The Holy Family of God

Audio Recording of “The Holy Family of God” recorded in worship (12:03)
Christmas Eve
Texts: Isa 9.2-7; Titus 2.11-14; Lk 2.1-20

A friend and colleague of mine, Martin, spent time in Israel and Palestine some years ago. While he was staying in Jerusalem, the city experienced a rare snowstorm. Jerusalem gets snow even less often than we get snow, and so as you can imagine, even an inch of snow was more than they were prepared to handle. Martin was walking down a sloped street when he slipped and fell, and he ended up sliding downhill on his backside into a local gentleman on the sidewalk. With some difficulty in the slippery wet snow, the man was finally able to help Martin to his feet again, and they had a good laugh about the incident. When this gentleman learned that my friend was visiting, he insisted that Martin come to stay at his house. Martin declined, of course, not wanting to impose on this stranger he had just met, but the man wouldn’t take no for an answer. He was adamant that Martin must be his guest, and insisted that he be allowed to offer him hospitality. After much protestation, Martin finally gave in and came to the man’s house for dinner because he felt that he would dishonor his new friend by refusing.

Showing hospitality is a huge part of Palestinian culture, and has been for millennia. Two thousand years ago, the hospitality of a stranger could literally mean the difference between life and death for a traveler. Anyone passing through could expect to be given a night or two of lodging by a local at a moment’s notice simply by standing inside the town gate. Showing hospitality strangers was an important social norm because it assured the safety of all travelers.

So if strangers could (and can still!) expect to receive such gracious hospitality, of course the same would be true for family. Although we have this mythology built up around Mary and Joseph sleeping in the barn because there was no room for them at the inn, this isn’t quite what Luke says. He tells us that they had traveled from Nazareth to Joseph’s ancestral home of Bethlehem and that there was no room in the “inn;” but that isn’t quite the right word. The word actually means a guest room, such as many houses would have had.

Whether he had grown up there or only had loose familial bonds with the place, Joseph wouldn’t have gone to stay at an inn—a place reserved only for merchants passing through on business—he would have stayed with relatives. If he hadn’t, he would have insulted them. In fact, he could likely have found a room with anyone in Bethlehem by simply knocking on a door saying, “I am Joseph, son of Heli, son of Matthat, Son of Levi,” and the occupants would probably have responded, “Levi was my grandfather’s uncle, please come in!” or “Heli was my cousin’s barber’s butcher’s son; you must stay with us!”

Most houses were built around a single room in which the family stayed, with a guest room tacked on to the side or on the roof. The guest room offered to the young couple was already full with other guests—also probably family—but there was no chance that his hosts would have said, “Sorry, we’re already full up. You’ll have to find somewhere else,” because that’s not how you treat family. Leaving family to fend for themselves was not only shameful, it was dangerous. What if something happened to them? While it was far from ideal, any relatives of Joseph’s—whether close or distant—would have been more than happy to provide whatever accommodations they could, because that’s just what you do for family.

Nevertheless, with the guest room already packed to the gills, there was no room to deliver the baby, so when Mary went into labor, she had to do so in the main room, where the owners of the house lived—the main room adjacent to the stables, with mangers dug into the floor to feed the animals.

This is a small but important detail to this story. You see, the way we tell it, Jesus was born in the middle of a strange town in a barn devoid of anyone else except animals. In reality, it is far more likely that he was born into a cramped house surrounded by chaos and noise—but most importantly, by family. The son of a peasant craftsman and his young bride, Jesus came into this world with next to nothing—not even in his own house; but what he did have was family.

One of the most incredible things about the Incarnation to which we seldom pay any attention is that, as a human, Jesus had ancestors and relatives. Both Luke and Matthew include a lineage in their gospel stories so that their readers will know who Joseph is, and therefore who this baby being born is. In Matthew’s gospel, the lineage goes all the way back to Abraham with whom God made the covenant. It’s Matthew’s way of reminding his Jewish audience that Jesus is one of them. He’s their family, their kin. Luke takes things even further by extending his genealogy all the way back to “Adam, the son of God;” a reminder that not only Jews, but also Gentiles are included in Jesus’ family because we all come from one ancestor, and we all have God as our ultimate progenitor.

So family plays a central role in this story of Jesus’ birth. His parents were taken in by family in the hometown of his father, and he came into the world surrounded by animals, yes, but also by relatives who cared enough about his father and about him to make whatever room they could in an already full house—even if he did have to sleep in a food trough. But what is really interesting about Luke’s story is that it doesn’t stop there; more people showed up. It wasn’t the family we might expect—cousins, aunts, uncles, great-uncles’ cousins’ aunts six times removed… The news was not spread among kin, but among shepherds, out watching their flocks by night.

Shepherds had a reputation for being not only smelly and unsophisticated, but also unscrupulous and violent. When Luke says they were watching their flocks, he means they were protecting them from other shepherds who might try to steal them. These men may be even been armed. But when they burst into the house and share the news the angels told them, a miracle happens. Instead of being thrown out, instead of everyone running out the back, everyone is amazed. For a little while, this crazy collection of people—a young, bedraggled Nazorean couple, a family of kindly but completely callow Bethlehemites, and a bunch of gruff and bewildered shepherds—become family; a family all brought together by this extraordinary baby lying in a manger.

So often we reduce the life of Jesus to what happened at the end of it, and we forget that Jesus didn’t come to die, he came to live—and to live among us. The miracle of the Incarnation is that the Creator of the Universe entered into human flesh and blood. Jesus was born into a family, and his birth created a new family; one brought together by God through open doors and heavenly messengers and even Caesar Augustus himself, though unwittingly, and that census of his.

Family is central to how many of us celebrate this holiday, but even in the midst of our family preparations and traditions, through the miracle of the Incarnation God seeks to blow our definition of family wide open; Christmas is part of God’s promise to free family to be what it should be; not the place where we escape from the injustice of the world, but the place where that injustice is healed.

For if in the Incarnation Jesus becomes family to each of us, then it also makes us family to one another. All of us—shepherds and magi, kings and peasants, Democrats and Republicans—we are one family in Christ. We all trace our lineage back to the same family tree that has God as both its root and its crown. In Christ we are all connected by the blood given for us at this table and the water in which we have been washed.

This is not just a hollow sentiment about the general interconnectedness of humanity. Instead, it is God’s way of saving the world from itself; of helping us to realize that we all have the same responsibility to one another that Joseph’s family had to him in Bethlehem. At Christmas, God in the face of the baby Jesus invites us to look across the room, across the border, across the aisle, and to see that the people standing over there are just as much our family as the baby lying in the manger because the spare room is plumb full up. Yes, it’s an inconvenience; yes, it costs us money or comfort or safety; but can we really leave family out there to fend for themselves? What if something were to happen to them?

In God’s family, when one of us is sick, we take care of them. When one of us is persecuted, we stand up to protect them. When one of us is hungry, we feed them. When one of us is oppressed, we stand alongside them. When it comes to family, we don’t do this out of a sense of obligation or to escape punishment—at least, not ultimately. We take care of one another because we love one another, because we are bound to one another in a way we can’t really understand or articulate. That love is what slipped into our skin on Christmas night—and what we worship here tonight.

Imagine a world where we treat everyone—from immigrants to shepherds to strange men sliding on their backsides through the snow—as though they were family. That is the world we see coming to birth at Christmas: a world in which we can look into the face of another—whether friend or stranger or enemy—and see a cousin, a sibling. A Christmas celebration that runs away from or ignores the problems of the world to focus only in our families is an anemic, malnourished holiday. But when Christmas can expand our definition of family and teach us to look outward, to begin to see the people around us—even weary, pregnant travelers and shepherds—as kin, then we become co-creators of the kingdom of God, celebrating the hope of God’s promise of ultimate salvation at Christmas. When we can look at one another with the eyes of Jesus, to see and love one another as he does, then something new is born.

Behold, Your Mother

Delivered at Our Redeemer’s Lutheran Church, Maundy Thursday, NL Year 4.
Text: Jn 19.23-30

Normally on this night, we read from the 13th chapter of John, not the 19th. We typically share the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet and giving them the commandment, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” This commandment, or mandate, is what gives this day its name: “Maundy.”

The story we hear tonight, though very different, paints for us the same picture. On the night that he washed their feet, Jesus told his disciples that the greatest love one person can have for another is to die for them, and that is where we find Jesus now: dying for his friends. And yet, even as he hangs dying, still his mind is on them.

He sees before his cross his mother. She is crying, weeping for the loss of her son, dying inside just as surely as he is. Next to her, his beloved disciple, a man with whom he has shared his life and his ministry. He opens his parched lips and says to them, “Behold, your son. Behold, your mother.” One of Jesus’ final acts in his life is to create community here for the people who he loves.

This is not just Jesus showing compassion for his mother and his friend. This is what he has come to do. His whole life, his whole ministry have been about forging community among people, bringing us together with one another and with God. He is the Word of God made flesh, the Lamb of God come to take away the sin of the world. For John, sin is separation from God and one another, isolation and loneliness. This is what Jesus has come to save us from. The gift he gives to his mother and his disciple from the cross is the gift of love in community that is stronger even than death.

The gift he gave them with his dying breath is the same gift we celebrate tonight. The love that Jesus commands us to have for one another, the love even unto death, is what has created this community gathered here. We, too, come to gather with Jesus, to receive his love in the form of his own flesh and blood, and in this sacrament of Holy Communion, we are transformed into this community.

This community is no ordinary group of people, it is a gift from God. In the midst of the mess and chaos of the crucifixion, John points us to a small, seemingly insignificant event at the foot of the cross. The four soldiers had taken Jesus clothes and divided them, but the fifth item of clothing was a seamless tunic, woven, we are told, “from the top.” Rather than divide this four ways as well, they throw dice to see who will get it, and it remains whole.

In Greek, the word for “from the top” can also be translated “from above,” and is used only in two other places in John’s gospel. The first is in chapter 3, when Jesus tells Nicodemus that he must be born “from above,” and the second is earlier in this chapter, when Jesus tells Pilate that any power he has over Jesus has been given him “from above.” This tunic, woven “from above” and seamless, which is spared from being torn and divided, is a symbol for the community of Jesus, a community called the Church. Even at his death, the Church is not divided, but its unity is preserved.

Community is essential to human life. Without community, we wither and die as surely as if we were denied food or water. This is why Jesus brought his mother and his disciple together at the cross: so that they could love and care for one another when he was gone. It is why he brings us together now. I know this better than most.

Many of you know that when I was 10, my mother died from cancer. When she died, I was lost. I felt alone and afraid. But I wasn’t alone. In addition to my family, my whole congregation felt the pain of her loss. It was in that confusion and sorrow during her sickness and death that Jesus said to us, “Behold, your son. Behold, your mother.” And like our story today, from that day forward the Church as been my mother, and I am her son. The people in that congregation cared for me and nurtured me, they raised me and prepared me and sent me out to serve the Church. They are forever my family.

That’s the reason I am here tonight; because in the Church I have been given the gift of community. In the Church, I have felt most fully and clearly the love of God. When I decided to devote my life to God, I gave myself to loving and serving the Church, because it was through the Church that God first loved me. The Church is my community, my family, my mother. You are my family.

This is the gift Christ gives us. He takes us when we are separate and isolated and weaves us together into one. He creates unity from seclusion. And through that community, he gives us the gift of love, of support, of compassion, of consolation, of life. He takes a collection of broken, flawed, sometimes even nasty people and creates from us a loving, caring, nurturing community in the Church.

He does this by feeding us with himself. Jesus Christ has given his life for us; in his love, he has given us his very self to eat. His flesh strengthens us, his blood gives us new life. On the cross, Jesus was lifted up to draw all people to himself; in the same way, at this table, he meets us and brings us together into one. He says to us, “Behold, your father. Behold, your sister. Behold, your daughter. Behold, your brother…”

We all know our community here is not perfect. There are quarrels and divisions. There are lines drawn in the sand. There are people that we try to avoid if we can. In spite of all that, through the love of Christ and the grace of God given to us in this holy supper, we become the Church, the Body of Christ. That’s not all: we are but one expression of that body, one limb of the body, one hair on the head.

In this meal, we are united with all God’s people, across time and space. Death and distance to not separate us: the tunic remains whole. We gather at one table, and with us gather all the saints in all the places and all the times that ever were or will be. In this meal, I kneel beside my mother. And my grandmother. And my great grandmother. In this meal, we all kneel beside Peter and Paul and all the saints of Christ’s Church.

Christ gives us himself in this meal, and in this meal, he becomes a part of us. Just as the bread and the wine is incorporated into our bodies, Jesus himself becomes a part of us: he abides in us, and we in him. In the meal, he continues to draw us all to himself, until we are one, woven from the top, never to be divided.

I hope that all of us, but most especially those of you receiving first communion tonight, know this about the Church: wherever you go, whatever you do, the Church will always be home for you. You may move to a different city or state or country or continent; you may become more faithful or less; you may come to this table every week or once a year; but regardless of who you become over the course of your life, the Church is now and forever will be your home. There is always, always a place set for you at this table, and all of us—your family, your friends, your neighbors, even your ancestors and your descendants—will always be gathering there with you, no matter how far apart we may be.

The Church is your home; Christ has died to make it so. With his final breath, he cried out “It is finished!” The word he used can also be translated “it is accomplished,” like a goal that has been met. In his ultimate act of love, he accomplished the work that makes us one. From the cross, he gives us this gift so that no matter where we are, we will always be able to know the immense love that he has for us through the love of the Church.