July 21, 2009
By Beth DeCristofaro
Let us sing to the Lord; he has covered himself in glory. …And you brought them in and planted them on the mountain of your inheritance—the place where you made your seat, O LORD, the sanctuary, O LORD, which your hands established. (Exodus 12: 1, 15)"Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Matthew 12:49-50)
Piety
Jesus, I come to do your will. Show me how to love rather than fear or render judgment. Help me to love rather than seek to be right or make demands. Strengthen me to love rather than defend what I imagine is mine whether property or identity. Enfold me as your sister, Lord, and open my eyes to those opportunities in which I might be sister to someone else. Amen
Study
This week is the anniversary of my brother’s death, more than 10 years ago. Unexpected and shocking, this was harder to get through than my father’s death from leukemia years before. Sadly, Mike and I did not get along very well. We had one of those relationships in which being in the same room together for more than five minutes usually led to tension at best, a heated debate over opposite opinions at worst. He was a curmudgeon with a generous streak and I was a “let me tell you how to get your life together”, big sister. Which makes Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel even more difficult for me.
“Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” he asks. Don’t you think this hurt Mary’s feelings? What does he mean dismissing the immense love and sacrifice with which she raised Him? She probably was hurt, pierced. A mom would be. But she probably understood her beloved Son much better than I.
Kinship is one level of relationship. God’s love is quite another. Jesus is again telling his audience and us just how much he loves us. He is inviting us to be his spiritual siblings and thus close ever further the gap between divinity and humanity. He is inviting us to be closer than even human siblings can be, because he is for us. God is for us.
Jesus wants us to close gaps between people too. He wants us not only to honor the kinship, the gift of family, but to realize its limitations. We are to go beyond and extend the kinship of God to one another. God graces us with the Spirit to do so. I did not do very well on either level with my own brother. Mike was not my only sibling; he was a child of God. I did not respect either identity in him very well. Jesus reminds us that as we start by loving God first, we then are beholden to love others as we love ourselves. He takes the adage of loving one’s neighbor and deepens it, graces it. We must love each other because the other is also God’s brother, sister or mother not just neighbor or kin.
Action
God has planted us in his sanctuary by giving us Jesus as brother and as Lord. In God’s vision, we love those even if they offend or discomfort us, not by accepting their transgression but by accepting their kinship to Jesus. Attending to our prayer life helps ground us in Jesus’ kinship. Our actions make manifest this love. Who do we see as our brother or sister? That self-indulgent and whiny family member? The homeless person who blocks our way asking for a hand out? The worker who will be receiving a raise this week when the minimum wage is moved up? Or are we self-righteous? Judgmental? Fearful of what might be taken from me?
There are so many things that I would say to Mike if he were here now, not the least of which is “Sorry I was so impatient and self-righteous.” What do we need to say or do for the other to whom we are less than loving? Do our actions on a personal level and as a member of society proclaim our spiritual relation to Jesus?
