Jeremiah 23.23-29, Luke 12.49-56
The Ninth Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 18 August 2019
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
For those of us who have enjoyed a good stable family life, there’s something quite disturbing about today’s gospel passage.‘I came to bring fire to the earth,’ Jesus announces; and the incendiary words which follow seem far removed from those Christian Family Values we’ve all been taught:
‘Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth?’ He said. ‘No, I tell you, but rather division! From now on, households will be divided, three against two and two against three; fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law - each against the other.’ [2]
Whilst his followers expected Jesus to bring peace to the troubled family of Israel, here he’s telling them that he’ll do the opposite. Whilst his friends saw Jesus as one who showed deep love and care for those closest to him, here he throws a grenade into the heart of the family home. He’s saying that the values of the kingdom of God supersede our family values, and that those who rise to the challenge of living out the kingdom should be ready to face trouble and division at home.
And this passage would not be so disturbing if it were a one-off, if elsewhere Jesus affirmed the family in terms we might call ‘conventional’. But the reality is that he never does. [3]
Remember when someone said, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, wanting to see you,’ and he replied, ‘My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.’ [4] And when a woman in a crowd told him, ‘Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!’ and he retorted, ‘Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it!’ [5]
The gospels are full of statements like these. Consistently, when it comes to the family, Jesus will not affirm it - as having ultimate value. Ahead of it, always, is the way of the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is the essence of Jesus’ teaching; the kingdom of God is the dawning of a new way of human relating, which is not a lesser way but a greater way than the family way. As far as Jesus is concerned, in the kingdom of God, loyalty to himself takes precedence over family loyalty. Kingdom first - family second, Jesus taught. [6]
In Jesus’ day family loyalty was a major symbol of Jewish identity; it was an obligation at the heart of that society. Interpreting the time that he lived in, Jesus’ teaching expresses the notion that family loyalty is good, until it becomes an idol. If we never welcome outsiders to our family meal table; if, in securing the boundaries of our family home, we make an enemy of our neighbour; if unquestioningly supplying our family with all desirable consumer goods helps despoil the earth; or if our determination to maximise our family’s wealth means exploiting our poor employees - then we’ve made an idol of the family and turned our backs on the ways of God.
Where family life risks becoming a clannish affair, closed-off against all neighbours, Jesus calls us to experience a new way of human relating, the life of the kingdom of God. The values of the kingdom of God are the true Christian Family Values, which rewrite the rules of conventional society to create a new set of relationships altogether.
Now, we’re aware of how much family life is changing in our present time. The Office for National Statistics last year reported that ‘While married couple families remain the most common, cohabiting couples are the fastest growing family type as people increasingly choose to live together before, or without, getting married. There are also more people living alone than ever before, an increasing number of same-sex couple families and more young adults living with their parents.’ [7]
How do we interpret this? What underlies the changes we’ve seen in our culture in our lifetime? What is beneath the surface of developments in technology, changes in business practices and the transformation of the patterns and shapes of work and home life?
I would dare to say, what has most defined the direction of our lives over the past forty years or so, is the idol of individualism. Today, the acceptable focus of life is ‘me’, not ‘we’; working together for the common good is eclipsed by the drive to get what works best for me. The ‘public’ has been replaced by the ‘private’ as the framework for our lives. It isn’t working out too well. This privatisation drive has brought with it the splintering of family life and the decline of other traditional institutions; increased job insecurity for the many; depression, anxiety, and stress at ever increasing levels. It’s just as well it’s not the only way we can live. [8]
In a world where our rights always trump our responsibilities, the gospel of the kingdom goes against the grain, with its urge to always reach out towards others in celebration of our common humanity. For in the kingdom of God the meal table is open to all. How often in the gospels do we see Jesus at table, sharing fellowship with invited guests. Controversially, he ate with moral outcasts such as the tax-collectors Levi and Zaccheus. Shockingly, for his day, women were included, among them a so-called ‘sinful women’ who, in the house of a leading Pharisee, anointed Jesus with ‘an alabaster jar of perfume’. But his meals were also shared with - often hosted by - people who were not outcasts. He ate in the homes of leading Pharisees, and many of his meals were paid for by wealthy supporters such as Joanna. [9]
Jesus’ fellowship meals brought devout Jews together with the ‘outcasts and sinners’ and the poor of the land, helping them discover a new sense of being - which did not replace, but did eclipse, their enclosed experience of family. By inviting people to broaden, deepen and strengthen their relationships with others, Jesus’ fellowship meals prophetically challenged the divisive social conventions of the time.
Some Churches like to say, ‘we’re one happy family here’, but does that truly express what the kingdom of God is about? Family life, when well-lived, is a source of great happiness and security to its members. The good Christian family sits well within the kingdom of God - whose table is radically open to everyone, whose membership is the community of all with whom we share this precious earth. [10]
Notes
[1] A rewrite of Christian Family Values: an incendiary approach preached at Whitegate, 18 August 2013.
[2] Luke 12.49, 51-53 paraphrased.
[3] N.T. Wright’s discussion of Nation and Family in Jesus and the Victory of God, pp.383-407.
[4] Luke 8.19-21.
[5] Luke 11.27-28.
[6] Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p.402
[7] Office for National Statistics, Families and households: 2018.
[8] This sermon (and this paragraph particularly) is haunted by the writings of the late Mark Fisher on ‘Capitalist Realism’. See his blog k-punk.org and the book Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
[9] See my sermon, Placed among the poor, Bratton Clovelly, 17 March 2013. Drawing on Luke 5.27-32, Luke 19.1-7, Luke 7.36-50.
[10] Richard Bauckham, Bible & Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation. Referenced by Bruce Stanley in Christine Miles, If you kneel down in the woods today, Church Times, 4 October 2013.
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