Jesus is about to challenge your ideas of what is important in life and what is not; and it will change you. Jesus is about to challenge some of your most fundamental beliefs about family, your friends, and all that you find most important in life.
Let us start with one of the most basic of values that we teach our young children. It goes something like this: “Who you hang out with says a lot about who you are, so hang out with good people.”
It goes without saying that we would prefer to have our children hang out with straight A students, who tend to follow the rules, and who have loving and supportive families.
It also goes without saying that we would prefer that our children not hang out with those who have discovered drugs and exhibit behaviors that seem awfully rough around the edges because of the abuse they suffer at home.
Not only that, but we do not want our kids to be touching any snot-nosed kids, and I mean "snot-nosed" literally. We do not need those kid's nasty germs taking up residence in our own home. In other words, there are people who we want in our children’s lives, and those who we want out.
Jesus’ family was no different. Imagine his family's genuine concern when they learn that Jesus is touching desperately sick and contagious people, lepers, and hanging out with those who are sinful and disturbed in mind. What kind of filth is Jesus picking up along the way?
Those sorts of people are pushed to the edge of the community for a reason. Many of them can literally infect the community with their disease. Who in their right mind walks out to them? Many of them are like a corrosive chemical on paint. If you let them touch what is pristine and shiny, they will destroy in seconds all that has been beautiful for years and years.
Only someone who is out of his mind hangs out with such people. Only someone who is crazy (or maybe even possessed) cares for these dregs of society.
That is the most positive construction that the scribes could put on all that Jesus was doing. He had to be crazy. He had to be out of his mind. He had to be possessed by a demon or worse. He, obviously, had spent too much time around these people, and now a satanic had infected him and settled in his soul. The Scribe's proof of this infection is Jesus' ability to call out the demons and they listen. Only Satan can order his minions around. Jesus must be infected.
Jesus was not the first person to be accused of doing evil while doing good, or was he the last. Dr. Martin Luther King was accused of upsetting the peaceful order of the nation with his words of equality and actions of peaceful resistance in the face of racial injustice. That is being accused of evil while doing good.
A number of pastors in Argentina were accused of harboring death and infection when they set up hostels for AIDS patients who had been thrown out of their homes. They touched them, offered shelter, offered food, and offered a new family. They were shunned as the patients had been. That is being accused of evil while doing good.
Even now, some women are maligned for speaking up about sexual abuse perpetrated on the part of powerful men. “Why did they not speak up earlier?” they are accused. As if shame and depression are a reason to allow despicable harm to continue to be perpetrated on future girls. They are shunned for taking a stand. That is being accused of evil while doing good.
Many people have been accused of doing evil while they were actually doing good. Jesus was not the first, nor the last.
Blaspheme against the Spirit of truth and healing is nothing new. It is a hardness of heart…a hardness of uncaring that is an impenetrable shell, and is therefore unforgivable because it refuses to acknowledge it is in the wrong. When you refuse to see goodness as goodness, and love as love, you are truly lost.
Jesus challenges our sense of with whom we should hang out. Jesus challenges us to go to the edges of town and touch the untouchables, because it is they who need the healing. Jesus changes the basic value that we learned as children from, “Who you hang out with says a lot about who you are, so hang out with good people,” to, “Who you hang out with says a lot about who you are, so hang out with those who need love.”
One of my seminary professors, Dr. Preibe, is famous for saying, “If you draw a line in the sand, Jesus will always be found on the other side.”
In other words, if you draw a line which separates those who are in and those who are out, Jesus will always be on the side of the line with those who are out. Jesus is the healer of the ill and the savior of the sinner. He is the Lord of new life and redemption, and you cannot do any acts of love or redemption without hanging out with those who are considered the outcasts and sinners.
“Who you hang out with says a lot about who you are, so hang out with those who need love.”
This leads right into a second value that Jesus upends, that of “family first.” You hear it on the radio, “family first.” You hear it coming from the lips of grandma and from the expectations of dad. Family always comes first.
I once was invited to attend a Christian men’s conference for the first time. At that conference, it was made clear by the presenters that family should always come first.
They even laid out a clear plan for how men should greet their family when coming home from work: First you kiss your wife, because she is your partner in this thing called family. Then you kiss your children, because they are next in line of family importance.
As a father, they explained, you are the head of the family and all praise or scorn for the family falls on you. Therefore, it is up to you to be utterly devoted to loving your kids and shaping them into the kind of people God wants them to be, and utterly devoted to your wife so that she finds no reason to be unfaithful. In other words, family comes before anything.
In the gospel story, Jesus’ family agrees. As the accusations against Jesus fly, the family arrives at his home to take him away; to shelter him and reprove him of his crazy ideas; and to persuade him to stop hanging out with these crazy, unsavory people. Jesus' family come to protect him from the authorities before they take too much notice. They come to protect a family member. Family first.
But, here is the thing, Jesus does not need the family’s protection.
Jesus is the one who is in the right. He is the one who heals the sick and brings good news to the sinner. He is the one who is works continually to tie up Satan, the strong man of this world, and desires to set the world free from Satan's influence of sin and death. Jesus is the one who acts out of love.
Do you want to know who Jesus’ family is? It is not his mother, brothers, or sisters who would protect him and keep him from healing the discarded and loving the unlovable. It is not those who would keep him from facing the threat of the cross. They are not his family. Following Jesus does not look like what our society thinks of as “family first.”
Jesus asks those gathered around him, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him [who followed him, learned from him, and sought healing from him], he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”
That is Jesus’ notion of family values. Blood is nothing. Those who love as Jesus loves are Jesus’ family. Those who receive God's healing and forgiveness, and then offer it to others, are Jesus’ family.
I told you that Jesus would challenge you this morning. Jesus is challenging you to love in the face of a world that prefers to divide rather than heal. Jesus is challenging you to include rather than draw lines of exclusion. Jesus is challenging you to be who you were created to be, creatures of love.
You are his family after-all. You have been loved into this world through the wide open arms of Jesus. So, go ahead, and open your own arms wide. Love as you have been loved.
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