Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the
earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!
From now on five in one household will be divided, three against two and
two against three; they will be divided: father against son and son against
father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law
against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law.” [Luke
12:51-53]
Jesus depicts, and predicts, the
most painful and unthinkable kind of family strife, resulting from following
him in time to come. He says this on his
way to Jerusalem, knowing very well what is likely to happen there. What we have in this passage is some sayings
from that time, collected by someone into what scholars now call the Q
document. The Q document itself is long
lost, but it was evidently known to the writers of both Matthew and Luke, and
we have these glimpses of it in their writings.
Sometimes these sayings are not where you would look for peaceful,
strengthening reassurance.
Jesus shockingly predicts that
allegiance to him will divide people.
Even the sacred family relationship, he says, will come under threat. But when you are facing the sterner realities
– be it a serious downturn in health, or the death of a loved one, or the end of
cherished hopes, or despair about a world going mad… and here Jesus himself is
walking to Jerusalem – any sort of feel-good spirituality, all about me, is not
going to suffice any more. It’s
growing-up time. Jesus says there are
things to be decided.
One of our most potent and time-honoured tribal gods is
called Family. Family comes first, and
is not negotiable… certainly in Pacific Island culture. In a book I’m reading, about Jewish life in
Poland during the rise of the Nazis, a young Jewish man who could read the
signs, tried to persuade his father to leave, while they could, for a new life
in Palestine: As soon as I started talking, Papa made it clear that he would have no
part in this. He told me that… he
couldn’t think about leaving his mother, father, cousins, brothers, aunts, and
uncles… Family was more important than anything; without family, life had no
purpose. So that was that. They all fell into the abyss.
I have observed families along
the way, including my own (the family of my parents and grandparents), but also
as a parish minister… the tribal reactions, the defences and the walls that get
built, the memories that become distorted and then enshrined in tribal
folklore, the sanitising, rewriting of history to cope with the uncomfortable
or the unbearable. We are a very close family, I hear people saying, while others may
be getting a picture of suffocation in that closeness, and emotional control. It is when, in a Christian family, the clear
claims and requirements of Christ get subordinated to tribal needs, right or
wrong, that I find myself off on the road to Jerusalem, somewhere in sight of
Jesus, if I possibly can. Love is not
love if it is possessing and controlling… even less if it is requiring recognition
and gratitude and compliance and conformity.
The way of Christ, which may well be the way to Jerusalem, may indeed
invade sacred family ties.
In our contemplative prayer the
Spirit of Christ helps us sort out what comes first, and what we must now let
go of – as we are silent, and still.
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