Family Gets Messy (Reflections on Pentecost 10, Year C 2025)

 

“Do you think I’ve come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!” (Luke 12:51)

It seems every time I open my laptop and look at the news there’s some gossipy story about Britain’s Royal Family. I have to confess, I suck that stuff down like a toddler with a juice cup. There’s something in me that just loves the castles and the scarlet uniforms and the Church of England and all that classy stuff. But I also think it must suck being part of a clan whose family business is representing the whole nation—especially when you can’t seem to get your act together and every family spat and squabble gets splashed across the world press for nitwits like me to read. I mean, I really hope the King and Harry make up and the two princely brothers can shake hands someday. But it also makes me think just how messy families are. If these pampered, palace-dwelling stiffs can’t manage to get along, there shouldn’t be any shame for the rest of us when we’re not on speaking terms with someone who swims in our gene pool.

In the Gospel lesson for Pentecost 10, Year C in the Revised Common Lectionary (Luke 12:49-56) Jesus warns us that he’s going to create some division within families. He wasn’t kidding. It’s very possible in the world of this text to be kicked out of your family if you decided you wanted to follow this rabbi from Nazareth or any of his disciples. You could even get kicked out of your community. Later, Christians who waffled and denied Jesus in order to save their jobs or their lives in the face of official Roman persecution risked not being allowed back into the church (even though the church was supposed to be teaching love and forgiveness!).

Jesus didn’t come with the purpose of screwing up family relations, but that has often been the result. Obedience to the way of Christ is always going to get under someone’s skin and, sinful, broken children that we are, relations are going to get strained.

Of course, there are good reasons for family discord, and not-so-good reasons. If you happen to be a hereditary monarch and titular head of your nation’s official church, you might take it amiss if your little brother has been hanging out with a notorious pedophile and human trafficker. After all, such behavior reflects rather poorly on both the church and the state. Most of us, however, won’t find ourselves in that sort of situation, so it’s best we examine the motives which lead us to slamming doors, blocking numbers, or banning others from our social media.

I would guess the most likely reason for a righteous exile from family life will have something to do with substance abuse. There may be times when someone’s drinking or drugging means you have to revoke their welcome for the sake of the peace of the rest of the family. Life in Christ means we’re called to forgive sin but not ignore it. I imagine it’s an incredibly painful thing to tell your child or your sibling or your parent that their addiction has cost them their place in the family and they will have to earn their way back.

Obedience to Christ calls us to be witnesses to righteousness and speak truth when we’re confronted with falsehoods. Nobody wants to cause trouble, but if hate speech and ignorance aren’t challenged, they won’t go away on their own. In the First Lesson (Jeremiah 23:23-29) the prophet calls out false prophets who claimed they’d had mystical dreams promising Judah safety and prosperity. Jeremiah knew these guys were liars and suck-ups who were telling the king what he wanted to hear. Jeremiah felt it his responsibility to preach the word of God. This didn’t work out too well for him. He was ostracized, ridiculed, and died in obscurity. But he did what he was called to do.

Not all of us are going to be Jeremiah, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Martin Luther King. Nevertheless, when your cousin Dave starts using the “N word,” or starts bashing LGBTQ+ people, or starts telling you the Rapture is coming as soon as Israel conquers all of Jerusalem, you need to set him straight. And, to borrow a quote attributed to Elie Weisel, we must never allow anyone to be humiliated in our presence.

Families are messy. So is standing up for the Gospel, but obedience to Christ carries responsibilities. Sometimes it means bringing a little fire to your world.

Be good to your family this week and keep on being a witness.

Waiting for the Burglar? (Reflections on Pentecost 9, Year C)

 

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” (Luke 12:32)

I will always remember the sound of my brother-in-law Bruce’s voice on the afternoon of February 17, 1989. I had just taught my last period at Stephen M. Wright Junior High in Los Angeles. I was summoned to the school office for a phone call. Bruce phoned the school (there being no cell phones in those pre-historic days) to tell me that my sister had just given birth to their first child, a little girl. The new daddy’s voice pulsated with excitement and love for his new infant daughter. “There’s a new little girl in the world,” he said. “She’s beautiful!”

A year later, when he informed me my sis was pregnant again, he didn’t sound quite so excited. In fact, he had the look of a hedge fund manager whose office was just raided by the FBI. “I don’t know,” he said. “Two babies..? I don’t know how we’ll manage.”

 They managed just fine. But that’s the thing about babies. Like a lot of things in this world, they tend to come around when you’re not expecting them or haven’t planned for them. But God provides. You just have to have a little faith.

I’m not saying there isn’t plenty to worry about these days. In the First Lesson from the RCL for Pentecost 9, Year C (Genesis 15:1-6) Abram is worrying that God won’t ever come through on his promise. He and his missus Sarai have been planning for and expecting a baby, but one just isn’t forthcoming. Abe’s getting discouraged, and his big fear is he will never achieve the desire of his heart—a son and heir. God reassures the old boy that he’ll get what he wants. It’s just not going to be right away. So Abe says, “Okay,” and the Lord reckons it to him as righteousness.

If you’re ever wondering what righteousness looks like, there it is. It’s faith. Not mere assent to a doctrine, but the living belief that it’s the Father’s good pleasure to give us what we need (although not always what we want!). Our baptism is a reminder of God’s grace and goodness. It’s the reminder that we matter to God so we can operate out of faith and not out of fear.

After all, there are really only two ways to live: by faith or by fear. Some may suggest there’s a third way—manly self-reliance. I’m not so sure that’s going to work when your company downsizes you or you or your family member gets a life-changing diagnosis. You’ll be looking to rely on something more than yourself. No. It’s pretty much faith or fear. And we have to decide how we’re going to live and how we want our children to live. Remember, there’s nothing scarier to a kid than fear in an adult.

In our Gospel lesson for Pentecost 9, Year C (Luke 12:32-40) Jesus’ admonition to live fearlessly comes with a pretty scary suggestion. Who wants to sell everything they have and give the money to the poor? Shouldn’t you be saving a little something in case of a stock market collapse or a hurricane or the zombie apocalypse? I think what the Lord is really challenging us to do here is get outside of ourselves. Fear is the result of self-preoccupation. Martin Luther always described sin as the soul curved in on itself. Jesus is urging us to pull our heads out and be part of the world around us. His suggestion about selling our possessions and giving to the poor is a recipe for faithful living. When we transfer some of the blessings God gave us to others—be it through donation of our cash or the donation of our time as volunteers—we’re making two statements of faith. First, we’re saying that we’re going to get along just fine on what’s left over. If we give ten bucks to the March of Dimes, we won’t be ten bucks short at the end of the pay period. We made a choice to trust in God for our own preservation. Second, we’ve said through our gift or volunteering that what we’ve done will matter. We believe someone’s life is going to be just that much better because we’ve reallocated some of our own blessings for the benefit of others.

Another part of this Gospel lesson is a parable Jesus teaches about servants (that could be us) staying alert for the return of their master (that could be Jesus). There are two ways I think you could look at this. You could go the “end-of-the-world-is-coming-soon” rout and start interpreting every story you hear on the news as a harbinger of the Apocalypse, the Second Coming, the End Times, or whatever. Don’t even get me started on that jawn. That’s a sure-fire way to live in fear. It’s also an exercise in heresy since all the nitwits who’ve claimed to have deciphered eschatological Biblical prophecy have really just pulled their interpretations out of their lower GI tract (metaphorically speaking, of course).

The other way to look at this is the Matthew 25 rout where Jesus tells us, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”[i] What I mean is we should always be on the lookout for meeting Jesus. He could be present in a neighbor, a family member, someone in need, a panhandler on the street, or an immigrant behind the counter at Dunkin Donuts. Any chance encounter might be an opportunity to draw closer to God by drawing closer to the ones around us.

Finally, the last part of this Gospel lesson is a weird kind of warning. Yes, if the homeowner knew what hour the thief was coming, he’d have met the guy at the window with a loaded Smith & Wesson. The problem is, we don’t know when stuff is going to happen. Like the arrival of a baby, life-changing moments occur, and we can’t always control them. So, it’s not about what happens, but about how we react. You can live in fear and sit at home all night with your Smith & Wesson on your lap just in case a burglar should try to break in, or you can go out among fellow human beings, risk loving them, and find your purpose.

Fear? Faith? Which one is it going to be?

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[i] Matthew 25:40.