For Sunday
Proper 5B
Collect
O God, from whom all good proceeds: Grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
This is a remarkable encounter we’re reading about this week. It starts a little before this, when the crowds following Jesus become multitudes—a word that will come back to us later when Jesus feeds them. But here, the crowds are too much. Too many people and Jesus can’t get around. They are quite literally restricting Jesus’s ability to do stuff.
We should see this literally and metaphorically, of course. The physical danger and restriction is a threat to Jesus and to his ministry—which also reflects on his ability to share the dream of God with humanity.
He puts water between himself and the multitudes—to give that room. To save and to open. Then, when he comes home, his family sees the crowds and their danger and his mother can’t help herself. She wants to protect him!
Jesus offers an important corrective for us and our own need to protect and horde Jesus for ourselves; and also to see families as more important than the dream of God. Which is probably the most difficult part to hear.
There is tragic beauty in this story for those willing to hear it and receive it. That, for God to be first, it means families are always, at most, second. Safety is, at most, second. Our own desires and ambitions are, at most, second.
We know this conviction better in name than practice. In practice we like to attribute this arrangement to our own lives—and still saying “family comes first.”
But there is a more fascinating truth—that Jesus doesn’t disown his family. He extends that high esteem to everyone on board for this epic journey. It could yet be true of these who know him as son and brother.