Garry Kenney is an exterminator, and he always calls to confirm his appointments the night before he is scheduled to do a service. One night, he called a customer and said to the man who answered the phone, “This is Garry from the pest-control company. Your wife called us.” There was a moment of silence, and then Garry heard the man say, “Honey, someone wants to speak to you about your relatives.”
We all have them. Relatives. Family. Kinfolk. In-laws and out-laws. Mostly they’re pretty normal folks, fruit from the same tree and all that. But then there are those few who make us a little hesitant to claim any relationship whatsoever. One young man who was a student at Butler University was telling his aunt about his classes and said that he was taking a psychology class that semester. “Oh, great!” she said. “Now you’ll be analyzing everyone in the family.” “Oh, no,” he answered, “I don’t take abnormal psychology until next semester!”
Perhaps during these days of staying at home, you are finding it hard to get along with your relatives. Husbands and wives or partners who are not used to spending quite so many hours together every day may be developing short tempers or finding petty things to criticize in each other. Children who you brought into the world seem to have become annoying little beasts, with constant unrealistic demands and whiny voices. Parents who didn’t seem so bad when you just have to see them after school and on weekends have suddenly become tyrants who make unreasonable demands on your time. Roommates who used to get along well now find that they have much less in common than they thought before they had to be together 24/7.
It may be Mother’s Day, but it may be harder than usual to celebrate family life. Are you familiar with the expression, “You can choose your friends, but you’re stuck with your relatives?” I guess that can be true. Some people we put up with just because they’re family. And amazingly enough, that seems to have been true in the family of Jesus. Except that there came a time when they were no longer willing to put up with him any longer.
Let’s think about the situation for a minute. We don’t know how many brothers or sisters Jesus had, but it would be reasonable to assume that there were several. We know that one of his brothers was named James, and he became a leader in the church after Jesus died. Most Biblical scholars assume that Joseph died soon after the incident when Jesus was in the Temple with the teachers when he was twelve years old. There is no evidence to indicate that he lived much past that time. Jesus’ mother, Mary, was still living to the end of his life.
As the oldest son, Jesus would have been expected to take responsibility for the whole family after his father died. He must have worked in the carpentry shop until he was around 30 years old, when he left home to begin his ministry. In the first century, that would have been considered middle-aged. Presumably up until that time Jesus had done all the things a Jewish man was supposed to do: work hard, attend synagogue, go to Jerusalem to celebrate the major feasts and festivals, go to weddings and funerals and bar mitzvah, prepare the Passover lambs, teach his younger brothers the carpentry trade or apprentice them out, make arrangements for the marriages of his sisters to respectable men.
Then this man, John, Jesus’ cousin, began his revival ministry out in the middle of nowhere in the wilderness. And people flocked out there to hear him preach. Talk soon spread about his wild clothes, peculiar diet, and combative sermons. People listened as he told them they were sinners who needed to repent. John did not even spare the religious leaders from condemnation. He called them vipers, snakes! He called these men to accountability and pointed out their hypocrisy. One day, Jesus went out to see for himself what was going on. And he submitted to the baptism of John, despite John’s protests, saying that it was the proper thing for him to do. And then Jesus embarked on a strange and intense ministry of his own.
Jesus began to travel around Galilee, and large crowds followed him wherever he went as he taught them and healed the sick. He signed up a few fishermen to serve as apostles, and then added eight more to their number, including a tax collector and a Zealot. Things really got crazy when word got out that there were women traveling with him, too! Jesus made a point of associating with disreputable people – prostitutes, adulterers, sinners, lepers, you name it. He enjoyed parties and fellowship around the table, to the point that a leading historian of the age accused Jesus of being a glutton and a winebibber, or drunkard. As stories spread about the miracles he was performing, the size of the crowds following him increased. People wanted to see this man who could cure leprosy, drive out demons, heal paralytics, and give sight to the blind. Rumor had it that he had even raised someone from the dead. And rumor also had it that Jesus had gotten his power from Satan.
Finally, the family came to a decision. They must take action. Some people were saying that Jesus was crazy, insane, and something had to be done. So, they came. They weren’t able to get near him, because of the crowd surrounding him, but they sent word to Jesus that they were waiting outside, and they wanted to talk to him. Jesus hadn’t seen his family in a while. And his mother was right there, the mother he loved. But Jesus didn’t say, “Well, show them in!” He didn’t go out to greet them. What Jesus said was, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers and sisters?” He looked around him and said, “Whoever hears the word of God and does God’s will are my mother and brothers and sisters.”
You know, I’ve often wondered how his family felt when they heard him say that. Did it hurt their feelings? Did they think he meant it literally? Did they have any idea what he meant by it? Had they talked about any of this before? Did they have any idea who Jesus really was? What was it like to be in Jesus’ family that day?
But then again, I’ve wondered how it felt to be in the crowds around Jesus that day. Here was this man, who was more than a man somehow, who could work miracles, teach circles around the rabbis, and tell the funniest stories ever, calling them his brothers and sisters. He was making himself part of their families. And more than that, Jesus was making them part of his family. He was making them part of the family of God.
We in the church are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are family to each other. Maybe we don’t always get along with our blood relatives. Maybe we have broken families. Maybe we were abused by our own kin. Maybe we haven’t spoken to our siblings in years. Maybe we have been hurt or betrayed by the people who were supposed to love us. But we have another family, not family we are stuck with, but family we choose. We have people in this congregation who love us, who are com-mitted to supporting us, who want to have a relationship with us. And we have Jesus, who is proud to call us his brothers and sisters. We are family for each other. We are part of the family of God.
I have the good fortune to have some good kin, people I would choose as family even if I weren’t actually related to them. And I have a few nuts on the family tree. But I am doubly blessed in being a part of God’s family, welcomed by relatives in churches wherever I go. I hope that you feel that same blessing in this congregation. If you have found family here, tell someone about it. A colleague or a friend, a business associate or a neighbor. That person might just be feeling like an orphan in this world, and we can welcome them into our family with open arms. Even if you can’t get along with your relatives, you can get along with this family and we can get along with you.
