Jesus taught us to call God Abba, Father. This choice of language implies a familial relationship. Through our belief in Jesus Christ, we can call ourselves a beloved son or daughter of the Father. This spiritual kinship is greater than any earthly biological kinship. Being part of this family is also a decision that each and everyone of us gets to make. There is no price that is too high for us to turn our back on this familial bond.
The True Kindred of Jesus – Luke 8 : 19-21
Then his mother and his brethren came to him, but they could not reach him for the crowd. And he was told, “Your mother and your brethren are standing outside, desiring to see you.” But he said to them, “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it.”
Scriptural Analysis
Luke places the visit of Jesus’s family after the Parable of the Sewer where as in Mark’s Gospel it appears before the parable. It provides a great bookend to that parable: showing the implications of hearing the word of God and keeping it.
This particular Gospel passage can cause a modern hearer a bit of angst. Jesus’s family arrives but they are unable to reach him as he is preaching: surrounded by followers. Someone told him that his family had arrived. Jesus gives them a curious response, “My mother and my brethren are those who hear the word of God and do it.” Where was the joy at their arrival and the urge to run and great them? On the surface, it appears as if Jesus is denying his earthly family. However, such a denial is not the meaning that Jesus is intending in this passage. Rather, he is using such stark language to reveal to us that there is kind of familial relationship that is greater than and beyond our earthly biological familes.
For Jesus, genuine familial relationship does not come from biological ancestry. Rather, genuine familial relationship comes through a voluntary attachment to God’s word. Those who hear the word of God and believe it become the sons and daughter of God the Father and as a result, brothers and sisters of one another. Now, that does not mean that biological family can’t also be spiritual family but they don’t have to be.
This can cause great consternation as families are divided over the faith. Surely this can’t be what Jesus is suggesting, but it is. Consider what Jesus says a few chapters later:
Do you think that I have come to give peace on earth? No, I tell you, but rather division; for henceforth in one house there will be five divided, three against two and two against three; they will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against her mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. Luke 12 : 51-53
Belief in Jesus can tear a family apart and the Gospel tells us that is OK. That does not mean we should seek that out nor does it mean that if it happens it won’t be hard to accept. What it does means is that attempting to preserve one’s biological family at the expense of becoming part of the heavenly family is a price too high to pay. Receiving the word can be costly including costing someone their biological family but that is a far smaller cost than the lost of one’s soul.
Application
Today the Church celebrates the Memorial of Saints Andrew Kim Tae-gŏn, Priest, and Paul Chŏng Ha-sang, and Companions, Martyrs: the Korean Martyrs. Saints who were martyred working to spread the Gospel in Korea. It is important to sit with this for a minute especially since most of us will never face the loss of our life over the faith. These martyrs joyfully laid down their life in service of the Gospel. What would cause someone to do that? The only answer is love. These individuals loved their Lord and brother, Jesus, with such a deep conviction that they 1) would not deny him and 2) wanted other to come to know and love him in the same way.
These people received the word of God and then acted upon it. They acted without fear. Do we do the same? Are we willing to put our necks on the line: especially within our own families to share the Gospel? Evangelizing strangers is easy. If they reject you, you move on: unlikely to ever see them again. Nothing is harder than evangelizing your own family. If they reject you, and they often will for as Jesus tells us, “A prophet is not without honor, except in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”, then tension can arise within the family. (Mark 6:4) These tensions can cause great division. There are numerous stories of family members never talking to one another again because of an issue of faith. Are we willing to pay that price?
Today’s Gospel demands that we do. For it is more important for us to be part of Jesus’s family than it is our own earthly family. Being ostracized from our own earthly families is painful and will hurt. However, that hurt is nothing when compared to the eternal hurt of being separated from out Lord because we turned our back on him. Recognize your true family: the family of believers in Jesus Christ. Then be prepared to lay down your very life for that family just at the Korean Martyrs we remember today so bravely did.
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