Family values??

Matthew 12:46-50, Mark 3:31-35 and Luke 8:19-21 present variations of Jesus’ mother and brothers arriving while he’s teaching . . . but they share a singular reaction. Upon hearing his family is nearby, the Nazarene asks the harsh question, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” His jarring response was nothis kin, not those who grew up with him, but instead those who have become his followers.

His own flesh and blood family . . . rejected? Mark’s Gospel was the most brutal about setting this scene. At Mark 3:19, after listing Jesus’ disciples and right before a “crowd came together” to listen to his preaching, the writer of the earliest Gospel claimed “he went home.” In other words, Mark depicted Jesus’ rejecting his kinfolk in the very place where his mother comforted him on her lap and his siblings played hide-and-go seek.

Family values?

In my lifetime, spanning the beginnings of the Cold War in the early 1950s to the current information age, family values have been trumpeted as what we have lost and what we must regain. According to some of my fellow Christians, divorce, gay marriage, single-parenting and women in the workplace (to name a few of our modern “ailments”) have eroded or discarded the Bible’s true values . . . the scriptural foundation of how a family should look and act and believe.

...Who is my family? I am thankful for the messy, wonderful, nurturing family of my birth. How blessed I was to be raised by loving parents. But my sense of Jesus’ family values leads me to open my faith and my eyes wide enough to embrace those different from me.

I am grateful to have learned about faith from Muslims and Jews and more. Atheists have taught me about loving the neighbor far better than some of my fellow Christians. Heterosexual and homosexual parents I’ve personally married have been lousy parents. And, no matter what their orientation, some have been near perfect parents. I’ve had friends who loved me unconditionally and extended family that ignored me.

Who is my family? Jesus’ question is worth asking every day. Sharing a last name or DNA will not be the only answer.

http://www.larrypatten.com/2012/05/29/unnerving-and-unsettling/

You are mad

" The readings this week describe two alternatives: mimicking the status quo of the world or living on the lunatic fringe in the kingdom of God. One story is about politics, the other about family life....John challenged the religious and political status quo with his anti-establishment message. By joining John's fringe movement, Jesus did too. After his radical rupture with his family by identifying with the desert troublemaker, to the point of submitting to his baptism, Jesus's family tried to apprehend him. The village of Nazareth tried to kill him as a deranged crackpot (cf. Mark 3:21, Luke 4:29, John 7:5). When his mother and brothers found him, he rebuffed them and redefined family. "Who are my mother and my brothers?" He gestured to those who had gathered around him: "Whoever does God's will is my brother and sister and mother."

           And so just as with John, they said that Jesus was demon-possessed. ...

Abba Anthony said, 'A time is coming when men will go mad, and when they see someone who is not mad, they will attack him saying, "You are mad, you are not like us."'"

           We have a choice: to live on the lunatic fringe in the kingdom of God, where even the most basic values of family and politics are radically redefined, or to support the status quo with its predictably oppressive consequences."

http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20120604JJ.shtml