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Sunday, February 15, 2009

What does the Lord require of you? Who are my mother and my brother?
7th in a series on Questions from the Bible

By Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Micah 6:8

8 He has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

Mark 3:31-35

31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. 32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, “your mother and your brothers and sistersb are outside, asking for you.” 33 And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

We are in the middle of a series of sermons on some of the questions from the Bible, questions the Bible asks of us. We are connecting two of those questions this morning. The first question is from the prophet Micah who lived about 700 years before Jesus. This short verse in Chapter 6 is inscribed on the cornerstone of our building and is a verse that I encourage all of us to commit to memory because it summarizes a life of spirituality and faith.

The second question is from Mark’s gospel and the scene occurs early in Jesus ministry. By the way, for people who tell me that they just haven’t read much of the Bible and they want to get started, my recommendation is that they start in the New Testament with the Gospel of Mark. It is the first of the four gospels to be written, the closest to the time of Jesus’ actual life, and it is short and full of action.

In today’s story, Jesus is in Capernaum in the region of Galilee, northern Israel. He has been itinerating from town to town doing the three things that he has been known for in the Bible: Teaching, Preaching and Healing. By chapter three of Mark’s gospel, he has already healed many people including Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, a paralyzed man, a man with mental illness, and a man with leprosy. When he heals the man with leprosy, he does so by touching that man, something you weren’t supposed to do. Jesus, you are not supposed to touch that leper!! But he did. He touched the lepers and included the outcasts, the prostitutes, and even the tax collectors, who were shills for Rome. They were considered the worst kind of sinners. His willingness to touch and associate with all persons caused the religious people to plot to kill him. This happens by chapter three of Mark’s gospel.

Most of Jesus’ three year ministry places him in northern Israel, in Galilee. His headquarters is Capernaum. When we go to Israel, we go to Capernaum and see the remains of the synagogue that Jesus worshiped and taught in. In today’s story, he is in Capernaum again and the crowds have come to hear him.

He is so overwhelmed with people that he does not even have time to eat. The religious leaders are saying bad things about him; saying that he is crazy, that he is full of the devil. Because of those accusations, his family is coming to get him, to take charge of him, the Bible says, because of the rumors that people are spreading about Jesus.

Jesus is teaching in a house and someone stops him and tells him his mother and brother are outside, and he seems to ask a silly question, Who are they? He seems to be in a situation where his own family does not understand or does not agree with what he is doing. Have you ever experienced that with your family, feeling they do not understand or agree with what you are doing?

Let’s stop and talk about what family means in the Bible. I had to chuckle a few weeks ago when one prominent American church leader said that he wants to honor and return to the 5000 year old tradition of what a family is in the Bible! I laughed because there is not just one single image of family in the Bible, there are many. I think we do not want to return to some of those traditions. In fact some of them are illegal, including the tradition, in Leviticus, that adulterers are to be killed.

In the book of Genesis, Abraham and Sarah give us one image of family that we probably do not want to return to. Sarah, unable for a while to become pregnant, tells her husband that it is OK to have intercourse with her slave girl so that Abraham and Sarah can have a child by that means. The child of Abraham and Hagar is named Ishmael. Ishmael is traditionally the father of the Arab people.

There are other family traditions and practices in the Bible that are 5000 years old but we don’t want to adopt them. Those include the practice of polygamy-a husband having several wives at a time. This practice says, if a husband dies, it is the duty of that man’s brother to sleep with the widow so that she can continue the family line in that manner.

The simple statement that we should return to the 5000 year old image of marriage and family that is in the Bible is very simplistic and even laughable. When we actually read the Bible for ourselves, we don’t see just one model of marriage and family but what we do see should give us pause 5000 years later.

Let’s go back and look at the direction in which Jesus is leading us. For you, who is family? Who are you closest to in your life? Some of us would answer with the names of our close relatives. Others of us would also answer with the names of some friends we have become close to over the years, people we have chosen as “extended family,” family by choice. This gets us close to what Jesus means.

The Bible has some examples like this that revolve around the most important and most famous of the leaders in the nation of Israel, 1000 years before Jesus. In the book of Ruth, in the Hebrew Bible, we read of an Israelite woman, named Naomi, who left her homeland when there was a famine and went to the foreign territory of Moab. Her sons even intermarried with some Moabite women, foreigners! Both her sons later died and their widows were faced with a decision. One of those women stayed in the region of Moab but the other daughter-in-law, whose name was Ruth, chose to go back to Israel with her mother-in-law.

In fact some of the words that Ruth uses when she pledges loyalty to her mother-in-law might be familiar: “Wherever you go, I will go, and wherever you stay, I will stay; your people shall be my people and your God will be my God.” The words have even been set to beautiful music and perhaps you have even heard them sung at weddings, which should cause us to think a little bit. They are not words spoken between husband and wife, they are words from a loyal, foreigner, daughter-in-law to her mother-in-law. If and when you hear them sung at a wedding, you might be moved to smile a little!

The rest of the story of Ruth evokes some other interesting family values and a redefinition from the Bible of what family is, the same redefinition that Jesus is asking us. Mother-in-law and foreigner daughter-in-law go back to Israel. Daughter-in-law, Ruth, meets a relative of her mother-in-law’s and sleeps with the man Boaz. She marries him and this intermarriage of Israelite and Moabite is unusual. Later on, as their children have children and they have children, Ruth, the foreigner becomes the great grandmother of King David.

The “family values” of the Bible and the images of family in the Bible are more complex and varied than some preachers want us to know about! By the way the story of Ruth in your Bible is very short, just 4 chapters, and is a lovely story. It is worth reading when you get home today.

Who is family for you? Let me give you one more Bible example before we pursue that. Ruth is the great grandmother of the most famous, most beloved of Israel’s kings, King David. Before he became king, he was in a deadly rivalry with the first king of Israel, King Saul, who tried on several occasions to kill David. Ironically, David’s best friend in the whole world was a young fellow named Jonathan. Jonathan was King Saul’s son. The Bible tells us that David and Jonathan were very close friends, in fact they were perhaps more like brothers that David’s natural brothers. They had chosen to be family for each other.

The images in the Bible of what a family is are very diverse.

Who is your family? Is it only the people you are related to by blood or does your family consist of others with whom you spend time by choice? Our staff team and lay leadership team have become even more of a family for each other as we have dealt with hard times and challenges. We continue to open ourselves in vulnerability and honesty. We have people in Disciple Bible study classes and Just Faith classes who become family for each other, particularly as they deal with crises and grief together. They care for each other and see each other through tough times.

We saw another example of choosing to be family during the last Thanksgiving holiday. One of our church couples, Bill and Marty Hornaday, opened up their home, in the same way that some of you have, to some enlisted people from Fort Carson. They were very distant from their families of origin but for that day, in the Hornaday home, they felt the closeness of family. That story was covered in one of the neighborhood newspapers.

Who is family for you and how do we give people a chance to be family for each other in our congregation? Our youth director, Cindy Klick, told me that we have another 40 youth signed up for our wonderful eight month confirmation process which begins in a few days. What was even more encouraging to me is that when Cindy put out an appeal for a few more of you to become prayer partners for the youth to walk with over this journey of confirming their faith and to keep in touch with afterward and guess what happened? We now have a few more people who want to serve as prayer partners than we have students!! We have adults who want to be part of the support network as teenagers explore and affirm their faith. We have a waiting list of prayer partners!!

That prayer partner relationship is one of the many strengths of our confirmation program. It was instituted about ten years ago right after the Columbine High School tragedy. We looked at the findings from the Minneapolis based, Search Institute, that said one of the assets that every kid needs to grow up healthy is several adults, in addition to their parents. They need several other adults who know them, who care about them, who take time for them, who affirm and listen to them, and who can be role models and can help them blossom into the people God created them to be, people who can be like extended family.

What is a family? Do sixteen small children make for the right size family? Does anyone else wonder about that?

There are three other comments about the short verses in Mark’s gospel when Jesus’ family has come to take him away because they think he has gone overboard. This story tells us clearly that Jesus had brothers and sisters. Jesus had siblings, just like many of us. Jesus was not an only child. His mother Mary had other children. This reminds us of the humanity of Jesus, a truth that has gotten lost so often. If he had siblings, he probably experienced sibling rivalries like some of us as we were growing up. Those sibling rivalries probably prepared him for the same jealousies he saw later among the twelve people he chose as his followers. They had rivalries and jealousies also.

Next, Jesus says that whoever does God’s will, that’s what we pray in the Lord’s Prayer each time, whoever does what God wants is my mother and brother and sister. That is my family, Jesus says. You are my family. How does that feel? How does it feel to think about Jesus as your brother, your wiser, kinder older brother? How does that feel?

The passage from Micah is connected to the insight about God’s will. It is about what God wants for us. The three words in that verse are some of the most important in the Hebrew Bible. God wants us to practice justice, to act with kindness and to live in humility, in other words, to walk humbly with God.

Which of those virtues comes most easily to you? Is justice important to you? Do you feel a keen sense of right and wrong when you hear allegations that Wall Street executives have taken public money to rescue the companies they have mismanaged and then secretly granted bonuses?

Do you feel outrage at allegations that Food Company executives knew there was danger of salmonella in their products and allowed those products to continue on the truck to the markets for unsuspecting consumers?

Act with justice, Micah says, and, practice kindness. A couple of years ago, I told about the slogan on a T-shirt I saw. The slogan said, three rules for life: First rule: Be Kind, Second Rule: Be kind, Third Rule: Be kind.

Micah has one more word for us in his short summary: walk humbly with God. Don’t let pride and arrogance rule your life. Persons all wrapped up in themselves make for very small packages. Walk humbly with God.

Those words are Micah’s answer to his own question of what is God asking of us.

Let me close with another short summary of what is expected of us. I am halfway through a book that church members, Bill and Joan Youmans, gave me. The book was written by Bill’s uncle who was a surgeon and medical missionary for the United Methodist Church in the Congo in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Dr. Youmans took his young family to the Congo and did outstanding work with people who had never been able to see a doctor. He performed surgeries under difficult conditions and very long hours. On one occasion when he came into a village and was introduced to the residents as the new surgeon, the male nurse explained to the villagers why the doctor was there:

“The doctor had come to treat them because Father God loved them and wanted them to have strength. To show how great God’s love was for them, God told the doctor to leave his home far away in America and to come here to them today.” Roger Youmans says, “It was very simple. Back in college I had known that I was to be a boundary crosser and a messenger, but I didn’t understand what the message was to be. The nurse expressed it that day. God is compassionate and God wants us to love and help each other.”

Can we hear and live that same message as well?