Mass readings for the 10th Sunday in Ordinary Time:
Genesis 3.8-15 Psalm 130.1-8 2 Corinthians 4.13-5.1 Mark 3.20-35
This gospel always intrigues me; Jesus in conflict with his mother, Mary and his family. Now, I think it’s better characterized as a misunderstanding on the family’s part. That it occurred, and that it is remembered and memorialized in the gospel, made part of our tradition, is interesting. Why has the Holy Spirit prompted us, the Church, to preserve this embarrassing episode?
And what is really curious is how the famous saying about a house divided itself being unable to stand is told here, ostensibly in reference to the accusation that Jesus is an agent of the devil – but is applicable to the situation we see between himself and his own family, that is, what would be referred to as “his house” in first century society.
We see two groups of people: those with Jesus, engaging him, learning from him, and I imagine, receiving an untold amount of grace through their encounter. The other group, his family, are outside – outside what? The synagogue, or outside this crowd that has encircled Jesus? Whatever the case, we can say they stand at a distance from him. They do so, however, with concern, and perhaps, with some embarrassment. They are responding to reports that, “he has gone out of his mind.”
It raises for me a comparison with a current dynamic within the Christian community; and I would argue, Western civilization itself. There are those who are engaging with Christ; and then there are those who believe they know him well enough, and so, keep a distance. They only come looking for him when they think he (or rather the Church) is out of control.
Jesus’ family knew him better than anyone else (other than God, of course). He grew up in front of them after Joseph brought him and Mary back from Egypt. This is unlike many families today who are spread over distances great and small, who don’t live in close proximity. We use social media to keep in touch, see photos and videos, because we don’t live just down the road anymore from our cousins. My maternal grandfather grew up in rural New Brunswick in the first half of the 20th century. Then and there most made a living off the land, on farms with little villages as community centres for the dozen or so extended families of an area. My grandfather hung out with his cousins all the time, and apparently all the families worked out a signal to let my own great grandmother know where he was – whoever was hosting him, they hung a red jersey out an upstairs window. So, think about that, the extended family mostly lived within sight of each other, and all knew where Myles, my grandfather, was on any given day.
I don’t know if they had a similar system for keeping track of Jesus in the village of Nazareth, but I can imagine similarities in terms of just how familiar he would have been to his extended family. And just as the whole clan had stories about my grandfather, and each other, so too with Jesus and his family. They would all have a very strong sense of who he was. And Mary knew her son was special, and they must all have had some sense of that specialness too.
But did they really understand who he was; and why he came, what it is that he had come to teach us, by word and example, and ultimately by his sacrifice?
This takes me back to something I’ve spoken of before, just last week as well: that most of the inhabitants of the Western World are Christian, whether willing to acknowledge it or not. That if you grow up within this civilization, you cannot escape a passing familiarity with Jesus Christ; his teachings are a part of the cultural fabric, a cloth now being picked at and unravelled perhaps, but there nonetheless. So, in some way, we are all like Jesus’ cousins. Now, of those who had an upbringing in a Christian community of the West, we might think of them as analogous to being first cousins – I went to church as a boy and teenager, I heard all the stories, celebrated Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter, and I received the sacraments as found in the Anglican church. I had them and was made familiar with them at a theological level. That is, they weren’t just rites of passage, family occasions, but I had a fairly full explanation given to me, and I retained an intellectual understanding of what baptism, confirmation and communion are as sacraments.
So, what I will confess for my own part is this: that when I effectively abandoned the Church as a young man in my twenties, it was not out of protest or disaffection for either Christianity or Christ. Yes, I could have used the scandals that beset institutional Christianity (the Roman Catholic Church is far from being alone in suffering such things), but these didn’t figure that much into it. We just grew apart. In fact, I thought well enough of Christ and his Church, and could be quite sentimental about both. I even went occasionally to a service, to hear the music and indulge a bit of nostalgia. But at some point, the drift away became a definite break.
When it came to what the Church actually taught, as opposed to its charity work, the food drives, the volunteerism; the doctrines – I found myself unable to really accept them. And here I am not talking about those that are controversial and in conflict with secular sensibilities about sex and sexuality; these were a minor matter compared to things like, well, resurrection, God’s judgment, the problem of evil, spiritual warfare, God’s mercy and the call to practice sincere unreserved forgiveness. At the heart of it all was a lack of belief in Christ’s capacity to actually make a difference in my life. After all, I was a good person, in my own estimation; and I could acknowledge that my sense of right and wrong, the basic morality I possessed came from knowing Christ in his word, through the Christian community that preserved his teachings. But as to these other things, how does any of this matter?
And so, when I walked past a church with a sign out front that read, “Repent!” my response was one of slight embarrassment over being in any way spiritually related to those who worshiped there. When I read about or saw on television reports of evangelical or charismatic churches where the Holy Spirit was being manifest in all kinds of strange behaviour; I would scoff, but also be a little concerned – I mean, these people going to these things, waving their hands in the air, passing out in the aisles, should they be allowed to vote? In a more Catholic vein, what’s with the Rosaries, the candles, the incense? What’s with this idea that you need to receive the Lord in word and sacrament every week? I mean, is it really that different one week to the next, Christmas and Easter excepted?
Of course, I was missing the point of this being about a relationship with, as opposed to be related to him by the adoption we receiving in baptism, It wasn’t about membership such as we have to a gym or a social club but about repairing a rift, restoring a relationship lost in the sins of Adam and Eve. The story of the garden tells us how they gave into the tempting thought they didn’t need him, that they could go it alone, become gods themselves; they fell for the lie that God was the liar, the deceiver, that it was Satan who tells the truth.
To receive sacraments is an act of humility at the most profound level of our being, the spiritual – sacraments are for the soul. To be slain in the spirit, or hey, just open one’s heart to let God in, and allow whatever to happen – that’s a profound act of trust, and therefore, so difficult for those who live anxious lives these days, and yet it is so liberating when one can let the Holy Spirit in.
I see those families who have children at the publicly-funded Catholic schools struggle with how to relate to me. Usually polite, but awkward. Like a cousin they only now see at weddings and funerals, the reason for having anything more in terms of a relationship escapes them, but there is nonetheless some regret and embarrassment over it being that way.
We have so much work to do, to bring people back into relationship with Christ – the ALPHA soon coming to conclusion has been one effort. The Knights gathering for “Into the Breach” with other men to delve into the nature of Christian faith, the Bible Studies, the children’s catechetical program we’re developing; these are all efforts to bring to Christ those who suspect that maybe they don’t know Jesus as well as they think, or should. And in these trying times, they’re finding themselves naked and afraid, and trying to cover this up with whatever they can find: possessions, money, status, whatever. Like our timid first parents, we must coax them from the bushes, and show them Christ is not to be feared; that their embarrassment is all really on them, that they have a loving father who is searching for them, and Christ as a brother who wants them to come in from outside.
Amen.