Holy Family
Sunday after Christmas: 31st December, 2000
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's Eastern Hill
And this is God's commandment, that we should believe in the name
of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us.
1 Jn 3:23
Something simple, clear and direct is probably in order on a day like today. We are on a Sunday morning, which is the eve of a New Year. Not just any New Year either. For those of careful mind, this is indeed the end of one century and the beginning of another - and none of us will be around for the next one. 2001 is also the centenary year for our Commonwealth of Australia. There are more fireworks, more milestones ahead.
For some of us, this is just another evening coming up - not really worth the trouble of staying awake for the midnight change over. For others there will be another festive meal culminating in bells and whistles, the embracing of those we love, the banging of saucepan lids, Auld Lang Syne; perhaps some laughter, perhaps some tears. And a quiet day tomorrow.
There are however, very few of us who do not at this time spare some time for reflective thought. The events of the year concluding and what might come our way. The turning of centuries or even of a millennium encourages this introspection even more.
I have never really been one for New Year's resolutions. The idea for the process is good enough. Like all good goals, such resolutions need to be at once achievable and stretching. They need to be kept sufficiently in the front of awareness to be behaviour or attitude influencing. I find that the effort required to take them with me very far at all into a new year is very hard, especially in the somewhat lazy context of our summer January. Lent is better; more encouraging and more overtly religious. We get more help then - and it is only after all for six weeks.
But here we are on this Sunday within the octave of Christmas, with the Holy Family, on this New Year's Eve. We wonder what is in store for us ahead. We would wish to give thanks for all that had been good. We would pray for God's grace, we would ask to be saved in times of trial that are ahead, we would like to evidence the gifts of faith and hope and love in our lives.
Today's epistle presents the response of the Christian in simple terms. It flows from gratitude. Look what God has done for us. Consider the love lavished on us. It is the language of relationship that is used, the language of close contact and presence and guidance. "Beloved, we are God's children now" 3:2 What we have is a variation on a very familiar theme. It is not a question of doing, or indeed not doing, this or that particular thing. Rather, it is a question of shaping attitudes to a life. St John puts it simply. What is our task as children of God? First take on board the person and fact of Jesus: specifically "believe in the name of God's son Jesus Christ" with all that might flow from that. Second then, as he says, love one another. This is the commandment, that is a way of living that is pleasing to God. That is the Christian task St John says. So easily and quickly said; not so easy to put into continuing effect.
In the absence of something else on our kitchen notice board or fridge door thus far, we have been offered this New Year resolution then, straight out of one of the smaller letters of the New Testament.
When there is a Sunday between Christmas and New Year, the feast of the Holy Family is observed. Then Epiphany follows to bring the Christmas season to a close. This year, that will be observed next Sunday. The Holy Family readings are in year A the flight into Egypt, in year B the Lord's presentation in the Temple as an infant and in year C which is today's, the Lord at the Temple on the Passover at the age of 12, staying behind when his parents leave. In all of these, it would be good to have more detail, more information. These three brief insights into what otherwise remains almost totally hidden and mysterious, make the point that the child Jesus grew up in a context. It was a context observant of religious practice, but by no means easy. It is strange for instance that a tradesman returning to home territory had neither material nor wider family resources to see his young wife better provided for. The sudden flight to Egypt as refugees resonate all too well with the plight of millions, including the frail and the sick and young infants in this last century of ours. The problems of lost child in a city of crowded festival is enough to put shafts of fear into the heart of any parent. So while the name 'Holy Family' sounds comfortable and somewhat pious, the way was bumpy right from the beginning.
The birth and infancy narratives are in Matthew and Luke for a purpose. The Lord who died at Calvary did not come out of nothing. The great and inspiring teacher clearly in the line of the great prophets had a context. For those in the gentile world, he was born in an identifiable province of the empire at an identifiable time. He was born of a woman and grew up in a normal human environment, normal too in its difficulties and problems. To those who said that a Messiah could not come from Galilee, Matthew provided reassuring points of Old Testament connection, and most clearly placed the birth in Judea. For those who would make this Jesus only God, Luke provides the connections of the utterly human as well as the wonderfully divine. This is a family that experiences fear and deprivation. This too is a human context within which all the needed human nurturing can and does take place. This is a child who is loved, who is cared for. This is a child who grows in wisdom and in stature. There are many things that his mother can only ponder in her heart about: mysteries that will be long in the unfolding, glimpses of pains as yet unexperienced. Some of these too are noted for us.
The concept of family in the Scriptures involves both ties of blood and of grace. A person needs no relationships of blood or marriage at all to be able nonetheless to claim family rights in this association. Outreaching ties of relationship that stretch across race and culture and gender find expression in the Church in all that is claimed in the sacramental ties of common baptism. We are, we are told, brothers and sisters in Christ, the sharing we have comes as being part of the body of Christ, and the sharing we have in the Body of Christ in the Eucharist. The language of family that is used in the Church sometimes seems stretched and strained, but it reflects a truth worth affirming, worth working to make real in our own experience. True, some families are more family than others. Some, particularly at this time of the year, go through terrible fights and disagreements. That happens. So can reconciliation and healing and growth in grace. So can good times shared and troubles and burdens mutually carried.
The Holy Family then is perhaps another sign of that call to community, that generous provision of community (and sometimes in the most unlikely ways), that is the recorded experience of the people of God through the centuries. Even in the little we know from the record, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are actually also sufficiently far away from the Christmas card perfect and totally unhelpful sentimental pietism that the name 'Holy Family' might initially summon up, to be able to offer even the most dysfunctional and marginalised a sense of new hope. All things are possible.
We need however a guiding shaping force for our lives:
And this is God's commandment, that we should believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ, and love one another.
Amen.
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