Working from the Revised Common Lectionary is not only a good way to keep us honest, reading scripture portions we might not otherwise, but also occasionally a funny thing to do. How do they get those scriptures together from the vast library that is the Bible? And how do they correspond to the season at hand? The answer is tenuous much of the time, save the Jewish and Christian holidays when the obvious passages get used.
But it can be kind of funny from time to time for those of us paying attention.Last Sunday was Father’s Day, admittedly a B-rate holiday compared to Mother’s Day, but a Hallmark occasion nonetheless.Paul did a nice and humorous job speaking of the positive impact of good fathering, including his own experience with the one who could have killed the microphone as he spoke.
A week later, today’s three scriptures’ could be themed along the lines of “Let’s destroys the nuclear family.” Nice followup, eh? I’d love it if sometime the wiseacres who put together the Lectionary would put Jesus’ “Who is my mother?” monologue smack down as the Gospel text for Mother’s Day. That would be pretty choice.
Because what today’s three scriptures have in common are an apparent and cavalier disregard for what some folks term “traditional” or “biblical” family values.I’ll admit up front that what are termed “biblical family values” in our culture wars have long been a source of entertainment for me.Which biblical family? Abraham’s? So relevant to this morning’s reading from Genesis, who essentially pimped his wife Sarai/Sarah not once but twice, the second time after the establishment of the covenant with his God.
David’s, the “man after God’s own heart,” who essentially had a man murdered as a cover for stealing his wife, whom he first lusted after one afternoon whilst playing the peeping tom instead of being on the lines with his troops? Cain and Abel and fratricide? Don’t get me started about Noah or Job, and their sons and daughters.
Lest the women get off easily, today’s passage from Genesis is greatly courtesy of that same Sarah and her schemes to get a progeny in the family. “Hey, Abraham, why don’t you go pay a visit to my hot young Egyptian servant girl, if you know what I mean.” Abe: “Uh, okay.Thanks.” This leads to what might be termed buyer’s remorse on Sarah’s part.As her own son Isaac surprisingly comes into life, Hagar and Ishmael become a sore reminder of the reality of their awkward “family ties,” and Sarah responds bitterly.Abraham goes with it, so Hagar and Ishmael are exiled, Abraham becoming just what the world has always needed more of, another absentee father.(Psalm 86 is a desperate plea from one in desperate straits akin to those of Hagar in her crisis.) According to one rather notable tradition, this is how the beginning of Islam was established.
Biblical family arrangements are not only often messy but also – as has always been true – fluid across their times and cultures.Some are certainly better than others.As noted, in the Hebrew scriptures, some are real doozies of the dysfunctional sort, cautionary tales as it were.But we also see profound steps for the better. That same Abraham and Isaac tale plays forward in God’s testing with the call to sacrifice this precious son on the mount.This amazing scene – drama and pathos and dark humor and more – becomes for all people of the book perhaps the great example of what Kierkegaard termed “the leap of faith.” Here we find one who is called to risk the very future of his line in order to be faithful to his God, and he is willing.
But that’s not all.As most careful commentators note, this is also a dramatic “no” in theatrical form to the practice of sacrificial “infanticide” so common in Ancient Near East cultures of the second millennium BCE.Simply put, our God doesn’t kill kids.We can come back to that a little later.
Which brings us to our Gospel reading, and to Jesus.The 10th chapter of Matthew is all about mission, specifically the first sending of the twelve close disciples out to go do and teach what Jesus himself has done and taught to this point in his ministry.DO good stuff.Do Jesus stuff And in such we find a radical re-orientation of life’s primary relational identification away from blood kin – the standard social/economic unit – to those with whom you live out the faith and mission, and those who receive you likewise.
Not easy.Going forth without much material provision to unfamiliar places and people, “sheep into the midst of wolves,” and all without the security and comfort of one’s own clan.No doubt this is born of Jesus’ own experience, wherein we discover that his family thought him to be rather loco, and his reception by the serious religious folks of his day started cold and went bad from there.
So too we, and those who have and would follow him. Let’s not kid around here; the text doesn’t.Living the message of Jesus, loving those society deems hard to love as we have discovered we are loved, and rejecting the pretensions of the false powers of our and any age, WILL LEAD TO TROUBLES.Following Jesus in the mission that the first twelve stumbled into is a hard act of resistance, often hitting where it might hurt most: fear and money.
“Have no fear, do not worry, be not afraid” are the kinds of things said to those who are afraid, who are worried.What draws forth the fear and anxiety? As with Hagar, that you might be shunned, that you might find yourself in material want, that you might become unpopular with religious folks and even your family.Why? Why didn’t Jesus have better luck with his ministry? After all, he was all about love.Should have gone down smooth.
But it didn’t.He cared for the wrong people.He challenged people to confront the ways in which we all buy into false comforts that insulate us from God and the neighbor to whom we are called.And it doesn’t always play well.What was the last temptation of Christ in Nikos Kazantzakis’ masterful book (the movie wasn’t that great)? To be normal.Play the game.No one will be hurt.
Except they are hurt.God needs to intervene as with the one pleading in our Psalm, and still does so where welcomed, often through we followers who care about the mission.A couple of years ago, when the “God is still speaking” campaign was introduced, I thought – from afar, serving in another denomination – that’s pretty cool.But our passage today offers that what we tell, proclaim, and acknowledge may get us in the same troubles that Jesus underwent.In fact it’s a mercy to the disciples and to us that Jesus tells us so.
Of course we must interpret this for our time.Courtesy of the 1st Amendment we can say all sorts of things, and many religious people do.Certainly we have seen of late that one of the smartest things that Christians can do at times is to know when to stop speaking, when in fact to shut up. In this era of youTube, that can be wisdom.
But not out of fear.
Especially where it’s most potentially painful, fear of strife with those closest to you.The familial divisions, when faith is at stake, may be inevitable.Some of this is generations at normative odds, kids rebelling, parents resistant to change from the same snots whose diapers they once changed.But we do well to be precise as the text is precise.
The sword found here, of course, has nothing to do with Jesus advocating violence.Jesus never physically harms anyone, and that is the baseline.The metaphor of the sword is of division, and of a specific sort. Son vs. dad, daughter vs. mom, daughter-in-law vs. mother-in-law.(Let’s avoid the easy in-law jokes.) Each of these relations describes how a younger gains advice and skills from an elder that will provide for them their very material sustenance.As in many cultures still, a son learned a trade from his father, perhaps even inherited the family business.Daughter learned from her mother how to keep a home and raise a family.After marriage the mother-in-law became that female elder from whom the daughter learned what she needed to do.
This was how you lived, how you made it.The extended clan was the primary social and economic unit of life.To give up this to chase Jesus around Galilee, caring for the wrong kinds of people and teaching about the kingdom of heaven, was a bad lifestyle choice, and there would be repercussions, even fearful ones.This was opposition to the best the earth had to offer.It was literally a giving up of provision and all that comprises identity, it was – as the passage puts it – “losing life.”
What’s this mean to us? There are some real differences in our time and place and we must be specific about these too.The primary social and economic unit for our lives is not parents, in-laws and clan (at least not for many).It’s our work, our jobs.We live in an era of unprecedented social mobility, driven by economics.If you possess a certain set of employable skills you might wind up working anywhere on the planet these days. Few live in the same compound as their parents, many don’t even live within the same communities when they individuate.As people age, maybe start families of their own (or maybe not), they may live near nobody at all that knew them prior to their twenties.The only person in this county who knew me in my later teens is the one to whom I am married.
The rules thus are different.So is the application of Jesus’ message.Social order is largely predicated on the acquisition of money. Social mobility is driven by jobs. Find a young adult in this town who didn’t grow up here and ask them why they moved to Redlands.What you’re going to get as an answer is “ESRI” and a few other employers, little else. There is a primacy of one’s job to where one locates, and among whom.
Which gets to what I think might be a necessary paradox in our living out this text.We are told clearly here not to make an idolatry of family.To be a smart-mouth I’d rather that you my friends focused on Jesus and not on any families, much less how to make such into a powerful voting bloc and money machine centered in Colorado Springs because the tax laws are more lenient there.I observe that this ethos leads to various forms of retreat and isolationism, and religious practices that I find hard to understand in light of the mission of Jesus in his own day and now.
Yet the same economic-based social mobility that orders much of our culture often has a very negative effect on marriages, children and taking care of the elderly.Family is very important, and fragile.I have a lot of friends who have divorced.Sometimes that has been very necessary.But too often little kids have gotten ground up in the acrimony.
Jesus does teach about that, a lot.Matthew more than the other three gospels extensively addresses what we might term “a preferential option for children.” While nuclear family discord is as regular as the sun’s rising and setting, Jesus doesn’t create it.In the text nothing is said about Jesus setting spouses apart, or parents against their small children.Those are too important for the well-being of persons.Don’t make an idol of your spouse or your kids.But don’t disregard them in ways that may happen all too tragically often in a overly busy society driven by other powers.Our God doesn’t harm kids, or what should be healthy marriages.
That’s where I want to end up with a few thoughts about our specific mission here at Redlands UCC.
As one fairly new to this congregation I have been most impressed with some of our mission expressions, our Jesus stuff.Step by Step, Get on the Bus, our mission trips to the Gulf region are all very good things and I applaud them.But this morning’s texts articulate an alternative vision of mission and family life, rightly prioritized with a love of Jesus Christ and the things of the subversive social ordering of the kingdom of heaven.
Thus two thoughts, meant for further and future discussion:
How might we best undergird marriages – all marriages – that they thrive and are more than an isolated pocket of refuge against a harsh outside world? That our marriages might be prophetic presences of the love of God in a transient and disposable culture? Might that be part of our mission?
And how do we include our children – our very own and those whom God entrusts us as a congregation – in this movement of the Kingdom of Heaven without succumbing to either pole of placing them on silly pedestals or conversely neglecting them?
First would be acting on our wider understanding of marriage. As broadly defined by the California Supremes, we are likely the only church in town equipped to work with all couples. I think we would be well-served to do all that we can, in new and deliberate fashion, to support and strengthen marriages, our own and those who may be joining us. Years ago as some numbers of our friends began divorcing I set out to learn more about marriage systems and what, if any, things could be done to reasonably support couples.I was taken aback to see how little useful Christian reflection there was, most of it being anecdotal with no clinical component.With a little digging I did find some good resources, resources for any kind of marriage.They’re available if we wish to pursue such.
Secondly, that we think afresh how we might include our kids in doing the mission themselves.One of the most moving times for me this past year in worship was when we had our Earth Day service outdoors with the Biloxi crew sharing of their trip.Most moving was the sharing done by Noah.Having hands-on experience of caring for others while still a kid may be one of the best gifts we can give our children, sharing with them God’s realities beyond themselves.We don’t shy from having our kids be in such situations for in them they can learn the life that Jesus wants them to find for themselves,
But we must be present enough in their lives to love them and help them interpret how to respond non-violently when they get teased or gossiped about or even bullied at school or when they begin to experience the good stuff themselves.I remember years ago when a friend of mine – a huge bull of a man still resembling the linebacker he once was – shared with me how he was trying to teach his 6 year old the right way to “get beat up at school,” how as a burgeoning Christian he might respond.This wasn’t an abstraction for Derek.His parents had done the same with him and his siblings, as they were among the first black kids to integrate the elementary schools in Jackson, Mississippi.That his own son wouldn’t shy away from those places and people with whom their family was called – at some social and economic cost – was consistent with how their family had been living faithfully for decades.
This is how we might tie it all together.Jesus’ stuff on Jesus’ terms.Out for the mission and re-orientation away from what normalcy might look like.May we be faithful to that which lasts.
