Were Mary's Feelings Hurt? (Reflections on Pentecost 2 Year B)

“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (Mark 3:35)

Back in 1999 CBS-TV aired a not-too-terrible made-for-television movie called—simply enough—Jesus. I have it on video and I show it to my Confirmation students when we study the New Testament. It’s not 100% biblically accurate, but it’s a lot less gory than The Passion of the Christ and the kids seem to like it. It’s good for stimulating thought—which is always somewhat challenging when one is dealing with adolescents.

There are also a couple of scenes in this movie that get me thinking. There’s this one scene that takes place right after Jesus says the line which I’ve quoted above. It’s a scene which does not appear in the scriptures, but I wonder if it didn’t really happen after all. In this scene Mary Magdalene (played as a prostitute by a smokin’ hot Debra Messing) approaches Our Lord’s mother (the ever-charming Jacqueline Bisset) and asks her if Jesus’ remark about ‘anyone who does the will of God is my mother’ has hurt his real mother’s feelings. If I were the Blessed Mother, I think I might be a little put out should my son say such a thing. After all, it wasn’t just anyone who carried him around for nine months in her womb. It wasn’t just anyone who had to have him bounce on her bladder during a seventy-mile trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem. It wasn’t just anyone who had to give birth to him in a stable. It wasn’t just anyone who endured the societal scorn of being an un-wed teen mom. And it wasn’t just anyone who had to hunt his holy twelve-year-old butt down when he decided to stay in the temple in Jerusalem. And let’s not forget changing diapers, midnight feedings, and everything that goes with being a mother to the only begotten Son of God. Yup. I’d be pretty hurt by that crack.

Face it. It’s hard to be family. Sometimes the ones who should be the closest to us seem the most distant. So often we feel closer to non-relatives than we do to our own flesh and blood. And in this week’s Gospel pericope (Mark 3:20-35) it’s the home town folks—not the strangers—who accuse Jesus of being bonkers. Sometimes our deepest wounds come from the people who should be the closest to us. How very painful it can be when our house is divided against itself, when we don’t like the people we love!

Of course, I’d really love to believe that we are all family in Jesus Christ—in spite of centuries of denominationalism, holy wars, and the fact that they won’t let me take communion in a Missouri Synod Lutheran church! During my first day on campus at the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia it somehow occurred to me that anyone I met on that pleasant, green city block of stately ecclesiastical real estate would be a fellow Christian. I was among family. Everyone was my brother or sister. When I noticed a family unpacking a U-Haul truck in front of my building, I volunteered to help them. They were my new relatives. We shared a lovely impromptu lunch together when the unloading was completed, and many happy hours together for years thereafter. At the recent Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod Assembly, ELCA representative Stephen Bouman, former Bishop of the Metro New York Synod, told a touching story of how he—a complete stranger—had been invited to the home of a poor Palestinian Christian family living in the Old City of Jerusalem and treated like royalty just because he was a fellow believer. It is possible for us to create such loving community. It’s just not always easy to maintain it.

Even in my small parish I know there are folks who don’t like each other. Sometimes, I don’t like them very much myself. We still gossip, we still complain, we still blow stuff out of proportion. But we are family, like it or not. The only way to keep the house from being divided is to do the will of God—putting God’s will above our own. No one says this will be easy, but in the effort we just might find ourselves, like Jesus, accused of being possessed. In our case, the possession will be by the Holy Spirit.

God bless you, my family! Thanks for reading.