Matthew 12:46-50
[Read text]
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.
Which brings us to another of the cardinal virtues: forgiveness, the supreme act of grace. There’s a very good reason why forgiveness is such a central teaching of the Christian faith. Love and forgiveness go hand in hand, as we know from our own experience of the saving love of God. Christians will fall short like everyone else, but what makes us different is the act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is grace in action, the essence of love, full of its mercy. And once again, we need God’s help, but we have to be willing to do our part.
Corrie ten Boom, a Nazi concentration camp survivor, tells of consulting a Luthen pastor over her inability to forgive. After listening to her story, her pastor said, “Corrie, there’s a bell up in the tower of our church that’s rung by pulling on a rope. But even after the sexton releases the rope, the bell keeps on swinging. There will be several more tolls, each growing slower and weaker, until it finally stops ringing. The same thing is true of forgiving. When we forgive, we let go of the rope. But if we’ve been tugging at our grievances for a long time we shouldn’t be surprised if the angry thoughts keep coming for a while. They’re just the lingering tolls of the bell, slowing down.” Our part is to stop tugging on that rope, and God’s healing Spirit will do the rest in achieving the work of forgiveness. And if it takes time, that means the Lord is doing a deep work.
Along with the gifts of love and grace, there’s a third cardinal virtue of healthy congregations: a sense of belonging. God knows how much we need each other on this journey, and that’s why he created these human networks of both the family and the church, for our mutual support and blessing. It’s how we were created, and how God has designed life to be well lived: not alone, but together.
Something as simple as the power of physical touch illustrates how true this is. A study was conducted in which someone was positioned near the exit of an art gallery to ask a few survey questions of those who were leaving. For one group, the interviewer gently touched the visitor on the arm when approaching them. But for another group there was only a verbal exchange and no physical contact. Those who were touched reported having significantly more favorable impressions of the exhibit than those who hadn’t been. Even that almost imperceptible physical connection had made the difference in their feelings about the visit. And as we now know, the same positive effects result from handshakes and hugs. Or in basketball, for example, teams who huddle or tap hands when a teammate is at the free-throw line have a higher average of made shots.
Human beings are hard-wired to be touched.
And that principle holds true not only physically, but also socially and spiritually. Some of the best memories I have of growing up in my family are of those times when we extended hospitality to those who might otherwise have been alone. Those occasions were not only a blessing to others, but they also brought out the best in our family.
As congregations, too, we‘re here to share our life together--not only with each other, but also beyond our walls. There’s an epidemic of loneliness in society today. And it isn’t just among the elderly; surprisingly, 16-24 year olds experience loneliness more often and more severely than any other age group. Our high-tech, low-touch world needs the human connection of the church as much as ever.
God has designed the created order with the foundational communities of the family and church. They reflect his gracious providential care, including through the life-giving blessings of love, grace and a sense of belonging. May we appreciate God’s goodness and pass it on with generous, open hearts.
Let’s pray:
Thank you, Father, for the way you’ve provided for us through our families and the kindred spirits given to nurture and sustain us. May we never take them for granted. Help us to do our part to be a blessing to others, and to you, through these bonds of love. Amen.
