Bishop Will Willimon: Jesus' Family Values

On the cross, Jesus gets into it with his mother. "Woman, behold thy son," he says to her. Mary, look at the child you are losing, the son that you are giving over for the sins of the world. Maternal love is that love that loves in order to give away. In Mary's case, it was particularly so. When Jesus was born, old Simeon had predicted, "A sword will also pierce your heart." From the first, it was not easy to be the mother of the Son of God. And now, even from the cross, Jesus is busy ripping apart families and breaking the hearts of mothers. Because he was obedient to the will of God, because Jesus did not waver from his God-ordained mission, he is a great pain to his family. "Woman, behold thy son."

In that day, in that part of the world, there were no social attachments as rigid or determinative as that of the family. Family origin determined your whole life, your complete identity, your entire future. So one of the most countercultural, revolutionary acts of Jesus was his sustained attack upon the family.

In a culture like our own, dominated by "family values," where we have nothing better to command our allegiance to than our own blood relatives, this is one of the good things the church does for many of us. In baptism, we are rescued from our family. Our families, as good as they are, are too narrow, too restricted. So in baptism we are adopted into a family large enough to make our lives more interesting.

"A new commandment I give to you that you love one another as I have loved you," he said elsewhere (John 13:34). Watch closely. Jesus is forming the first church, commanding us to live as if these foreigners were our relatives. Church is where we are thrown together with a bunch of strangers and are forced to call these people with whom we have no natural affinity, nothing in common, "brother," "sister."

So after this moment, never again could the world say family without Jesus' people thinking church.

On campus one evening, debating the future of our fraternities and sororities, this student says, "One reason why I love my fraternity is that it has forced me to be with a group of guys, many of whom I don't like-guys of a different race and culture from my own-and call these losers 'brother.' That's made me a better person than if I had been forced to stay with my own kind."

"I've never thought of a frat as a church," I said.

That day when they came to Jesus saying, "Your mother and your brothers are looking for you," Jesus responded saying, "Whoever does the will of my Father, he is my brother." In other words, Jesus is naming and claiming a new family for himself, that family made up of disciples. Now anybody who attempts to follow Jesus is one of the Family.

From The Best of Will Willimon, Abingdon, 2012

Taken with permission from the Bishop's Blog, May 14, 2012. North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church.