Moving forward

Mark 3:31-4:9

                When I was in my late teens there was a chap I hung out with quite a bit. We were involved in church together, travelled together and had similar friends. Sometimes it almost seemed like a soap opera but that would be another blog or perhaps a book! One of the things we seemed to have a penchant for was to discuss things, debate, converse, challenge each other. We covered a lot of topics. After a few years I grew weary of what began to appear to me to be repetitive arguments. I grew weary of the tension. I knew he was not challenging me and always retreated to a stereotypical religious argument for almost any subject we were discussing. It was tiresome and eventually we grew apart. Rather, I avoided him and then he and his wife and the relationship basically ended.

               Move ahead about 30 years and I came to the joyous discovery that the missing piece in my personality that made me whole is that I am gay. That's an over simplification of course but again, another blog or book. Suffice to say though that simply stating I am gay changed a great many relationships. There are those hat I thought would be as loving and supportive as they had always been that dropped me like a hot potato. To many it made no difference at all, I wa the same decent and loving person I had always been. Many others came out of the woodwork so to speak to embrace me and in some ways I have a 'new family' in addition to the wonderful siblings and my children that have been rocks to me. I cannot even begin to speak about how wonderful my husband is.

                  In today's passage it would be so easy to simply make a historical note that Jesus in fact had brothers and sisters. The point I would make is that Jesus seems to be dissociating himself from his family while broadening the definition of who his family is. To embrace his ministry and be true to who he is Jesus had to be willing to embrace new and varied people ( "family" ) and be willing to put aside the old if necessary. Tough challenges for anyone, even Jesus. We live and love and we are called to do so with power and zest and fullness. When we have to say good bye willingly or through tragedy or death, it hurts. The dissociation hurts, it's just human.

                     But one thing I have learned that is a powerful force in my life from everything both personal and material is that things never really end. The friendship I had with that chap at 17 still resides in my consciousness. The relationship has helped mold me and made me richer for the love and living. The same is true for my parents. While I miss them, the love we shared and that they imparted has not died. The memories are there intact, the love is still vibrant, almost palpable and they live on in me and what we shared.  Strangely enough the same is true about some material things. I once had a Jeep that I had a heck of a good time with, romping in mud troughs, climbing over boulders sharing fellowship with some great people. Every time I see a Jeep riding on mudders with the top off I smile and great memories come flooding back. I no longer have the Jeep but the joy and memories are still alive. 

                   Sometime we are called to 'move on'. We can lament the change or we can come to know that life makes us richer for everything and everyone we know or have known. Embracing and broadening our love, our relationships while maintaining those who brought us where we are and who we are is a joy to thank God for. We are called to always move forward to be the best that we can be, living in the now and (hopefully), joyfully remembering the past.

Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters^* are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’ 

Again he began to teach beside the lake. Such a very large crowd gathered around him that he got into a boat on the lake and sat there, while the whole crowd was beside the lake on the land. He began to teach them many things in parables, and in his teaching he said to them:‘Listen! A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seed fell on the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on rocky ground, where it did not have much soil, and it sprang up quickly, since it had no depth of soil. And when the sun rose, it was scorched; and since it had no root, it withered away. Other seed fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked it, and it yielded no grain. Other seed fell into good soil and brought forth grain, growing up and increasing and yielding thirty and sixty and a hundredfold.’ And he said, ‘Let anyone with ears to hear listen!’