A Sermon preached by the Rev. Thomas Mousin on the Third Sunday After Pentecost, June 10, 2018

I Samuel 8:4-20; 11:14,15     Psalm 138     2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1     Mark 3:20-35

It was in June, only a few weeks after I had started my work as a pastor in a small Vermont town, when one of the matriarchs of the church and the village approached me. She explained that her extended family was having a large family reunion in August, and that the church would be full of family members on the weekend of the reunion.  “And I hope,” she concluded, that you will preach a fine sermon on the subject of ‘family’.”

I think I know what she was hoping for – perhaps a sermon on the importance of family and family values, with inspiring stories from scripture. I nodded my head, but what I wanted to do was to ask her, “Do you really want a sermon about families? Because if you look at the Bible, there is a lot going on there that doesn’t always promote family values.\

It starts with the very first family – Adam and Eve, and their sons Cain and Abel – where a brotherly dispute results in nothing less than fratricide. Or consider the kings of Israel. We heard in today’s Old Testament lesson about the people’s desire for a king. But all you have to do is read about Saul and David, the first two monarchs and you will see family issues leading to betrayal and death.

It is not necessarily better in the New Testament. We have our images of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, the Holy Family. Yet the one story told about Jesus in his youth is one of disobedience, where he remains in the temple while his parents head home to Nazareth, causing them worry and anxiety until they finally find him. Elsewhere in the gospels, when Jesus’ family is mentioned, there is often tension between them and Jesus.

Certainly, we sense that in today’s gospel lesson. Mark tells us that Jesus’ ministry was creating such a stir that in that particular place:

…the crowd came together again, so that Jesus and his disciples could not even eat. When his family heard, it they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, “he has gone out of his mind.”

They went out to restrain him, but they could not. Were they concerned? Embarrassed? Or perhaps both?

Families are like any other web of human relationships: they can be a blessing, and they can be a burden. If we have been reared and nourished in a family that loved us and supported us, we thrive.  If we have been reared in a family where there was neglect, shaming, or even abuse, the resulting wounds and burdens can last for years. For most of us, there has been a mixture of blessing and burden.  We do not exist as solitary individuals. We need to be in relationship with others.

I was listening to a social anthropologist on the radio this week who was explaining one theory of how it is that human beings came to develop lasting and extended family units. Before the development of agriculture, animals that were hunted provided the main source of food. But a man could not reliably kill an animal once a day. It was women – mothers, and grandmothers, who would search and gather tubers and other kinds of food to ensure a regular diet for their children. Both the hunter and the gatherers were necessary and dependent on each other to provide for their offspring.

Jesus of course, knew the value of families. His knowledge of scripture and his respect for others suggest he was reared as a good and obedient son.  But then, according to some, he went out of his mind.

Jesus had not gone out of his mind. He had gone to his place: the place of his calling, the place of his ministry, the place where God’s reign, or God’s kingdom was bursting forth.  And there would be times that his calling would confound and perhaps even anger his family.

When God calls to each of us, we may find that our response is blessed by our families. Or we may confound them.  When I shared my own call to ordained ministry with my parents, each seemed to express some reticence about the choice I was going to make. My mother, a person of faith, nonetheless worried about the sacrifices I would need to make were I to take up the role of a minister. My father was more silent, and it was only about five years later that I would learn of how unsettled he was about my decision.  A faithful Roman Catholic all of his life, he saw my entrance into ministry in the United Methodist Church as a very public reminder that he had not reared me in the Catholic Church. He felt guilt – perhaps even embarrassment.  When he finally shared those feelings with me, it was while he was visiting in that same small town where I had been asked to preach about families. By the grace of God, the local Roman Catholic priest, a friend and colleague, met with him, an assured him that he had nothing to worry about, and that had I not been raised a Methodist, I might never have found my true calling.

Jesus, apparently, faced stronger feelings from his brothers, and perhaps even his mother. They tried to restrain him. But they couldn’t. He did not dismiss the importance of family. He expanded its meaning:

“Who are my brothers and my mother?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

Doing the will of God can indeed cause tension in families. Doing the will of God can also create new families. Consider, for example, foster parents who are stepping forward asking to care for immigrant children; children who have been separated from their parents by our government’s policies at the nation’s borders. Here, in a situation where families are being torn apart, there are those who seeking to be mothers and fathers, doing the will of God until those families can be reunited Or, to those of you who marched in the Pride Parade yesterday in downtown Boston: No doubt you marched with persons who were estranged or expelled from their biological families, and through their lives have struggled to create new webs of relationships – new families – where they were accepted and loved. And all those who marched – you were brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers.

The will of God cannot be constrained, even when some think that those who embody it have lost their minds.  Jesus did not lose his mind. He found his place, and his family. They were all those who embraced the Good News he brought of God’s gracious reign.  May we be a part of that family as well.

Amen.