Tuesday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time

Lectionary: 396

“Here are my mother and my brothers.
For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father
is my brother, and sister, and mother.”

You can choose your friends; you're stuck with your family. Or so they say. 

Ben Wilson, in his book, Metropolis: A History of the City, Humankind's Greatest Invention explains how large cities give individuals more choices about their coworkers, friends, and acquaintances. They can work for companies other than the family farm. They can explore different forms of entertainment, and develop artistic talents their families never imagined. Because the city comprises many nationalities, children can learn new languages and even develop their own codes, gestures, signs, and words their families cannot understand. 

Individuals can attend other churches, or no church; and their family is none the wiser. in the largest cities, some people might assume different identities with different names in different parts of the city; living with perfect respectability among family and kin, and wickedly among shadowy friends. The city offers companionship and solitude, respectable and bizarre entertainment, opportunity and reassurance. If the city is enormously complex and demands much cooperation and compromises from its citizens, individuals find it well worth the sacrifice. 

In the Roman Empire, the Lord's new religion was a phenomenon of the city. Individuals could be baptized and enter the Church without their family having much say in the matter. Eventually, when their numbers attained a critical mass, the empire was converted to Christ. Or it said it was anyway. 

But Christianity had a hard time spreading to the countryside. The word pagan originally meant villager or rustic, and became identified with the religious beliefs and practices of people who lived far from the city. Because these "pagans" had always resisted the fads and fashions of the cities and clung to their old ways, urban Christians suspected their unauthorized rites and unorthodox beliefs. 

Jesus's remark about baptized believers fits the milieu of the city. His "family" are those who believe in him. They might not be related by blood; in fact their families might be very suspicious of the freedom of the baptized, as Jesus's family was of him. They pray differently, make odd sacrifices, and spend time in strange company. Although they speak the same language, dress like everyone else, and eat the same food, they often renounce many of their family's attitudes and behaviors. 

Faith, the Gospels tell us, is a gift from God, and is acquired through a process of rebirth. And one's biological mother might have nothing to do with that mysterious event. Faith is not determined by one's family, race, language, or nationality. Although we're born into it, it's not the birth we received from mother and father. 

And newborn Christians often have much to learn from their new family. If their family of origin abused alcohol and other chemicals; if they routinely shamed, scolded, and berated one another; if their language and entertainment was crude or violent: these practices must be discarded and forgotten. They don't fit the new, reborn fellowship, as Saint Paul reminded the Ephesians 4:17-24, 

That is not how you learned Christ,
assuming that you have heard of him and were taught in him, as truth is in Jesus,
that you should put away the old self of your former way of life, corrupted through deceitful desires,
and be renewed in the spirit of your minds,
and put on the new self, created in God’s way in righteousness and holiness of truth.