Every human, Jesus said so

       When I asked my wife for a divorce many years ago, announcing I was gay after some tumultuous times and a great deal of therapy, one of the things that I was accused of by my in-laws was the damage that I had done to "the family".  It truly is a loaded statement for discussion which has never been addressed and I will not do so now, or ever.  What I find amusing however is the notion of what family is and how it seems to be defined.  If recent social history has taught us anything about families, it is the beautiful and extraordinary permutations of what a family is.  

         While an obvious observation of this passage might be that, 'hey, Jesus had brothers' , he wasn't an only child!, Jesus told us way back when that we are to consider everyone to be our brother and sister, every one is family if we accept that we are all children of God.  In fact, all of Judeo-Christian scripture is replete with examples of 'different' families.  Jonathan and David jump out to me first. Then there is Ruth and Naomi and who can forget Jesus' healing of the Centurions lover? Why are so called conservatives obsessed with the 'traditional family' that never really quite existed. In fact, looking back at Lot and his family as noted in Scripture seems to give an alternate example of 'family' and a template of what not to do. Abhorrent, really. So I have to chuckle when anyone speaks to the so called 'traditional family' or traditional family values. They wind up being the ones who are usually found out to be having torrid affairs of all sorts. Oh, those breeders, always into something bad.

      I think it was noted that family is not always the people who gave birth to you or the people you were raised with. Family is that group around you that loves you, nurtures you and looks after you . If you claim to be a follower of Jesus, we are called to embrace an even larger looking, perhaps odder looking group, all of humanity. The guy on the bus, the struggling farmer in some arid African country,  a refuge from some war torn country, a teen struggling to come to terms with their sexuality. Every human is our family, Jesus said so.

           

Matthew 12:46-50

While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, ‘Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.’ But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, ‘Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?’ And pointing to his disciples, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.’