Genesis 21.8-21, Matthew 10.24-39
The Third Sunday after Trinity, 25 June 2023, Austwick, Clapham, Keasden
‘I have come to set a man against his father,
and a daughter against her mother,
and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;
and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household’ [1]
Sometimes scripture comforts us; and sometimes it is so uncomfortable that we’d rather avoid what it says. But if we are to grow in our faith and to present a mature version of Christianity to the world then we need to grapple with these difficult texts, trusting God to reveal himself to us through our struggle. So why did Jesus say those things about the family which we have heard today?
We might assume, before looking, that the scriptures would unconditionally affirm the family as an institution. But when we start to look, then we see something different altogether. From the beginning to the end of scripture, family is a forum for conflict and pain. From Adam and Eve conflicted over a secret and a lie, to Martha and Mary squabbling over household duties when Jesus was visiting. Look at today’s Genesis reading, about trouble between Sarah and Hagar over Abraham’s two sons - one deemed legitimate, one illegitimate; and Hagar’s consequent pain and struggle. [2]
There always seems to have been a tension in families; regarded as society’s anchor, a comfort and support, they can be, often at the same time, at war with themselves and others. Scripture celebrates families as holding society together - but equally reveals their painful habit of falling apart, and creating conflict with each other. [3]
So, Jesus distanced himself from his society’s so-called family values. He would not make an idol of the family, as the rest of his society had. Time and time again in the gospels we hear him make statements like today’s incendiary remarks,
‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me.’ [4]
Now Jesus’ era was not unlike our own era, a time when the institutions of our culture are being undermined, challenged, changed. Family and religion especially. So, given his peaceable nature, given his healing mission, Jesus’ followers expected him to bring peace to the troubled family of Israel. How it must have shocked them, when he told them that he would do the opposite.
‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. … to set kinfolk against kinfolk; where one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.’ [5]
Jesus, who constantly expressed his deep love and care for those closest to him, and demonstrated his self-giving compassion for all the people, here throws a grenade into the heart of the family home. In this passage, he blows apart the concept of Christian Family Values. What is going on?
Now, Jesus, I suggest, is not saying these words to deny the importance of the family, but is calling us to ‘sit loosely’ to the institution, so as to give a greater priority to being baptised citizens of God’s kingdom; he is not trying to undermine or reverse the good family values that we live by, but is inviting us to bring these with us into a whole new set of relationships.
Jesus was not overly concerned with family matters, because his chief concern was to announce, and demonstrate, the coming of the kingdom of God.
He made his point strongly in order to ensure it was heard - that whilst there will always be a place for the family in the future of God’s people, we must not make an idol of it, and we must be prepared to reshape our relationship with it, in the light of the values of God’s kingdom.
Paul’s teaching in Romans about the baptised is helpful to us here. The baptised, Paul says, have died to the old ways of the world, family ties included. The baptised are a people exploring a new way to be human together, with God: ‘We have been buried with him by baptism into death,’ writes Paul, ‘so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life’. [6]
The Baptised are not a family - our relationships transcend so-called family values. Those wrapped up in family alone are alive to each other, exclusively; but the baptised are alive to a newness of life in God, in relationships which embrace and include all people, both inside and outside our clan.
Those who are baptised into Christ’s way, his followers, remember Jesus’ practice of sharing fellowship meals which brought together devout Jews and the ‘outcasts and sinners’, the powerful and the poor of the land. [7] In our own communion service we remember that around the family table of the baptised, a new community is formed. In the Acts of the Apostles Luke tells us that ‘All who believed were together and had all things in common’. [8]
The Baptised are not a family - our relationships transcend family values. Being baptised doesn’t remove us from the mess of human living - and from the sometimes messy business of family life - but it strengthens our love, and brings us together with people in new ways.
The prominent British scholar Terry Eagleton recognised how the New Testament demonstrates ‘the grossly inconvenient news that our forms of life must undergo radical dissolution if they are to be reborn as just and compassionate communities’. [9]
This dissolution from the ways of an unjust and indifferent society, and rebirth into God’s kingdom is not easy to achieve. As Rowan Williams once said, ‘You don’t go down to into the rivers of Jordan without stirring up a great deal of mud!’ [10]
The Baptised are not a family in the usual meaning of the word - but ones who seek to follow Jesus in embracing those who have been rejected by other families in society. This will not be welcomed by everybody: some may even find their own families rejecting them for their faith. This is what carrying ones cross might mean for some of us, or losing one’s life for Christ’s sake, to find it.
But we, the Baptised, are helped by The Spirit to join a new community, who remember the forgotten ones, who include the excluded ones, who bring peace to the conflicted ones, who love the unloved ones, who nurture life and love and hope where family and society has failed to deliver these things. Like our Lord, breaking down barriers, transcending boundaries, muddying the waters in joyful, loving activity - these are the marks of the Baptised, to whom we belong, and what a way of life it is.
Notes
A rewrite of The Baptised are not a family, preached in Queen Camel, 2014.
[1] Matthew 10.35-36
[2] Wikipedia: Sibling rivalry - in religion
[3] N.T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, pp.383-407; see my previous sermon, Christian Family Values - an incendiary approach, Whitegate, 2013.
[4] Matthew 10.37-38
[5] Matthew 10.34-36
[6] Romans 6.4
[7] From my earlier sermon, Placed among the poor, Bratton Clovelly, 2013, and also Christian Family Values - an incendiary approach.
[8] Acts 2.44
[9] Terry Eagleton, Culture and the Death of God
[10] Rowan Williams, Being Christian: Baptism, Bible, Eucharist, Prayer, p.6
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