Why is there something rather than nothing? Better still, why is there someone rather than no one? Why are some people so attractive? What is so attractive about Jesus that the eager push their way through His front door to hear Him teach?
Some are attracted to Jesus and some are repelled by Him. Either way, He is always interesting! While would be followers fill His House, there are some who see him as deranged and out of His mind. The mind He is ‘out of ‘ is the one that accepts everything the way that it is even when it is not life giving. Jesus doesn’t play by the rules and this alarms His family, who come to do some damage control. Worse still he has really angered the religious leaders in Jerusalem. Their accusation goes way beyond madness. They think He is possessed by the Prince of Devils! But Jesus has never made life easy for any demon. He faces them eye to eye. He does not shadow box with them. Now He has to do the same with those who are trying to discredit Him. They are so frightened of contamination that they abandon people. Jesus loves them too much to leave them unfreed. He is able to release the captives because His strength comes from the Holy Spirit. If these scribes cannot see that, if they are willing to take what is good and call it evil they will never be in a position to ask for forgiveness. They mistake the presence of the Spirit of God for the presence of an unclean spirit. They are in the grip of what the Gospels call self-serving hardness of heart. We can only hope, for their sake, that this is not permanent! Now His ‘family’ call Him out in the hope that He will embrace conventionality. But this is no longer possible. So, Jesus starts a new family. He does this with eyes and with voice. Taking them in. A new bond of love has been forged – their shared commitment to the coming of the Kingdom of the Father. They belong to Jesus new family by doing what He does.
So, what about us. Are we still trapped by convention? Still believing that blood is thicker than water!? We gather to break the bread of understanding and to drink the wine of love. Jesus can never refuse a beggar. And when we are together do we feel that we belong to a new humanity, a new community a family? A new family which includes all those I see face to face. All those I hear about, and all those who have gone before me who were unable to resist the luring of the Beloved Son of God. We belong to a universal and largely invisible community that spans space and time. A community which bids us to take the next step, the next risk for love.
In the home of Jesus this energy is called the Holy Spirit. The liberating presence of God to all peoples of the earth. The Holy Spirit is at work alleviating, accompanying and transforming all suffering. In the beautiful words of Hildegard:
Holy Spirit
Giving life to all life,
Moving all creatures,
Root of all things,
Washing them clean,
Wiping out their mistakes,
Healing their wounds
You are our true life,
Luminous, wonderful
Awakening the heart
From its ancient sleep. -(The Enlightened Heart: An Anthology of Sacred Poetry. ed S Mitchell, 1989, p.42)
The values which shape the hearts of the new humanity are not willy nilly. They flow in power from the heart of God calling us to what is eternal and ultimate. We need to keep telling the stories of the times when we felt that Spirit surge through us. Like a man in Rwanda who kept people alive during the genocide; like the woman who held the hand of her dying friend so tenderly that she died at peace; like the ten-year-old insider who reached out to a ten-year-old outsider; like the grandmother who keeps in loving contact with the children her son abandoned; and that same son helping a work colleague through depression. Like the child who walked up to a street sweeper and thanked him so sincerely that he cried. Everyone is invited to belong to the new family of God. When we hear their stories, we know the answer to Jesus’ question, “Who is mother and sister and brother to me?”
