Family Ties
As we begin to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic, as I am sure many of you are, I have begun to make a list of the places I want to go, activities I want to do, and people I want to see. As vaccination rates increase, positivity rates decrease, and restrictions lessened my “bubble” has grown but there are still people I have not seen or seen enough. For the most part, these people are family members who live out of town; further away than a quick day trip.
It was a little over a month ago that I hugged my maternal grandmother for the first time in over a year. This time last year I dropped flowers off on a doorstep for her birthday and just last night we had dinner together. The Washington Post has an online, interactive article showcasing reunions as families and friends are vaccinated and are, finally, able to safely begin their return to sharing life in-person and not over a screen or cellphone connection. Like Wendy Elliot and her three friends who pre-COVID play mah-jongg - a 300-year-old tile-based game that demands skill and luck. The four friends played weekly before stay-at-home orders but were able to play online, serving as what Elliot described as “a literal lifeline,” creating an “oasis of normalcy in this year where so much of her life” was in chaos.[1] And still, as so many of us plan to reunite with family and friends who are practically family many knew the sting of separation long before the pandemic began and Dr. Fauci was a household name.
Jesus had returned home from his Capernaum campaign. He taught in the synagogues “as one who had authority, not as teachers of the Law”[2] and healed a man with unclean spirits on the Sabbath. He healed Simon’s mother-in-law who had been bedridden with a fever. Then, people throughout Galilee brought the sick and demon-possessed to him and Jesus, he healed these people and drove the demons away. And then, as if he needed to do more, he healed a man plagued with leprosy, making him clean, not just physically but ritually as well, thus making him no longer an outsider within his community.
All of the people Jesus healed, in one way or another, were separated from their communities, their families by their afflictions, and through his touch or word, he offered them the which no one else could. He healed the sick and released the captive and we today pickup with Jesus and his disciples and a growing crowd. A crowd so large that Jesus and his disciples were unable to eat. The Capernaum campaign was so alarming that the social ordering of the time - the maintaining of files, status, and peace - that revolved around families, the Temple or religious obligations, and pax Roma was threatened, and thus two of the three groups became concerned. The religious leaders, scribes from Jerusalem, believed Jesus’ actions would undercut their authority and social standing.
Jesus’ family attempted to take charge of him, “thinking he was out of his mind.” They thought he had flown the nest. While he had been engaged in his Father’s business in Capernaum it was not the family business. During this time your immediate and extended family -a double-whammy - determined one’s personality, one’s identity, and controlled vocational prospects, and facilitated socialization. In his Capernaum campaign, Jesus took the first-century how-to adult handbook and threw it out the window. In one out-of-town trip with his buddies, Jesus overturned one of the backbones of social order. Doing so left his family, the entire family thinking he must have been “out of his mind.”
Kinship today falls along lines not dissimilar to the first century. While we today may not be dependent upon family for a vocational identity or socialization, that does not mean our identities are unaffected by our families. It does not mean that not towing the family line can’t get you on the “you’ve got to be out of your mind” kind of family meeting.
While many are once again gathering with family, embracing a parent or grandparent after a year apart because of a pandemic - something out of our control, not of our own doing - many will continue the pains of separation that began before we hoarded toilet paper or finally watched everything in our Netflix cue. For every Wendy Elliot gathering with friends that might as well be family or grandmother hugging a grandchild for the first time, some people will continue to eat alone or not feel the embrace of a family because they do not fit into the societal or religious norms - something out of their control, not of their own doing - because they are a member of the LGBTQ+ community.
After Jesus had been confronted by his family and the blasphemous scribes he told those who had gathered before his family or the scribes arrived that they were his mother and brothers. He said that “whoever does God’s will is (his) brother and sister and mother.” Jesus created a new kinship model based on obedience to God - not family, clan, or patriarchy.
At his baptism, the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit once again descended, filling Jesus, enabling him, equipping him for the mission before him. At that moment a voice echoed from the heavens, “You are my Son, whom I love; with you, I am well pleased.”[3] Since his baptism kinship, power, and authority looked different.
Throughout his ministry, beginning in Capernaum, continuing to the cross when he told a disciple and his mother, “Here is your mother. Woman here is your son,”[4] Jesus created a new family, and frankly, it looked and continues to look different than many expect.
Those that were once out are now in.
Those unable to be healed are now whole.
Those relegated to the outskirts of the community are welcomed home with open arms, with a banquet fit only for a prodigal returning home.
This new family includes all of the people who look, think, and act like to us, and all of the people who do not look, think or act like us. This new family includes every person excluded for whatever reason, especially those excluded because fear and bigotry were embraced more than the grace extended to us from God in Christ. This new family includes every person excluded by the church, where judgment is embraced more than love.
This is a family, we are a family-centered on the One who has promised us, assured us by his amazing grace, that all of creation will be made whole. A family held in the love of our Creator. A family empowered by wholly the Holy Spirit to engage in our own Capernaum campaign so that as we embrace one another exiting a year of separation everyone will know the love of their Creator, they would feel the amazing grace of Christ, and be filled themselves with the power of the Holy Spirit.
