We have entered into what the Church calls Ordinary Time. But there was
nothing ‘ordinary’ about those readings, was there! They were a collage
– even a blur - of images and stories almost too many to track. We had
Adam and Eve in their nakedness, we had the tree and the forbidden
fruit, the sly serpent, Satan and the divided kingdom, the family of
Jesus who thought he was out of his mind, the Scribes who thought he was
possessed; we also had the sin against the Holy Spirit, and Jesus
seeming to put-down his brothers, and even his mother. What to make of
all that! And I didn’t even touch on the reading from Second
Corinthians. I must confess that I found it almost too much to tackle!
But out of that jumble
of images and stories one thing did begin to emerge for me. It was
family.
Family. What is more
wonderful than family? Yet what can be more challenging and sometimes
more dysfunctional than family!
It all started with Adam
and Eve, the First Family, if you will. When all was going well, things
couldn’t have been better. But when those two began to want more - as if
being made in the image and likeness of God was not enough – when they
began to want more, there was that ever-so-enticing, forbidden fruit
that got plucked and eaten, and then dysfunction quickly reared its ugly
head. Eve may have been the first to bite, but Adam was the first to
blame, and then Eve passed on the blame to the wily serpent. And the
rest, as the saying goes, is history. More or less. And we, of course,
are part of the history!
And so are our families
which, since Adam and Eve, are this inescapable and inextricable mixture
of happiness and sadness, light and darkness, joy and sorrow. These are
things each of us knows in our own families. There are no perfect
families. Only good families, or families doing their best to be good.
And there are struggling families, too, and hurting families, and broken
families. And we can blame Eve for that, or Adam, or the serpent, or we
can simply acknowledge free will, selfish human choices, and the reality
of sin in a beautiful but broken world.
Family. We commonly call
the family that Jesus grew up in, the Holy Family. But in today’s
reading from Mark’s gospel, some of his family came across as – not so
holy – but (pardon the pun) wholly human! Jesus was absorbed - consumed
- by his preaching and healing – so much so, that we’re told he didn’t
even take time to stop and eat, and when his family heard about this,
Mark tells us that “they set out to seize him.” Or, in another
translation, to ‘take control of him.’ Strong words! And that wasn’t
all: “He is out of his mind,” they said, convinced that Jesus had lost
it. Not exactly family at its best, Right?!
And it doesn’t end
there. At the conclusion of the reading, when Jesus is told that his
mother and his brothers are outside asking for him, he poses that very
puzzling question: “who are my mother and my brothers?” and he then
points to his circle of followers – the halt and the lame and the
sinners he hangs out with – and he says, “Here are my mother and my
brothers. (‘Here is my family.’) Whoever does the will of God is mother
and sister and brother to me.”
I admit that might sound
like a put-down, but it is really not. What it is, is a strong statement
– a very strong statement - about Christian discipleship. Jesus is
saying that God’s kingdom, God’s reign, makes big demands on the
personal commitments of a disciple, demands which will, at times,
transcend even the strong, natural bonds of family.
Family. Families don’t
always get it right. I find it interesting that the family of Jesus,
instead of focusing on all the people he was working overtime to heal
and help, zeroed in on him and his sanity - or on what they perceived as
his lack thereof. All they could think was that something must be wrong
with him! Their line of thinking was: who in his right mind would be
doing what Jesus is doing, and doing it with such passion and
compassion, such utter self-forgetfulness, such selflessness? Who would
put his own well-being at risk for no other reason than to be there for
others? And their answer is: no one. So, Jesus must have lost his mind.
Or even worse, he must be possessed by a demon, which was the conclusion
of the Scribes and religious leaders.
It’s clear that
they failed to grasp who Jesus was and what he was all about: that he
was on fire with a mission that burned within him, a mission to make
known the love and mercy of God, God’s immense compassion for suffering
people, hurting people, broken people, people in need of healing and
wholeness. And what could be more important than that? Not even one’s
own family!
My friends in Christ, if
we take nothing more from today’s scriptures than a renewed awareness
that we are – each of us - beloved of God – part of God’s family - and
that Jesus, who literally wore himself out in reaching out to people in
every kind of need - to the point that he was judged to be crazy – Jesus
is still at work. He is at work in communities of faith like ours; he is
at work in the Church and its powerful sacraments, including this
Eucharist – this Eucharist. He is still at work bringing healing and
hope for one reason only: because he loves us and, dare I say it, he’s
crazy about us!
Father Michael G. Ryan
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