Sunday, September 11, 2022
Community Church of Durham
1.
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| Jesus and the Children, Emil Nolde |
But Jesus, if we hang tight, if we stick around: Jesus isn’t one for assessments and pronouncements. More often than not, especially when the heat is on and the stakes are high, Jesus asks a question. WHO ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS? AND WHO ARE MY SISTERS? It’s not his first, and it won’t be his last. Jesus asks a question.
And it’s a particularly provocative question, a radically disruptive question—given that his own mother and brothers, his biological mother and biological brothers, are waiting just outside, standing at the door. Jesus is flipping the whole notion of family, loyalty, commitment on its ear. Asking a question. WHO ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS? AND WHO ARE MY SISTERS? Who do I put at the center of my moral universe, my spiritual community? Who do I love?
And that’s his question this morning. That’s our September 11th question. That’s the question we ask on a day of baptismal celebration, a day of congregational renewal and experimentation. That’s our bold new-day, new-semester, new-world question. WHO ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS? AND WHO ARE MY SISTERS? Who do I love?
2.
I spent a couple hours at U-Day on campus this week. So much energy as the fall semester rolls out. So much curiosity about opportunities for connection, and possibilities for community, and a spirit of adventure in the air. It was a lot of fun. Except for that one moment when a hand shot out from a table (must have been a church group of some sort) and thrust this little burner in my hand. One of those exasperatingly sly little religious tracts. The question, on this one, is: WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?
And I don’t have to tell you about the innards of a piece like this: the threats, the bravado, the ways these folks couch good news in horrific and punishing promises. WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? It might not be good!
And you know, that’s not a question that Jesus ever asks, not once. Not ever. He’s got all kinds of questions. And he wisely, creatively, sometimes even brazenly throws them out there. But WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? isn’t one of them. Not even close.
Because here’s how the story goes.
They’re checking upon him—his family of origin—or they’re there perhaps to rein him in. In the first days, the first weeks, the first months of his ministry, he’s wandered the countryside gathering the condemned and convicted, the fragile and frivolous, the hungry and hopeless. He’s invited in a Roman collaborator and touched the untouchables with love and respect. And now they’re all right there, at his feet, in his home—noshing on pita or hummus or whatever they were noshing on in the First Century, singing their prayers, growing into a new community. Or, if you will, a new family. A family of friends.
But here’s the conflict—or, at least, the drama in this very short story. His family of origin is anxious about all of this, maybe even threatened by it. Threatened by Jesus’ imagination. Threatened by his devotion to other brothers and other sisters and other mothers. I suspect they’re also worried for him: for the world of conflict he’s invited into his life, into his home. Whatever Jesus is doing with his life, with his faith, he’s off the map now, off the grid. With an unusual and unpredictable new family. With a strangely beloved community. So they go to his home that day, his mother and his brothers, to check up on him. Or, maybe, to rein him in.
3.
And his question, Jesus’ question here in the text, cuts through all that anxiety, through all that religious pretense, ours too, and dares us to answer. (It’s not WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY?) It’s WHO ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS? AND WHO ARE MY SISTERS? Who do I love?
So out of the heart of Mark’s gospel, I want to offer up this question as our gospel for September 11—this year and maybe every year. Can we imagine a wide world of brothers and sisters? A world beyond wars of terror and wars on terror? Can we invite into our own homes, into our own communities, maybe even our own churches, those we fear, those we suspect, those we don’t—not for the life of us—understand? And will we—with Jesus—build and nurture and sustain a sense of kinship, a sense of family, on the wild shores of our diversity and difference? It’s one question, and then it’s a whole bunch of questions, and the faithful church resists every impulse to answer them quickly or superficially. We lean into the questions, we pray for wisdom and courage, and we trust in the grace that meets us in the asking itself.
And then we step toward this table, we step toward one another—to be mothers for one another, to be sisters and brothers and siblings together, to embrace the gospel and become a family and answer the question with our very lives.
But here’s the thing. Even to ask this question, as Jesus does, is to wander into some testy terrain, some tricky territory. To invite the world of vulnerability and brokenness into his home is to risk alienating even his family of origin. Maybe this sounds familiar? Anybody ever been there? The mother and brothers, waiting outside, at the door, asking to see him, hoping to rein him in. Turns out.: it’s hard to leave home. Even for Jesus.
I have a good friend, a sociologist at Purdue, who spends most of her time in Iraq studying the effects, the impacts of the war on terror, unleashed by an American administration on the children and families of Iraq in 2003. Kali travels from region to region, village to village, living with families torn apart by that war and everything that’s happened since, cataloguing their broken lives and broken bodies, assessing what it means for them to live without schools and water and governments that care. To be invisible, forgotten by the world.
From afar, from a very safe distance here in New Hampshire, I’m tempted, often tempted, to call her home. Back to Indiana. Back to her sweet teaching gig at Purdue. The hurt she meets in Iraq, in its people, is extreme. The losses are unimaginable. And at the heart of it all: her country’s, my country’s complicity. I want to call her home, tell her to stick to classroom teaching, raise some young radicals here, write a book now and then. I want to rein her in.
But that’s not happening. Because Kali is so devoted now: to the Iraqi people she loves, to the particular families she’s befriended, to the children, the orphans she’s held in her own arms. They will forever be her church. They will forever be her beloved community. There’s no turning back. Not for Kali. And I’ve got to tell you, this scares me and Kali’s many friends in the States. It moves us to tears, but it scares us. And I think that’s kind of how faith is for Jesus, how it works in his life, on his heart.
4.
HERE ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS AND MY SISTERS! Jesus is imagining, and then risking, and then enacting a family of a different kind. In his own little post-graduate apartment. And at the heart of that family is the kind of devotion that joins Kali to her Iraqi friends, to those orphans in bloody streets, broken places I can’t pronounce.
The nuclear family, it turns out, is lovely and essential—but it’s not the big picture for Jesus. The family of God is. The family of humankind is. The family of creation is. And that, that commitment, that vision, that kind of discipleship is costly. That kind of discipleship rearranges our commitments and reconfigures our social lives. It’s costly. And it’s going to shake us up. Over and over and over again. Just ask Jesus’ mother, his brothers, waiting, waiting at the door.
The odd thing, the really odd thing, is that God’s response to our hopes and hurts, to the world’s distress and despair, is a tiny, fragile, human community. Right there in Jesus’ house. Sitting by, listening close. God’s response to our hopes and hurts isn’t a religious tract, with a scary threat, and gruesome promise. God’s response to our hopes and hurts isn’t a complicated creed, one you have to recite and repeat and never stray from believing. God’s response to us and to the world is Jesus in community. Is a prince of peace surrounded by lovers and mothers, recovering addicts and daring dreamers, African refugees and blue blood Puritans, queer tenors and octogenarian sopranos. Jesus in community. HERE ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS AND MY SISTERS!
In just a moment, I’m going to invite you to join me at this table, for this beautiful feast. Pay attention as you step forward. Watch your step. Not because I’m worried you’re going to fall; but because these are the steps that bring us together. These are the sacred steps that unite us as sisters, brothers, siblings in Christ. Jesus in community. You and me at this table. Pay attention. This is the gospel journey.
To be in community is a holy thing, a sacred calling. To share one another’s burdens, to honor one another’s dreams is to walk a gospel path. To make space for fellow pilgrims, weary travelers, is Jesus’ way.
HERE ARE MY MOTHER AND MY BROTHERS AND MY SISTERS. We are the siblings of Jesus. Right here. We are the friends of God. Right now. If we hang tight, if we stick around, if we keep coming back. We are God’s good news.
Amen and Ashe.
