Division, family and friendship
Ordinary Sunday 13: 26th June, 2005
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. (Mtt 10:40)
Today's gospel is not an easy one. It comes in that part of Matthew's gospel immediately following the Lord's observation that his coming will produce deep division – right across the closest of family ties. Families will divide over religious questions. Families will be divided about how to follow Jesus or whether to follow. Matthew is clearly directly addressing something that is a pressing and present issue for his community – meeting as it was a generation or so after the events of Good Friday and Easter Day. In last week's gospel Matthew addressed the issue of the fear of persecution; this week the issue is division and the pain and sadness brought by it.
For Matthew then division was a simple fact. He and his community are not alone in that. That is how it was for his community and he is trying to bring encouragement to those whose relationships have been torn apart and who are hurting because of it. Yes of course the family ties of blood and traditional heritage are important. But following Jesus and being part of that newly constituted family of followers, of disciples, is even more important, more life-giving. And that is where many will find a new sense of family – and for some that newly discovered experience of the broader idea of family will be richer and more wonderful than could ever have been imagined or experienced before.
Our gospel today moved from statements to the disciples about the division that they know about, to assurances about hospitality and welcome in these Christian communities. These communities are to be their newly constituted families, for all those who are gathered in them to serve and to share the good news. They are so because of the shared relationship with Jesus, because Jesus and the one who sent him comes along with them, is to be found amongst them. And these communities will include all sorts. They might be radically challenging in the manner of a prophet, they may be simply recognisably holy people, they may be offering the simplest act of service or care like offering a glass of water to a child – the whole range is possible. But it is made clear that welcoming hospitality and care are the hallmarks of faithful community.
Welcoming hospitality and care. Matthew's first century community is not the only one knowing something about division. Where then does this all stand with the divisions that face us now within the Anglican Communion and which would seem to be only getting more solidified as a result of the meeting this week in Nottingham of the international Anglican Consultative Council. This is the meeting with the American and Canadian Churches not being permitted to vote and only allowed to be present for part of the proceedings.
Rowan Williams tried to speak about what might hold the Anglican Communion together. He chose not to speak of family, but rather about 'friendship'. The Archbishop of Canterbury's presidential address at the beginning of that meeting last Tuesday would seem to have fallen on deaf ears. But it is worth looking for if you have web access. It included a reflection moving out from St Teresa of Avila's observation about 'friendship as the most radical mark of Christian community, as we find our common ground simply in God's invitation to us to be his friends.'
Then the Archbishop went on to refect on what such an idea would need to mean in our own context today:
What are we prepared to do to nourish this sort of friendship? My sense of where we now are is that this is not high on our agenda. The debates are so close to us, so emotionally involving, that we can scarcely conceive of beings friends in Christ...Friendship in Christ is a willingness to share prayer, to listen without rancour to each other, to respect and even enjoy difference, to be patient with each other, not expecting quick healing of divisions but not walking away every time difference raises its head. Friendship in Christ is best and most creative when it is linked with sacramental fellowship... [W]hen we cannot witness together as fully as we long to do...we can look at and listen to the language we use about each other and watch how easily we are ready to let it slip from proper and honest disagreement towards contempt and mutual exclusion... [It] may be that as we work on what our friendship through Christ and in Christ's presence demands, we shall find ourselves able to step back from things that make our divisions deeper.....
ACC-13 Presidential Address
Click here for a link to this address...
Our prayers go out for Rowan Williams at this terribly hard time for him and for so many.
How is it appropriate for us to develop these related ideas and concepts of family, community and 'faith families'. This is a hot contemporary issue, of course. 'Who is family' rather than 'what constitutes a family' is another way of addressing that question. And who is not. We are, as already noted, tearing ourselves apart over such things internationally at this very time.
In our study group on Thursday evening we stopped to consider the conspicuous lack of role models in the Scriptures for what in these times is referred to as 'the Christian family'. Where do we find them? Not in the Old Testament exemplars of say Abraham who fathered children by two women, one his wife's slave girl, or Jacob – with two concurrent wives and two concubines. It is probably best to leave King David alone as well, since neither Bathsheba wife of Uriah nor Jonathan, son of Saul help the argument along.
Surely the New Testament will provide multiple examples of the traditional Christian family that we could all immediately visualise – perhaps in the 'Father Knows Best' model of the 1960s sitcom, for those who are old enough to remember. After all, modern political parties speak in many of their policies in these very terms, do they not? Yet, in the New Testament we are actually only given a very little about the life together of Holy Family itself for instance. We can see from the birth narratives that Joseph was clearly loving and supportive, but after that, apart from that distressing incident at the Temple when Jesus was lost for several days at the age of 12, our Lady and our Lord appear only in the context of the disciples. And that surely is the point.
Where else might we look? We have the siblings in Bethany (Mary, Martha and Lazarus), but we are actually looking for parents and children together. Then we have a lot of people who for various reasons are on their own and away from their blood families – by choice or circumstance. There are two couples mentioned in Acts – one good, one bad. Unless you care to run with the Da Vinci Code, which I most certainly do not, the Lord himself was not married and neither was the other giant of the New Testament, St Paul. They both of course encouraged others to be loving and faithful, as their circumstances demanded. But their being or not being part of a nuclear family was not the key point of discipleship and faith. St Peter had a mother in law, but there is no mention of a wife or children. Perhaps it was simply not considered to be important – we do not know.
What we do know is this: The functioning families in the Christian sense that we actually see in the New Testament are, as it were, 'families of faith': people brought together in relationship because of their relationship with Jesus. There are countless examples of these, in Galilee, in Jerusalem and then scattered all around the Mediterranean world. The ties that bind them together are ties of hospitality and care, support in trouble – a common faith, hope and love. This development is indeed then much more about what we might prefer today to call 'community'. It may or may not be including relationships of blood or marriage, but it is certainly not restricted or confined to those with those ties.
Christian community starts with baptism, as we were reminded in this morning's epistle, and in Christ we understand that other very significant distinctions need to be put to one side. As St Paul famously noted in Galatians 3:28, "There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is longer slave or free, there is no longer male or female; for all of you are one in Christ". Such communities of faith in every generation and in any place can have much about them that can embrace this richer definition of family that we have been exploring. And also of course they can also be places of bitter disappointment and frustration, just like blood families can be. But this is where the New Testament witness leads us.
I know some people respond negatively when clergy use the term 'family' to try to claim something important about parish communities. For some perhaps it is thought to be just a little too slick or easy and maybe claiming a strength and a reality that is not there to be experienced. But whenever I wonder if these people might after all be correct, I am brought back – not by what I hope to be able to find, but rather by what people assure me that they actually have found. And it happens week after week. And it happens here.
Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. (Mtt 10:40)
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