Is This Not Mary’s Son?
Seventh Sunday After Pentecost
Proper 9 (B)
In my denomination (the Episcopal Church), it has been standard practice to restrict newly ordained priests from returning to their home congregation. You can imagine the difficulty of providing pastoral care and teaching ministry to a congregation that has seen you grow up, perhaps even changed your diapers in the nursery. I suspect the practice is reasonable, since it might make it difficult for the people in your congregation to shift their relationship with you after seeing you grown up.
This is less the case now, since most priests I have seen through the ordination process are not lifelong Episcopalians, and they are usually young adults coming from a different tradition, having an altogether different relationship with their “sending parish.” So the standard practice is shifting in some cases.
But this “standard practice” seems to hold true for Jesus as he returns to his hometown. Perhaps some of the folks changed his diapers in the synagogue nursery, but there’s something more subtle happening in their disregard of Jesus and his ministry. Notice what they consider to be determinative for his authority: “‘Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?’ And they took offense at him.
Their assumption of his limitation comes from their knowledge of his family of origin, and there might be a subtle derision in saying he’s the “son of Mary,” leaving out his father in the list of his parentage and kin. They imagine that they can define him by his family, his heritage, and the scandal of his family history. He lies outside their imagined pedigree for a prophet and teacher. He does not come from the right family.
Here we see the disruption of our social norms and expectations and the means by which they are weaponized toward a normalization of social structure. That is to say, they read the family of Jesus as determining his fittedness for the ministry he is pursuing. This is backwards; Jesus is the determinative factor for our fittedness and the legitimacy of our familial structures. Life with and in the Son of God is the only means by which our social structures (like family, marriage, church, etc.) are legitimate in this fledgling New Creation.
In a lecture at Duke Divinity School regarding the structure of the family, Dr. Willie James Jennings refers back to the Holy Family as the paradigm for family relationships reordered around God’s desire. He said,
“Mary and Joseph must allow the holy icon to stand between them. Together they must share this shame with only a dream and a vision to defend their decision. All everyone else sees is an unfaithfulness at the very beginning covered up by an outrageous claim. This is the first disruption of human community trapped in distorted desire. They claim that this child is the desire of God and not first their own desire. Jesus will carry this shame and proclaim divine desire.”
The Holy Family is a disruption of social expectation for marriage and family, and it is a cause for shame. The disruption Jennings mentions is the very thing the crowd in Nazareth feels as he brings his ministry home. They do not look the way family ought to look, and therefore there is no reason this son of Mary ought to be able to wield such authority. Their obsession with right order and social norm ultimately captivates their desire and guides their assumptions about Jesus, the one who ought to be captivating their desire and reordering their assumptions.
We might see how such a vision of family and marriage - or relationships more generally - can be weaponized to guide and distort our desires. As I have said many times from the pulpit, the usefulness of our relationships is evidenced by the incredible number of advertisements that pull on our informed desire for a particular kind of family life to sell a product that claims to offer such a life. How many diamonds have been sold by advertisements suggesting that an improved romantic relationship comes from a shiny rock? How many terrible cups of coffee have been poured because certain brands offer an image of a happy family at breakfast, with an affectionate spouse pouring said terrible coffee into a steaming mug?
The family is no basis for determining who is and is not capable of effective ministry. It is faithfulness to the God revealed in Jesus Christ that ultimately determines one’s fittedness for ministry and for drawing social structures toward their good end. A marriage bearing fruit and multiplying is only inherently good insofar as it bears the fruit of peace, kindness, gentleness, long-suffering, faithfulness, joy, love, and self-control. Family is good only insofar as its relationships are determined by the lordship of Christ, not the other way around.
The failure in Nazareth is their capacity to subjugate the Son of God to the social norms and structures they have come to idolize. We cannot miss the underlying reminder that this proves true also for the church as an institution and social structure. The church as a network of relationships and shared practices is only good insofar as it is determined by the life and lordship of Christ. This means that we ought to hold our structures lightly, as the Spirit may will to blow some of them out of our hands. If we hold on too tightly to what is, then what is possible becomes harder to receive. As the Spirit of Christ continues to guide the church into all Truth, we must not allow our commitment to forms of gathering and practice to determine the ways in which God is calling the Body of Christ into death and resurrection.