June 9, 2024, The Chaotic Family of God, Mark 3:20-35 – Mtr. Kathryn Boswell

saintphilipsnorwood ♦ June 9, 2024 ♦ Leave a comment

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Last weekend MaryEllen and I were blessed to be able to attend the 156^th Convention of the Diocese of Albany at the YMCA Camp at Silver Bay. The weather was picture-perfect the entire weekend; the facility itself was absolutely beautiful; the lake and the grounds were gorgeous; the music was excellent, as well as the teaching and worship; the workshops were truly wonderful; the food was delicious and plentiful; and the business meetings were efficient and harmonious, thanks be to God. But even with all that excellence and beauty and all-round goodness, I would have to say that the best thing about the Convention – far and away the best thing – was the sense of love and grace that surrounded and filled every aspect of our time together.

There were over 400 Diocese-of-Albany members, as well as a few guests from other Dioceses, but even with so many different people from so many different parishes there was a real sense that we were one family – as Jesus says in our gospel today, that we were his mothers and sisters and brothers, united by our common belonging in the heart of God – which, as it happens, was the theme for this year’s Convention: “Dwelling Together in the Heart of God.”

And this was all the more precious – and all the more remarkable – because of the discord and hurt and division that most of us remembered all too well from the last time we came together as a Diocese in Silver Bay. On our first evening together, Bishop Jeremiah gave a Convention Address that spoke directly to my heart, and I believe the hearts of everyone there, about where our unity lies, and about what it means to be one family with so many differences.

And what it means to be family is what Jesus is talking about today in the gospel. We see Jesus, fully immersed in his ministry, healing, teaching, casting out demons. The crowds kept coming to him in greater and greater numbers, until there wasn’t even time to take a break for meals or to get some rest. From the quiet pages of our Bible it’s easy for us to recognize the hand of God in all that. We know what was happening. But to some of the people on the ground right then and there, it looked an awful lot like chaos. It looked like things were really getting out of hand. To the Pharisees, it looked like maybe there was some sinister and demonic power involved in all of this – how else to explain it? To Jesus’s family, it looked like Jesus had really lost his head – that he’d gotten completely carried away with all this ministry to the ragged multitudes. Jesus’ brothers were there to take him aside – by force if necessary – and to bring him home, where he belonged.

And that was exactly what Jesus spoke to. Where did Jesus belong? To the Scribes and the Pharisees belonging meant holding fast to the same Law, and reverencing and observing the same traditions. When Jesus offended against those traditions, when he healed people on the Sabbath Day, when he let his students eat without observing ceremonial handwashings, clearly he didn’t belong with them.

His family measured belonging in blood ties and family names. Jesus belonged with them, they reasoned, because they shared those common bonds, because their genealogies and hometowns and family stories, were the same.

In his answer, though, Jesus redefined what it means to belong. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he said to them. And that was a harsh thing to say, I think, or at least a harsh thing for his family to hear. But he looked around at the people seated around him, people from all different classes and all different walks of life, and he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” I belong here.

And that poses a challenge to the ways we are used to thinking and living and making decisions about who we belong with. Because if we are honest, finding our belonging in people that follow the same traditions as we follow, who pray the same way we pray and sing the same hymns we sing and follow the same rules we follow, that is just as comfortable for us as it was for the Pharisees. And finding our kinship with people who look like us and live like us, who share our language and our history, and especially who share our genetics, that is certainly as natural for us as it was for Jesus’s mother and brothers. What Jesus says shakes up our natural and comfortable assumptions, just as much as it did for them.

Where do we belong? More specifically, with whom do we belong? Jesus’s answer is that we belong with all those who follow God. And what makes that such a challenge is that not everyone who follows God looks like us or thinks like us. Not everyone who follows God shares our traditions. Not everyone who follows God shares our understanding or our interpretations or our tastes. In short, if we belong to the family of those who follow God, then we belong to a family where, at least on the surface of things, the main thing we have in common is how different we are. And that can be a scary and uncomfortable thing.

But it’s not a bad thing.

Bp. Jeremiah had this to say about our differences: “It does not help us to pretend we all agree on everything,” he said. “…especially when our differences can be a gift. They can help us glimpse a fuller view of God. Our differences help hold us accountable and cultivate in each of us a deeper empathy, a more honest sense of compassion.” And he said, “Our willingness to love across the divides is a powerful witness in this fractured world.”

First, our differences can help us see a more complete image of God, because we all see from different perspectives, and when we share perspectives with someone who is not like us, our picture of God is made a little bigger, a little more complete. We see this happening at our Friday morning Bible study so often. We read the same passage, we discuss the same idea, but because we all have different experiences and different ways of thinking, each person has something unique and valuable to add. We are enriched by our differences, not hindered by them. Sometimes we see things very differently – but in the end we all see God more clearly.

And that’s why it’s our differences that help us grow in our compassion for each other, and our empathy with each other. It’s pretty stress-free to live alongside people who are just like you. But when we are faced with people we sometimes don’t understand, maybe even with people who sometimes make us uncomfortable, that’s when real love goes into action. “If you love only those who love you,” Jesus famously said, “what good is that? Even scoundrels do that much.”

It is an unnatural thing, even a foolish thing in the eyes of the world, to love across the divides. The world is all about tribes and clans and loyalty to our own. Loving those who are different from us is so unnatural, Jesus tells us, that loving each other is the one sure sign to the world that we belong to him. “The world will know you are my disciples if you love one another,” Jesus said. Not because Christians are so like-minded or so virtuous that loving just comes natural to them. But the exact opposite – because in this fractured world our love for our very diverse brothers and sisters is a supernatural sign of our belonging to God, who loved us even when we were his enemies.

On the surface of things, there are a multitude of differences that divide us. Sometimes in the Church our life together looks an awful lot like chaos. Sometimes, we might feel like things are getting out of hand with all this diversity and disagreement. But when we get to the heart of things, that’s when we find our family likeness. Bp. Jeremiah said this in his Convention address, and it is equally true here: “This room is filled with faithful children of God, made in the image of God, filled with the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, endowed by the Creator with dignity and worth. We have our differences but even the people you think are the wrongest are much more importantly faithful children of God – Christians – your brothers and your sisters.” +