Here we see the young man, stretching out, at the end of a long day’s work in the carpenters shop, the late afternoon sun. His outstretched arms throw a shadow against the wall, prefiguring the shape of the cross. His mother Mary, kneels while opening a box, it contains the gifts of the magi, and she’s looking up, perhaps she remembers the words of Simeon, that a sword will pierce her soul. The painting suggests that the cross is always there, throughout his life, it is his destiny.
Our gospel reading today, comes in the second half of Luke’s gospel, after Jesus has ‘set his face’ to go to Jerusalem. And with a growing sense of urgency we see the turmoil of that decision. He presses on to the reality of the cross.
And Jesus has a great crowd of people around him. He’s the man who can feed and heal people, of course they follow him. He cares for them. But wants them to know the truth about the cost of discipleship.
And possibly, this passage rates highly in things we would have preferred him not to have said. Jesus says, ‘If anyone comes to him without hating his father, and mother wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. What can this possibly mean?
Let’s stay awhile with these difficult words about family.
Jesus is almost certainly using hyperbole, heightened language that disturbs and disrupts. Just as Jesus comforts the disturbed, he does set out to disturb the comfortable.
Family is reality and it’s also often, an ideal, part of our understanding of order and identity. Of course we know that our real families often fall far short of ideal. I love the story of the three middle aged women friends together on a park bench, the first one goes, (sigh), the second one goes, (sigh), the third one says, ‘look, I thought that we’d agreed not to talk about the children’. We fall short of ideals, yet family is foundational and can be the place of greatest love and acceptance.
The first thing to consider is about personal inheritance. In every family we inherit characteristics, in all sorts of ways, for better and for worse. Often we get to look like our parents. I was part of a filmed training event the other day and honestly, when I saw the film played back I thought, ‘What was my mother doing there?’ It was me of course but with all her mannerisms and gestures.
More seriously, parental influence can exert itself throughout our lives. The voice of the parent. This can be a deep blessing, if your parent was proud of you and loving. That’s what we want for children isn’t it, the deep confidence that comes from being loved? But what if that isn’t the case? What if the parent has been undermining and critical, or cruel or abusive? Becoming a disciple of Jesus, becoming more and more like him, learning about our dignity as Gods children, may mean letting go of the voice of the earthly parent, choosing a different way, the way of love, choosing not to repeat negative patterns, so that at the extreme, an abused child does not become an abuser himself or herself. We may need to leave family characteristics, habits, beliefs, behind, in order to grow in Christ.
A second issue to consider is Christian calling and vocation which can be in conflict with family, or culture. Throughout history this has been true of the saints. When men and women have chosen to give up everything to serve the poor, or take up the religious life they’ve often done it without the support of their families. The Roman Empire hated the way that, young noble women rebelled, claimed the right to direct their own lives and become nuns. Last week we remembered Florence Nightingale, just one of our Victorian Hampshire heroines, whose first vocation, before nursing, was to the church. She faced fierce opposition at every stage. She rebelled and achieved great things. A Christian vocation then, and now, can create division within families. Jesus warns that will be the case. Most Christian saints and martyrs will have been haunted at some stage with the knowledge that they were letting down their families.
I guess that Jesus himself could be accused of just this. Letting down his family, and indeed, letting his people down. Because Jesus doesn’t organise rebellion against the Romans and he doesn’t even privilege or vindicate his own people. He says, instead, that the Kingdom of God is for everyone. This is the third way we might approach Jesus’ difficult words. In bringing reconciliation, for all of humanity, he will be accused of letting his own people down.
Making peace is hard. In the face of deeply engrained ancient enmities and griefs, to seek reconciliation and a new start is hard.
You may remember when the Queen visited N Ireland, it was a hundred years since the last official Royal visit. The Queen wore green and spoke Irish and here, we see her shaking hands with Martin McGuinness, former senior member of the IRA, then deputy first minister in Northern Ireland’s government. It was a moment of great profundity, and complexity, not least as both had lost family and friends in the conflict.
To end cycles of hatred and violence is so urgent, and so difficult. And those who seek to make peace can be seen to be letting their side down, betraying closest loyalties, the past, their heritage. But Jesus did this, Jesus opened the kingdom of God to everyone, he befriended the outcasts, he made friends of former enemies. And it took him to the cross.
Jesus criticises the family when it creates barriers and prevents us from loving generously. When families become ‘us’ and ‘them’. Jesus is just much more ambitious for the family. His ministry seeks to create one human family. Even rejected and in agony on the cross, he sets about creating family, asking his mother and beloved disciple to adopt one another. He says that ‘whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12.50). His love breaks down barriers, welcomes difference, and creates a whole worldwide family.
So, may God enlarge our hearts, that they may be big enough to receive the greatness of God’s love and big enough to accept one another, especially those who are unlike us, as brothers and sisters in God’s family.
Amen.
