Mark 3:20-35
“Family Ties”
June 6, 2021 Communion Sunday
Kooky, mad, nuts, lunatic, bats in the belfry, round the bend, unhinged, unbalanced. All words used when we refer to folks whose viewpoint seems so dramatically different from ours. Maybe they come from the other end of the political spectrum. Perhaps they act in ways that we don’t understand. Maybe they are truly passionate about something and insist on everyone else being just as passionate as they are.
Here we are in only the third chapter of Mark’s Gospel and already the words and actions of Jesus are being aired in public and not always in a good way. He’s just getting started and people on the street are saying out loud that he’s out of his mind and even his family gets dragged into it, all here in a home that is so crowded they couldn’t even have a meal in peace.
What gets Jesus labeled as crazy? He’s been healing people and casting out demons to those who are suffering. He’s healing those born with a physical disability – those who then were thought cursed because they or their parents sinned.
He is acting with extreme inclusion where everyone is worthy of experiencing the grace of God and what really gets the scribes’ goat is that he has done it on the Sabbath. He is putting more value on human life and well-being than he is on the regulations of religious life. Jesus views pain and suffering as more significant than rules if those rules hurt people.
Could it be that this Jesus, far from being crazy, is just offering the unexpected when talking about who are truly disciples? The Gospel writer Mark lays out what discipleship looks like and we know this must have seemed like a tall order for these folks who thought they knew the rules for being a good person.
Jesus goes beyond all of the traditional ideas of what is acceptable with his message of universal love.
Jesus is pointing to a God that does not have so much use for leadership titles or traditional family roles.
What Jesus offers instead is a faith that speaks of forgiveness and includes all those folks who don’t have any of the power that was traditionally rewarded.
Instead, Jesus is recognizing the importance of God’s family as a whole.
The categories that we tend to divide ourselves up into no longer can be given their traditional power if we are to fully experience God’s extravagant love.
The divisions that have been created and carefully noted – those along racial lines, those that split us up along socioeconomic boundaries of rich, poor and the many of us in-between as well as give power and respect overwhelmingly to money.
We’ve marked the line that grants power to one gender over another, keeping girls and women in subservient roles around the globe – these all speak of the captivity that Jesus uses in his parable here for God’s people to overcome.
Jesus is pushing back against all that dominates and intimidates and oppresses.
The kingdom that Jesus is proclaiming is intended to shake things up.
He wants folks to know that as disciples we don’t have to be models of perfection to follow God. but rather the great mess that is humanity is to love and know that we are loved.
We are not to be held captive by that which divides us. That is the new family of which Jesus speaks – the ones who do the will of God – the hard and necessary work of taking care of each other.
Family and crazy actually go together – at least in most of the families I have been a part of or witnessed.
If we are to look around and think of every person we come in contact with as a brother or a sister, hopefully, once we get past historical slights, many a feeling of hurt or disappointment, the opinion that we know what’s best for them and instead focus on the fact that no matter what life throws at you, at the end of the day there is a relationship there that may be tattered but can never be broken.
To think of the rest of humankind as our siblings and treat them with the well-worn love and knowledge that our bond is eternal, might help us on our life’s work of becoming a disciple of Jesus.
Inviting everyone who wants to join us into our midst probably sounds crazy to some folks but isn’t that what church is about?
To say that we are forgiven, no matter what we’ve done, and that God loves everyone the same probably sounds nutty to a lot of folks.
Jesus’ craziness included showing us that whenever we draw a line indicating who is in and who is out, we learn that Jesus jumps over to the side of the outsiders by loving them and taking care of them.
This is the craziness that gets him in big trouble, and he will pay a huge price for this radical love.
Ours is a crazy Messiah, this Jesus whose family we are a part of. May his craziness continue to rub off on us in our love for one another.
We are about to eat and drink together, sharing a meal just like families do.
As we settle in for this first in-person sharing of this sacred meal in 15 months, let us offer this prayer from the New England Conference of the United Methodists:
As we begin to gather in our places of worship once again, may we look around at those who are physically seated around us and think of those who are seated around us virtually and remember those seated around us in our memories and rejoice using Jesus’ words: “Here are My mother and My brothers! For whoever does the will of God is My brother, and My sister, and My mother.”
We are not alone. We are members of your family. We have a place at the table.
With a grateful heart. Amen. (By Allyson Printz, UMC Commonwealth East District)