn’t he was not telling the truth.
If he claimed to be the Son of God and really believed it but was not,
then he was mentally unbalanced – he had a messianic complex. But, if he claimed to be the Son of God and
is, then our response can only be to acknowledge him as Lord.
Jesus points out the flaw in their argument, the fly in
their ointment. To their Satanic charge
Jesus asked, “Why would Satan heal, or give hope to the hopeless or light to
those who walk in darkness?” That runs
counter to everything the Devil stands for.
Evil loves the darkness does not want to heal of or do good. So he said,
“A house divided cannot stand.”
Have you heard that expression before? Does it sound familiar? Those are the words Abraham Lincoln quoted on
June 16, 1858 to the Illinois Republican convention when he was running for the
United States Senate. The context was
slavery. He did not believe our country
could long stand divided, slavery in the south and abolition in the north. He
believe slavery stood against the freedom that America stood for.
Strength is found in unity – not division. That is true for the soul of a nation or the
soul of an individual.
That’s where Jesus was going when he said, “Truly I tell
you, people will be forgiven of their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter,
but whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven.”[2]
Now, this particular verse has been one of the most
fearful in all of scripture. Throughout
my ministry I have had more than one person tell me they thought they were
beyond the reach of God grace because they believed they had committed this
particular sin, because they had said something bad about God – usually on the
golf course. For that reason they felt
they were beyond hope and redemption.
Each time my response has been the same. If you are worried you have committed this
sin – your concern tells me you haven’t.
This is not about saying something bad about God or feeling angry at God
or disappointed in God. God’s feelings are not hurt if you’ve said or done any
of these things. How do I know?
Just browse through scripture and the Psalms in
particular and you will find faithful men and women of God say something bad to
God because they are feeling angry or disappointed in something they think the
Lord has done and hasn’t done. Even
Jesus from the cross lamented, “My God my God why hast thou forsaken me?”
It’s not the complaints that are unforgivable – it is
apathy. If you don’t care about God or
what the Lord thinks or the sins you have committed against God or other people
then by definition you will not repent or ask for forgiveness; and if you do
not do that how can you be forgiven?
It is not that God refuses to forgive. It is that we refuse to acknowledge those
time we have sinned against God and others and so remain in our sin separate
from God and each other. In other
words, God cannot give you something you don’t want. God will not force you to accept something
you’ve already rejected. The hardness is
not in God’s heart – it is in everyone who through their lives, their words,
their attitudes and actions demonstrate they have not place for God in this
life and beyond. That is unforgivable
because forgiveness is rejected.
Meanwhile, back in Capernaum, the family waits outside
ready to take Jesus back home and back to his woodshop and so give up his
ministry of grace and mercy. When Jesus
hears they are outside he asks, “Who is my mother, who are my brothers?”[3]
Then he answers his own question, “Whoever does the will
of God is my mother and brothers and sisters.”[4]
Jesus knows what it means to be family. He is not disrespecting
his family of birth here; it is from them, after all, that he first learned to
treasure the bonds of kinship, bonds that he now draws upon as an image and
model for the relationship he seeks to have with us. Jesus simply has a notion
of kinship that goes deeper and broader than ours often does. Jesus traces his
circle wide, calling us all to be kinfolk to him by doing what God desires us
to do. And if kinfolk to him, then kinfolk to one another, with all the
delights and aches that come in learning to be a family.
In the sixth century there lived a monk called Dorotheos of
Gaza. In one of his sermons, Dorotheos invited his hearers to imagine a circle,
with God as the center point.
He then drew lines from the circumference to the center and
these lines represented lives of human beings. Dorotheos said. “…To move toward God, then,
human beings move from the circumference along the various radii of the circle
to the center. The closer they move to God, the closer they become to one
another; and the closer they are to one another, the closer they become to
God.”
With such persistence, Jesus works throughout his ministry to
draw his hearers deeper into this circle. He defines the circle not as a place
for folks who have a shared affinity, or who think the same way, or who hold
all the same beliefs in common. The circle goes deeper than friendship and even
deeper than our own family. It creates a
new kind of family – a family of God.
In these days there is much that works to divide us and tear us apart
and turn us away from one another. This
happens between nations on the world stage.
It happens in the politics of our own nation. It can even happen in our own family. It can even happen in our own souls.
Jesus came to draw us closer to God and so closer to each other
and he tells us it works the other way as well – as we draw closer to each
other we come closer to God. And so may we draw closer to each other as we
stretch toward the God who lives at the center of the circle, and who somehow
encompasses it—and us—all around.
Lord Jesus, by your grace bring us into your big family. Help us
to feel part of the family. Help us to see all people as brothers and sisters
in your family. In the name of one who was crucified for hanging out with
people like us, we pray. Amen.
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