Lectionary 10B (Pr 5)
Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church
Lakeland, FL
June 6, 2021
Genesis 3:8-15
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35
Grace to you and peace from God and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen. Please pray with me – May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
Last Sunday I shared with you some about Earl’s family – his birth mother who became pregnant with him, his adoptive family who welcomed him as a newborn. And how it was that many decades later, he came to meet his birth mother and his four half-brothers, their wives and their children. What was most dramatic about that was the way that so much changed after that day – September 13, 2002. New relationships were born and created that changed the way that we understood ourselves. Once an only child married to an only child, I now had brothers-in-law and sisters-in-law. Our sons became cousins and Earl and I became an uncle and an aunt. And now I am even a great-aunt. There was a fundamental change in our family – an expansion beyond our wildest imaginations, even a redefinition of what it meant to be family. There was a connection and a reconnection that was difficult to explain.
When I was in high school, I used to go to the shopping mall and browse the shelves of B. Dalton’s Booksellers. Hours of pulling books from the shelves, reading a few words, letting my mind wander and ideas take shape. One of the books that found its way to my teen age bookshelf was called “The Family of Man,” a photo book of pictures of people from around the world. Some looked very much like me and others very different. It first was published in 1955 and has been continuously published since that time. There is a universal and long-lasting appeal of this, a collection of over 500 photos that were part of an exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York that then was displayed in forty countries over the next few years. It brought a new understanding of what it meant to be a human being, part of the “family of man.”
Family. And we get a glimpse into some aspects of Jesus’ family in our gospel reading today. This is early in Jesus’ ministry. Crowds are starting to take note of him. Religious leaders are starting to question him and this “kingdom of God” that he proclaimed. He and his disciples are in the area of Galilee; he is healing people; the crowds are growing and pushing in on him. From these crowds, Jesus and his followers withdraw to a mountain and Jesus appoints twelve as apostles. And then, the Scriptures tell us, he went home. And the crowd gave him no rest such that he couldn’t even enjoy a family meal around the family table. And then comes this interesting insight into his family. Jesus is outside with the crowds and finally his family has had enough and they go out and proclaim to the crowds – don’t pay attention to him, he is out of his mind. A fine “welcome home” don’t you think?
There is an exchange then between Jesus and the religious leaders and scribes in the presence of the crowds. And someone tells Jesus that his mother and brothers are calling for him. And Jesus responds: “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers.” A dramatic shift in the understanding of family, of kin, of relationships. An expansion of the dining room table around which all may gather.
It was Karl Barth, a 20th century theologian, who urged pastors to prepare a sermon with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. And haven’t there been some headlines lately? No shortage of divisions and factions – along the lines of partisan affiliation, sexuality, hot button issues, race, age, wealth and nationality – to name a few.
I want to talk about two of them this morning. First is race. Race has been an issue in our country for centuries stemming from an ugly and horrific scar in our nation’s history, a scar found on the bodies of our fellow human beings. A scar that has never completely healed. This past week I learned for the first time about the horrors in Tulsa in 1921. The torture and massacre of hundreds of Black Americans, the demolishing of homes and churches and businesses and schools. And then I learned how much I did not know. I had never been taught of Tulsa, 1921, nor of the Red Summer of 1919 in which similar violence occurred in perhaps ten of our country’s cities. I had never been taught about Juneteenth – June 19, 1865 when the freedom of enslaved people was finally proclaimed in Texas – over two years after President Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. It was only a couple of years before my husband’s death that I learned about the destruction and violence in Rosewood in 1923 and in Ocoee in 1920. In grade school, I had been taught explicitly that the cause of the Civil War had nothing to do with civil rights but had everything to do with the economy. And, of course, race continues to be a headline as efforts are underway to be sure that the truth of our past remains unspoken and untaught.
And then there is the matter of our LGBTQIA+ brothers and sisters. Fellow faithful who have been bludgeoned with words of Scripture – cherry-picked to prove a point, a point that, in my opinion, cannot be supported by a faithful read of Scripture. Pride Month is celebrated in June to commemorate the Stonewall raid and uprising in New York on June 28, 1969. Stonewall was a bar frequented by gays and lesbians and trans folk at a time when this behavior was illegal and subjected one to arrest and imprisonment. Many were arrested, many injured, property destroyed. I had often seen Pride Month as confounding and frankly annoying. But I have come to understand the hatred and vitriol that has been directed to people of the LGBTQ community, to see the shame and accusation sent in their direction, the discrimination that they suffer. Maybe not in so many big ways any longer, but in the micro-aggressions that are intended to let them know what others really think of them. Pride Month is a time to learn and to listen to people who have been scorned and suffered and often received the short end of the stick. Pride Month is time in which we can join them in celebrating the steps that we as a society have made over the past fifty years and to become aware of the steps still ahead of us.
These are just two examples of the things that divide us. And, of course, there any number of others. And as these come to mind, we hear Jesus’s words – “Here are my brothers and sisters.” Here are those with whom we sit around the table – though we may not see them, they certainly are here. Here are those we may not understand – and so it is that we listen. Here are those who have suffered injustice – and so it is that we stand with them. Here are those who are outside our comfort zone – and so we are brave, together.
You know how I love the study of words – what they mean, how they came to be. This word “religion” is quite interesting. It is from the Latin – re-ligio. “Re” meaning “again.” And “ligio” for a bond or connection, as in “ligament.” In our religion we are reconnected – reconnected with God and with each other. And today we are called to a radical reconnection for the sake of the world – and this is possible because God made a radical connection with us in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. A connection that we rejoice in each time we gather around the Lord’s Table. And then having been fed and nourished we, with our brothers and sisters and our siblings and family in Christ, we depart to carry the Kingdom of God, the way of love, into our day in and day out lives.
May it be so.
