Mark 3:20-35
Mark's gospel gives us a rough start for Jesus' ministry. It might be because Jesus very quickly turns the religious order upside down. He heals people, on the Sabbath, he touches those who are supposed to be untouchable and the scribes don't like what he is doing. So they resort to name calling, trying to bring him down a notch or two. And Jesus response to the protection his family is trying to offer in the midst of this is to widen the circle of what family is.
Yesterday I heard a parishioner comment on how COVID has taught us what this ever widening circle of family is. We have had to mask up, stay apart, worship online, wash our hands, celebrate high holy days online and it has been hard. It has also taught us what it is to face change right in front of us. This is what the religious leaders in Mark fear. Jesus is asking them to broaden things, to widen the circle of who is included and they don't like it. Jesus casts out demons. What if these demons are the things we don't want to look at? The things which are hardest for us to grow into in faith?
What is the depths of this ever widening circle of family? How have we recognized what this means to our church? What are the depths of God's love? This is only naming a few. Sometimes we go kicking and screaming in finding what this means for us. We don't like what this faith calls us to at times. It hurts, and it is not easy to face our own demons, or as my dad called it slay your own dragons. Yet Jesus invites us into this bigger kin-dom.
Paul labels it this way, that we are being transformed because this is what Christ calls us to. Transforming our thoughts and ideas and becoming more and more like Christ. It is a tall order and one which we sometimes never face because we think we have accepted Jesus and this is the end all. Transformative faith demands we are always examining, always questioning, always trying to understand God more fully.
It is the same with COVID and how we have been asked to look more deeply about what it means to be family. One church has started a feeding program and when the churches were shut down for Christmas, wanted to shine the light of Christ by developing the lights of Sikeston, which will be happening again this year. We have asked it in donating to causes in town due to the lack of donations because of COVID. We are still asking it when we answer the Bishop's question of what it means to be faithful for our small church.
There are many ways we can be transformed, we just have to look at the way Christ is calling us to examine what we have taken for granted as fact and expand it out. Because this is the way of Christ, always calling us to deeper, ever-widening circles of faith.
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