Bible Reading: Mark 3:20-35
Dear Friends,
As most of you would know, this past week I spent three days in Stellenbosch attending Winter School at the Faculty of Theology under the theme: ‘Justice, Reconciliation and Unity, Rediscovering the Power of the Gospel’. It was a gathering of predominantly mixed race and denominations. Discussions were empowering however I was left with a deep sense of frustration with what appears to be a lack of deeper understanding of church leaders around issues of justice. We seem to easily judge and condemn with some kind of lack of empathy love and hospitality to others.
Which brings me to this weeks Gospel reading Mark 3: 20-35 although we might move in a variety of directions with this passage, the one that seized my imagination this week was to focus on the question of hospitality. I don’t know of a congregation, of course, that doesn’t affirm hospitality as important kind of like I don’t know of a congregation that doesn’t consider itself friendly, but my experience is that when most of us think of hospitality, what we usually mean or at least communicate through word and deed is that hospitality is being patient and gracious with new people until they learn the way we do things.
But Jesus offers another vision of hospitality that is about meeting people where they are, accepting any and all who are interested in God’s kingdom, and responding to need no matter who is asking or when or how they ask.
And that makes people mad. Why? I think the answer is tucked into the larger narrative that this week’s first reading from Genesis touches on: the story of Adam, Eve, and original sin. Note that before there was original sin, there was original insecurity, the recognition that we cannot establish ourselves, our value, or our worth on our own. And so in the Genesis story, Adam and Eve fall prey to the tempter’s suggestion, first, that God is keeping things from them and, second, that they don’t finally need God but can know good and evil a short hand for knowing all things on their own. And so they take matters into their own hands. Tellingly, as the section of the story we read this week indicates, severing ties from God doesn’t help. Indeed, their insecurity only grows and before they know it they are defining themselves over and against each other and find themselves alienated from God, each other, creation, and even themselves.
In this week’s Gospel reading we see a similar dynamic playing out in that all these different people the crowds, the religious authorities, even Jesus’ own family are judging him against predetermined and socially or religious agreed upon norms. That’s one way we keep our insecurity at bay, we create rules not so much for how they help our neighbour but for how they help us to define ourselves and how handy they are as a standard against which judge our neighbour.
When we see someone who doesn’t conform, we call them rebels, or radicals, or unnatural, or immoral. Which is pretty much what’s happening to Jesus. And still happens to everyone who follows him. Because the love of God we see revealed in Jesus knows no boundaries and respects no laws that would keep that love from being shared with everyone.
Solomzi