Pentecost II
Jesus gets somewhat crazy today. Or so the authorities think. And, his family arrive as if to take him quietly away from the crowd who have gathered to listen.
Aside from the lovely information that Jesus has sisters and brothers (of course Mary had more children!), we have to ask about family values…
There he is, healing the sick and proclaiming that the reality of God is at hand and is not elsewhere. Turn to that which gives life, and connects you to one another and to God’s presence (repent). Seek out what this connection implies for your life and the life of the world (the ‘will of God’ is another way of saying this). ‘You must change your life,’ as the poet Rilke put it.
Well, this can upset a lot of accustomed ways of doing things and the relationships formed (good, bad, indifferent) along the way. And when the rabbi (Jesus) really hits his stride in making this proclamation, and the crowds gather (who or what doesn’t need healing?), the claims of the old ways assert themselves.
People get nervous.
Shouldn’t the patriarchy just reassert itself, and the claims of established relationships and orders just continue on their way?
No. Jesus says: whoever does the will of God is connected by a bond as deep as the cosmos, itself. And, God has shown us, O mortals, what is good. What is the will of God, and what does the Lord require of us, but to do justice and to love mercy and kindness and to walk humbly with this awareness of the divine presence. So wrote the prophet Micah. Jesus knows this. Those who do and seek these things are those with whom he forms new relationships— justice is centered, not family structure; truth makes you free, not the performance of inherited roles; mercy should support and define our relationships, not expectation or repetition.
The love of mothers and sisters and brothers (and others) is not denigrated by a re-centering even these basic frames of our existence with the tools of justice, truth, and mercy. Lasting, life-giving human relationships are founded in and supported by rediscovering them in the light of this understanding of doing the ‘will of God.’ And, this relationship of love extends to the whole connected family of created things — our dear Brother, Holy Francis, called the sun, Brother, and the moon, Sister. Other parts of the cosmos do the ‘will of God’ unthinkingly: we humans seem to need to re-learn this way of being. Jesus reminds us how, and shows the way.