Kindred Spirits

Matthew 12:46-50

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The cover photo from the Mother’s Day issue of a Christian magazine showed a neatly groomed and well dressed little brother and sister serving their mother an artistically arranged breakfast in bed on a silver platter. In a subsequent letter to the editor, a mother wrote something like, “What color is the sky in your world? Where has there ever been a breakfast in bed even remotely resembling this one?” And she went on to describe what a realistic portrayal of that scene would look like: juice spilled all over the tray (definitely not silver), burnt toast, sticky jelly everywhere, a bowl of soggy cereal instead of eggs, and no coffee or napkin. The kids and their mother would all have “bed head,” and it would still be dark outside. Her point was that we should be honest about the reality of family life, especially as Christians--that it isn’t a dollhouse fantasy, or anything even close. Norman Rockwell would have painted a version of the scene capturing the love between the mother and her well-meaning children in all of its nuances: heartwarming, but not an airbrushed ideal.

Jesus would have known all about families. He didn’t just appear on the scene as an unattached, solitary figure. Quite the contrary, he was the first of several children in his large family, one of five brothers and at least three sisters. So he would have been very well acquainted with family life in the real world: the strong bonds of love, shared celebrations and crises, and the inevitable friction and cross currents.

I’ve been surprised by the suggestion that Jesus was in any way disavowing his family in this story, which would have been completely out of character. No doubt he loved his family deeply, and would have gone out to greet them warmly after receiving word of their visit. But it seems that before doing that, he used the opportunity to refer to his disciples as another kind of family, his kindred spirits as the children of God.

Families shape and enrich our lives in profound ways by providing the love, nurture, and deep sense of belonging we need. And that’s equally true of the church, God’s gift of unconditional love and spiritual nurture within an intimate community of the Spirit. No Christian would ever have been saved, or become who we are spiritually, without the love and nurture of the church.

But every congregation is composed of fallible human beings, which means that, along with its blessings, church life has its own challenges. “We have this treasure in jars of clay” (2 Cor. 4:7). The letters to churches of the New Testament, without exception, all attest to their need of help with problems they’re having. All of them are works in progress; none is a finished product. But even with their rough edges, our imperfect congregations are still well worth the work and commitment. And we need them more than we might even realize.

C.S. Lewis has written about his early reluctance for church-going: “When I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches….. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns… were being sung with devotion and benefit by an odd saint in elasticized boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.” (God in the Dock, pp. 61-62)

There are a number of cardinal virtues of congregational life that deserve our recognition and blessing:

First and most importantly, like a good home, the church is a place of love. This was the defining quality Jesus most wanted to see among his followers. “By this shall they know that you are my disciples,” he told them, “if you have love for one another.” Peter admonishes us to “love one another sincerely and deeply, from the heart…. because love covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 1:22, 4:8). The hallmark of healthy families, and of healthy congregations, is love. It’s what matters most, enough so that without love nothing else even counts.

Of course, loving one another is easier said than done. It requires grace, which comes only from God. Not only does the saving grace of God make all the difference in our own lives, but that same spirit of mercy also allows us to love others. We can only truly love and share God’s grace because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). We’re only the branches, in need of life through the vine of Jesus. We can’t do it without his help, his Spirit living within us.