Posts Tagged ‘family’

What sort of king?

November 26, 2024

Christ the King – 2024

John 18:33-37

Marian Free

In the name of God who continues to surprise, confound and amaze us.  Amen.

Many years ago, I read an article in an occupational therapy journal about children in foster care. It reported that no matter how much abuse or neglect a child had suffered at the hands of a natural parent they still wanted to go home. It seemed that the idea of family, mother, father created a deep longing to belong, even if the child’s reality did not live up to expectation. Apparently, an abusive mother was better than no mother, a disparaging, derisive father was better than no father. 

Terms like mother, father, mum, dad, family come laden with meaning – often idealistic and vastly different from many people’s reality. Few parents are perfect and even if they were, their styles of parenting would differ according to their own experience, their personalities and the relationship that they have with each other – no one family is the same. Even though the definition of “family” has vastly changed over the last 50 years, still many of us have an idea of what a mother/father/family should be like[1].  

The same is true of the expression “God”. In the eighties and nineties many feminists and others chose to use the term “Godde” to make it clear that the divinity in whom they believed was not a bearded, white-haired man sitting on a throne, condemning people to the fire of hell and that “Godde’ was much bigger and broader than the narrow image that was circulating. Many of us still confront the problem that the God which many of our friends have rejected is unrecognisable to us – a human invention not a revelation of scripture ad certainly not related to our experience.

Over and again, scripture confronts a narrow, unimaginative concept of God, an image of God that is easier to manage, understand and, dare I say, control. In a phrase that I often repeat, Isaiah says: “God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways.” (Is 55:8).  Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians makes the same point when he  argues that the cross exposes our false understanding and overturns all our preconceptions. “God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.” (1 Cor 1: 28).

Though there might be some assumptions that we can make about God, God consistently overturns and challenges our simple-minded ideas.  Nowhere is this more obvious than with the person Jesus. On every level, Jesus failed to meet expectations and at every turn Jesus refused to be bound by the limits of the human mind. Jesus came to serve not to be served, he argued that the first would be last, and announced – not that he would lead the Israelites to victory – but that he would suffer and die.

That Jesus confounds every attempt to label him and to box him in, is particularly clear in Jesus’ interaction with Pilate. Despite the fact that Pilate is in a position to put Jesus to death, Jesus refuses to give Pilate a clear answer to Pilate’s question as to who he is. In response to Pilate’s questioning Jesus is evasive, elusive and enigmatic. 

Until the moment of Jesus’ trial, Jesus was probably unknown to Pilate and now he is brought before him by the Jews (whose traditions and laws Pilate does not understand, and over whom he has no jurisdiction). Pilate makes an attempt to discover who and what Jesus is, yet Jesus speaks in riddles and throws Pilates’ questions back to him. “What makes you think I’m a king?”

Jesus does not deny that he is a king, but he is clear that like “God” and “family” the title “king” is impregnated with meaning and expectation and that if he admits to being “king” Pilate (and the crowd) will impose their own understanding on the word – Pilate will see Jesus as a threat to Caesar and the crowd will expect him to seek power.

By prevaricating, by being evasive, by not directly answering Pilate’s question, Jesus is trying to redefine “kingship”. Yes, he is a king, but not the sort of king that people are used to – not a king who enriches himself at the expense of others, not a king who expects everyone to be subservient to him, not a king that seeks to dominate and oppress all the nations of the world. Jesus is king of an unworldly kingdom, a king whose primary purpose is to testify to the truth – the content of which is contained in John’s gospel, the purpose of which is that those who hear Jesus’ voice will attain eternal life.

In just five verses the author of the gospel has de-stabliised and undermined the traditional understanding of what it means to be king. Jesus is king, but he is king on his own terms, he will not be defined and confined by the expectations of others – whether they be his fellow Jews or the representatives of Rome.

The passage is left hanging with Pilate’s question: “What is truth?” 

There is an interesting twist to John’s account of Jesus’ trial and crucifixion. Traditionally a name is attached to the cross to identify the one being crucified. Pilate orders that the sign on Jesus’ cross read (in Hebrew, Latin and Greek): “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” Despite the objections of the Jews, Pilate leaves the wording as it is. Has Pilate come to see the truth? Has he grasped that Jesus is a king (albeit a very different one) or is this is Pilate’s way of justifying an execution which at heart he believes is not justified.

Either way, Jesus’ crucifixion is the ultimate act de-stablises, unsettles and even undermines all our expectations of what it means to be King of the Jews, the one sent by God, the anointed.  

Jesus’ dialogue with Pilate, is a reminder that the narrative is not within our control, that God the Trinity will always act in ways that we do not expect and will always defy our attempts to categorise and define.  In the face of Pilate’s efforts to label him Jesus infuses the expression with new meaning.  He is a king, but he is a king like no other (before or since).

May all our longings for the kingdom be tempered by the knowledge that the kingdom is not of our making and that our human intellects are inadequate to the task of truly comprehending who and what God is, what it is that God plans, and what the kingdom will finally be revealed to be.

[1] Of course, the nature of families has completely changed and with that comes a change in expectations.

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Who is really a child of Abraham?

December 3, 2016

Advent 2 – 2016

Matthew 3:1-11

Marian Free

 

In the name of God in whose image we are made and whose image we are called to project to the world. Amen.

Recently I read a novel entitled A Spool of Blue Thread, by Anne Tyler. In broad terms the plot concerns a family and their family home, the complex family dynamics and how those dynamics shift as the parents age. The Whitshank family had a proud history – albeit only two generations old. Junior Whitshank bought the local construction company and re-named it Whitshank Construction. His son, Red, took over the company and it was expected that Red’s son Stem would take it over in his turn. Stem was not actually Red’s son. Red had three children of his own – two daughters and a son Denny. Stem, whose real name was Douglas, was actually the son of Lonesome O’Brien. Lonesome had the reputation of being the best tiler in town and he worked for Whitshank Construction. No one knew what had happened to Stem’s mother. When asked, Lonesome simply said that she had gone traveling.

Lonesome often took Douglas to work with him when a babysitter was not available. One day, when Stem was only two years old, Lonesome was raced into hospital from work. Red asked his wife Abby to come and pick up the child. Two days later Lonesome was dead and try as they might Red and Abby were unable to locate any next of kin for the child. Abby was adamant that Stem was not going into care and despite Red’s reservations and protestations Stem joined the Whitshank family. It was often remarked that Stem was more of a Whitshank than his brother Denny. Whereas Denny was easily bored, obstinate, thoughtless and unsettled, Stem was good, kind, sweet-tempered and easy-going like Red. Whereas Denny showed no interest in and no aptitude for the construction business, Stem loved working with wood and with people. Over time he became more and more like his adoptive father – even his walk was the same.

So what is it that makes a family? Is it blood or is it common interests? Is it the fact that people live together or are there other criteria? Today, families come in all kinds of shapes and sizes – extended families, nuclear families, single parent families, blended families, families in which there are two mothers or two fathers and families made possible through surrogacy or sperm donation. Families are both relational – that is there have genetic ties – and constructed – that is they bound together by ties that are as strong as family even though the individuals are not related to each other at all.

In today’s gospel John the Baptist challenges what it means to be in God’s family. He proclaims: “Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” Up until this point in time, being a member of God’s family was simply a matter of birth, of being able to claim Abraham as a forebear. To be sure, being a son or daughter of Abraham came with some responsibilities, but essentially it was understood that God was the God of the Israelites and that as such their status as God’s children was inviolable.

John challenges this assumption and the complacency that came with it. Being a part of God’s family is not something that can be taken for granted. As the prophets before him, John bears witness to the fact that there is much more to being a child of Abraham than an accident of birth. From Deuteronomy through to Malachi, the Israelites have been reminded of what God expects from his family. In particular God expects that those who belong to God will share God’s concern for the widow, the orphan and the stranger. Members of God’s family are expected “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with their God” (6:8).

The relationship between God and the Israelites is conditional on their holding and conforming to God’s values. God through Jeremiah says: “If you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever.” (7:5,6). Being in God’s family means being and behaving like God.

In the world the Old Testament and of John the Baptist there was no social welfare and at least ninety percent of people lived just above the poverty level. Those without any means of support – the widow, the orphan, the disabled and the alien were utterly dependent on the good will of others for survival. The Old Testament made it abundantly clear that it was the responsibility of all the children of Abraham to share with God a care for the vulnerable and for the outsider. By extension, if those were the criteria for being children of Abraham, then anyone who behaved in such a way could be considered a part of God’s family.

This is one of the points that John is making here. He is warning the Pharisees and Sadducees that they cannot simply rely on their lineage, nor can they assume that it is sufficient to make a cynical or superficial show of responding to God’s message. What they need is a complete change of heart. Unless they demonstrate in their lives that they share God’s sense of justice, God’s passion for the poor and the outcast, the alienated and the rejected, they cannot claim to be children of Abraham.

Being part of God’s family is not something that we can or should take for granted, it is both a blessing and a demand, a gift and a responsibility, it requires a response on our part not just passive acceptance. Being a child of Abraham demands an engagement with the world and a passion for justice and equity.

Sometimes even the best of us need a John the Baptist in our lives to shame us, to call us to account, and to remind us of who we really are and to whose family we really belong.

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