June 9, 2024
Rev. Mary Erickson
Hope Lutheran Church
Mark 3:20-35
Family Systems
Friends, may grace and peace be yours in abundance in the knowledge of God and Christ Jesus our Lord.
A carnival director interviewed a young man who was an aspiring magician. The director asked him, “So tell me, what’s your best trick?” The young man answered, “Oh, definitely, sawing a woman in half. That’s my best trick.” “Wow, sawing a woman in two. Isn’t that pretty difficult?” “Not really,” replied the young man, “I’ve been able to do that one since I was a child. I used to practice it on my sisters.” The circus director responded, “Your sisters. Do you come from a large family?” “Why, yes, I do,” answered the man, “I have eight half-sisters.”
Families come in all sorts of configurations and sizes. Some are large; others are small. Some families are blended. They have a little bit of yours, mine, and ours. Families can be formed from people of very different cultural backgrounds, economic strata, varying ethnic heritages. Or they can be comprised of people who are very similar, very homogeneous.
We all come from a family unit of some kind or another. Families are interesting things. A psychiatrist by the name of Murray Bowen did research which became the basis for the family systems model. Bowen noticed that each family forms its own unique sub-culture. We have our own rules and mores. Some families have a high level of emotional cohesion while others are more independent and differentiated. Where we fall in the birth order influences our personality, too. Important patterns and behaviors, such as how we communicate or deal with anxiety or conflict, are passed down, even over multiple generations.
Jesus came from a family. His was a little out of the ordinary, as there was some question as to who his father really was. But Joseph and Mary formed a family unit, with Jesus as their oldest child. They went on to have more children, it seems, from our text today.
But as the oldest male child, there would have been some expectations for Jesus. In a patrilineal society, he would have been the next leader in his family’s lineage. Families in first century Palestine were very cohesive. They stuck together in multi-generational households.
So when Jesus up and leaves Nazareth to engage in his itinerant ministry, certain alarm bells went off. What is he doing? Why is he abandoning his mother and family? There was no ready explanation for what he had done. Was he all right? Had he lost it? Was he … CRAZY?
When rumors of an unhinged Jesus make their way to Nazareth, Mary rounds up all her other children and heads off to collect her eldest son.
Family systems experience intense sadness when there is a child who succumbs to a serious malady. We all know families which have been affected by depression or substance abuse or schizophrenia, to name a few examples. It’s just horrible! They agonize over this child who is trapped in a tar pit of emotions. They would do anything for their child.
And that is exactly what Mary does. She gathers all of Jesus’ siblings, and together they set off to bring him back to the loving refuge of the family home.
Meanwhile, there’s another system in operation that also has an interest in Jesus. Word gets up to Jerusalem about this upstart evangelist in Galilee who is causing quite a stir. They’ve heard reports of incredible healings but also of some alarming sabbath infractions. A delegation of scribes is sent to Galilee to investigate. Their diagnosis is much more dire than just mere insanity. Jesus is possessed by the devil!
It's really the oldest play in the book. To discredit your opponent, just demonize them. We see it in modern politics all the time. When we demonize the other side, it becomes much easier to discredit and ignore their message. And easier still to justify doing whatever it takes to rub them out. This tactic will, in fact, be the end game for the religious hierarchy in Jerusalem towards Jesus. They will label him a heretic and call for his death.
But when we engage in slurs of demonization, we’re playing with fire. Jesus publicly calls out the religious leaders. How can Satan cast out Satan? He asserts that a house divided cannot stand.
Jesus is calling out to the dynamics of dysfunction within a systems model. Is there anything worse than a household embroiled in conflict? The place of hearth and refuge becomes a war zone. It simply cannot endure. Those dwelling within will be eaten up.
What are we doing when we demonize one another? As a nation, we’re turning up the volume of political animosity and polarization. What lasting damage is being done to our country by our continual vitriol towards those who see the world differently than we do? How does this cannibalization of one another play out in the long run? It’s not good.
Jesus points out the insanity of such an argument. A house divided cannot stand.
Then he tells them a parable. If you’re trying to rob the house of a strong man, you first have to tie him up. And then, once he’s bound, you can pillage his belongings.
Hidden within this parable, Jesus is revealing his mission for the remainder of his ministry. In Jesus, the reign of God has come to this earthly dwelling. He intends to go after Satan and subdue him. And he will rob him of all his earthly holdings.
Jesus has come to bind up Satan. But then, in his own arrest and crucifixion, it seems like something went terribly wrong. Satan isn’t bound; Jesus is bound and arrested. Who is the strong man and who is the plunderer? Jesus is nailed to a cross where he dies. And then his lifeless body is sealed in a tomb. It looks like game, set, match for Satan.
But it wasn’t so. In Jesus, the reign of God was breaking into our world. And in going to his cross, Jesus was laying a trap to ensnare the evil one. In being nailed to his cross, as he bore the sin of the world, Jesus nailed the power of sin to his own fate. And then in dying, death was swallowed up into his own death. Their fates were bound up into Jesus’.
But what they weren’t counting on, sin and death, was the power of resurrection life. They didn’t anticipate that the divine power to love, to heal, to forgive, to make all things new, was greater than their own might! They’d forgotten the divine life without end, its power breathe a new and inextinguishable life into being!
Jesus came to bind up Satan, and in his resurrection, he has defeated sin and death. The house of the strong man has fallen. In descending to Hell, Jesus destroyed the gates of Hell. And in rising from his tomb, Christ’s liberating presence has transformed our sorrow into joy.
Jesus then speaks of the new family system he’s creating. It’s a family system rich in mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters. He speaks of the family of God. When we align ourselves with the will of God, we are welcomed into a holy family. It’s a family system much broader and more diverse than even our most blended of earthly families.
In this season of Pentecost, we wear a unique set of spectacles to help us interpret our scriptural readings. This is the liturgical season in which we focus on the Holy Spirit empowering the church. And so we ask: How does this text inform the Spirit-filled and mission-guided Church of Jesus Christ?
How does this new sense of family in God’s Spirit inform us for our life together? First of all, we are called to be family to one another.
Christian singer and songwriter Jay Beech wrote a whimsical, bluesy song called “We’re Family.” The song addresses how, in Christ, we discover our kinship with one another. Some of us come from the other side of town. We may even look kind of strange to one another, but that’s all right, because we like variety. In this family, some of us may even be a little crazy, but that’s all right, too, because we’re family.
The final verse says:
Brothers and sisters standin’ hand in hand,
Let’s hear you sing it all across this land.
If love has found you then let’s have a nod,
We’re living’ in the family of God,
We’re family, we’re family,
I need you and you need me, we’re family.
In Christ, we discover that we are part of a new family. It’s not one based on flesh and blood; it’s founded on spirit and the love of God. Each of us has been adopted into this vast, global family in our baptism. At the font, as we were held in the arms of our earthly mothers and fathers, as we were baptized in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, we entered into an entirely new family system.
So, how does this inform the Spirit-filled mission of the church? The Spirit call us to be family to one another in the name of Christ. Like Jesus, we look around at those sitting around us, and there we see our brother and sister and mother.
This past week, our Archives Committee had the pleasure of meeting with Hope’s former pastor, R____ O____, and his wife M____. We enjoyed a nice lunch, and then we made a video interview of Randy and Mary as they recalled their years here at Hope.
One of their cherished memories involved their oldest grandchild, A____, who is now a teenager. Abram was a baby at the time they were here. R____ and M____ said, “A_____ was a church baby. When he was at church, he was passed around from person to person.”
What a blessing! We have church babies today, little ones who are passed around into the arms of church aunties and uncles. They grow up in the close kinship of our church family. We recognize in one another kindred spirits in Christ. Whether we come from large biological families or small, here we join in the large family tree of our faith community. Even when these Christ-kindreds come from a different walk of life, hold differing views, we anchor our unity through our faith in the triune God. Our kinship is in this. In times of sorrow, we bear one another’s burdens because that’s what family does.
This Christ-centered family system also informs us in our conflict resolution. Rather than demonize those who hold differing theological viewpoints, we regard each other with gracious latitude centered in Christ.
The global expression of Christianity reveals tremendous variety. From the meditative silence of Quakerism to the boisterous utterances of Pentecostalism, we are wildly varied, but we are still one in the Spirit, one in the Lord. We may hold differing views on the methodology for biblical interpretation, but within those differences, we maintain a gracious space for one another. Despite differences of opinion, our unity is in our one Lord Jesus Christ. And if we are anchored in Christ, then we’re able to recognize our kinship.
PBS has a show that I rarely miss. It’s called “Finding Our Roots.” On the show, two celebrity guests will meet with the host, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. During the show, Gates will uncover the vast history of their ancestry. At the end of the show, Gates hands them a very large, rolled up sheet of paper. As they unfurl it, revealed there is their enormous family tree, depicting numerous generations that are now rediscovered.
You might say that, in the church, we could trace an even larger family tree. Through Jesus our Lord, we have been grafted into the sacred family tree. As we unroll the tree, there we would discover ourselves. Along our branch, we would see all our fellow members at Hope. And tracing the branch backwards, there we would see the Hope members who preceded us.
But as we continued to unroll this enormous tree, we would discover that Hope is but one small branch on this gigantic tree. This family tree is so vast, we are but a small speck high, high in the canopy. So many of our relatives are on adjoining branches. Others are on completely divergent limbs, yet we are all part of the one same tree. We all grow from our common faith in the triune God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
And how lovely we are! This giant, green, ever-growing and expanding tree of faith. We sway in the unseen breezes of the Spirit. We provide shelter and nests to bless the world, the fresh oxygen of Christ’s grace to revive and enliven the despairing soul.
During Lent this year, our theme was “If Trees Could Talk.” Today In Jesus’ words, we discover yet another of God’s lovely trees, the Family Tree we share in Christ. Here we are blessed in abundance with mother, father, brother, sister, aunt and uncle, grandfather and grandmother. It’s a rainbow tree of every color of humanity, of age and gender. May we always recognize the face of our family in Christ Jesus our Lord.
