 |
| "Rebuke of Adam & Eve" Netoir, 18th cent. |
“Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my
sister and mother.” (Mark
3:35)
When
George’s wife passed away, he figured he didn’t need to live in his big house
anymore. Being a generous sort, George gave the home free of charge to his son
and determined to move into a small apartment. He approached his good friends
John and Maddie[i]
and asked if he could stay with them until he found a suitable new place. “No
problem, George, “they told him. “Stay as long as you like.”
He
did. In fact, he stayed for years.
When
I met George, he was planted like an India rubber plant in an overstuffed brown
La-Z-Boy recliner in John and Maddie’s living room—a spot from which he seldom
moved and from which he could enjoy endless reruns of “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke”
on a western movie cable channel until the inevitable day when the EMTs came to
carry him out. We buried his ashes in the same grave where his beloved wife
reposed in a tiny Methodist churchyard. I gave a brief graveside homily and read
the committal rites as John and Maddie and a few other old friends gathered to say
their farewells to good ol’ George.
When
I’d concluded the prayers, the small, quirky female funeral director addressed
the bereaved as funeral directors always do at graveside. Their little speeches
are usually the same. They thank the pastor and pallbearers and invite the
assembly to attend a luncheon at a local eatery. This director, however, began
her remarks with a phrase which sticks in my memory. She said, “There are a lot
of different ways to be a family.”
That’s
kind of Jesus’ point in the Gospel lesson from the RCL for Pentecost 3, Year B
(Mark 3:20-35). Jesus has just come back from a little mountaintop retreat
where he’s chosen twelve guys out of his myriad followers to be his disciples—sort
of a little fraternity. Most of us have also created mini families outside of
the folks who swim in our gene pools. Some of us have had stepchildren or stepparents.
There are army buddies, college roommates, co-workers, band mates, close neighbors,
fraternity brothers, sorority sisters—you get the idea. Sometimes these “families”
can be closer to us than our biological or nuclear families. Sometimes the ones
who should be the closest to us—as with Jesus’ family in this story—understand us
the least. Why? Maybe because we’re so close that all we see in our nuclear
family members is a reflection of ourselves.
I
had a great drama teacher in high school who used to tell us we’d know we were really
growing up when we started seeing our parents and siblings as individuals and
not as extensions of ourselves. As kids we’re certain our parents are out of
touch. As parents, we wish our kids could be more like us. As children we make constant
comparisons with our brothers and sisters. It’s often a pretty rough job to
think of people we think we know so well as individuals with their own
personalities, needs, histories, and gifts. It’s not surprising that not even
Jesus’ family could quite get their brains wrapped around what he was about.
They just thought he’d gone coo-coo for Coco Puffs.
Have
you ever lived in a house divided? I’m happy to say I never have, but I’ve
heard tell of plenty of families that just can’t seem to get it together and
love one another the way God intended us to love. The First Lesson for
Pentecost 3 (Genasis 3:8-15) tells the great mythical tale of our divided human
family. Adam gets caught with his fig leaves down breaking the rules. So what
does he do? He blames his wife. What does she do? She blames the snake. How
different this story might be if Adam had just said, “You know, Lord, I openly
defied your command. I take responsibility for my actions. I’m truly sorry.
Please don’t punish my wife. She didn’t know what she was doing, and I couldn’t
stand it if you made her suffer.” Wouldn’t that be some stuff?
But
no. We like to ignore our own weaknesses and blame others. We don’t want to see
their reasoning or their pain or forgive them for being human or simply decide we’re
family and we have to care for each other whether we understand each other or
not. And so houses get divided. So do societies. And nations.
When
my parents died, I realized I had so many questions I would’ve liked to ask
them. Still, I recognized it wasn’t necessary to understand someone in order to
love them. Love can be our choice. So can forgiveness. But if we don’t believe
in forgiveness or reconciliation or empathy, we go on being unforgiven,
unreconciled, and estranged. It’s the same as when the Jerusalem scribes in the
Gospel story claimed Jesus was possessed by Beelzebul (v.22)[ii]. They could never accept
the goodness of his message because they refused to believe there was
any goodness.
I’m
having a really, really hard time understanding some of our American
family right now in this time of a house divided. Nevertheless, I have to try
and remind myself at the end of the day we are all still citizens of the same
land, still entitled to the same freedoms, still—I dearly hope—trying to do what
we think is best. Fortunately, I still have the family of the Christian faith,
where I am reminded whenever I take communion—when I come to our family dinner
table—that we’re all in this together, and our primary command is to love one
another as Christ loved us.
Nadia
Bolz-Weber often repeats a story about the time, following some unexpected
publicity, her little church family—which she had imagined was for the LGBTQ+ community,
recovering addicts, and other assorted outcasts and weirdos—was suddenly inundated
with well-meaning “normal” people. A transgender teenager in the congregation
remarked, “I’m glad we have people in our church who look like my parents,
because they love me in a way my own parents can’t.[iii]”
We’re
a family, dear people of God. Maybe not a perfect family, but then what family
is? We don’t always understand each other, but God has enough understanding for
all of us.
I’m
so pleased you chose to look in on me this week. I’m glad we’re related.
[i]
John and Maddie were friends of my wife. John was a Vietnam vet, and my Bride
came to know him through her advocacy work with the Vietnam Veterans of
America.
[ii]
Beelzebul is a Hebrew corruption of the name of a Philistine god which might
have originally meant “Lord of the Lofty Abode.” It was mocked on to mean “Lord
of the Flies,” a reference to death and decay. As it appears in Mark’s gospel
it literally translates as “Lord of Dung.”
[iii]
Nadia Bolz-Weber: Pastrix: The Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner &
Saint (Jericho Books: 2013).
No comments:
Post a Comment