Growing up, I never quite understood that a lot of families aren’t as big as mine. I don’t mean in the immediate family sense, since it was just my parents, sister, and I. But, on my dad’s side, I am in the middle of twelve grandkids and now 8 great-grandkids. We weren’t always together, but when we were, you can rest assured that us kids would be running around, making way too much noise, while our parents got a chance to catch up with one another. It was an interesting dynamic because neither of my grandparents were loud people. In fact, my distinct memories of going to their house when all of the family wasn’t around consisted mostly of my grandma watching either the news or the farm report while sitting in her chair, or my grandparents working on a puzzle at their kitchen table so that they could still sit and watch the birds outside too. As a hyperactive kid, none of those activities were very appealing to me; I didn’t really care about the price of soybeans that day.
Unfortunately, this meant that I often had a harder time connecting with my paternal grandparents. This wasn’t a fault of theirs; I just didn’t quite have the understanding of them and appreciation for them that I do now that I’m an adult, and they have since passed. I get now why my grandma liked her routines, knowing what to expect of the day; having her favorite coffee shop and stores to go to for her weekly shopping trips, because I’m the same way! I understand why she wanted to call just to say there was a frog on her window (this was before texting) because I am constantly sending a text to friends when I see something cool and unexpected outside.
When we were planning our wedding, we decided to use my grandmother’s bible for our reading, since we were trying to find special ways of incorporating all of my family members who had died into the service still. And, it was in flipping through her Bible that I realized where, at least some of, my sarcasm and humor come from. I may have shared this already, but in the margins next to the reading we selected, the classic wedding text about love in 1 Corinthians chapter 13, my grandmother had written “MN nice.” I would have loved to have more conversations with her about faith, including the comments she wrote in her Bible, because she was a deeply faithful woman; I just wasn’t old enough to appreciate that about her before she died.
As you all know, families are complicated. There are different relational dynamics and personality styles, sometimes they meld well and other times it can create conflict. For reasons both valid and less valid, estrangements happen and family members go without speaking. Sometimes it’s because of harm that was caused, other times it often comes down to fights about money and who should get what amount of an inheritance. Any time people are together, there are going to be challenges; that is just the way that it is. This isn’t a good or bad thing, just a reality of what it means to exist with and for others. And, as complicated as that can be in our daily lives of work, school, or friends, it is often additionally complicated when we are a part of the same family and have different expectations and ideas regarding what that word means.
I’m going on and on about families today because we get a rather challenging message from Jesus when it comes to familial relationships. “For I have come to set a son against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and in-laws against one another; and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me…” (Matthew 10: 35-37). 2000 years later, we are still left wondering how Jesus could be so harsh in his claims about discipleship.
Jesus isn’t just some megalomanic who wants all the emphasis to be on him, but it does go back to his teachings about loving God and loving our neighbors. Our understanding of family relationships, and our study of family dynamics, is very different from the culture in which Jesus was teaching. If we look at the context in which he is instructing about faithfulness to God, families were peoples’ number one priorities. There was extreme loyalty, with sons and daughters-in-law living in his parents’ house, and generations being responsible for tending to and living amongst one another. Parents wanted to have sons so that their legacy and lineage would continue; and family expectations were very much driven by shame and honor dichotomy, in which you were intended to only act in ways that would reflect well upon your family.
When Jesus has these harsh words to say today, he isn’t saying that our families are unimportant; he isn’t coming in to wreck marriages and break apart siblings! But, he is acknowledging that our relationships will change when we fully commit to being disciples. The actions of his followers are going to disrupt the “typical” familial nature of society. Take his disciples who were fishermen, for example. James and John leave their father Zebedee in his boat to finish the family work of tending to nets and hauling in the days catch. We don’t know if they had wives or children, but, either way, their leaving the boat severs the expectation that they would live at home to eventually provide for their parents and produce offspring to continue the family line; to live in the same house with their wives and children and continue fishing the Sea.
And, with daughters, when they follow Jesus, they are no longer leaving the home for the honorable act of marriage, but to wander around the countryside with an unwed man (how scandalous!), which then leaves all the tasks of tending a home on the women that remain, on top of all the shame brought on the family. When Jesus talks about destroying families and setting sons and daughters against their parents, it’s because the act of being his disciple in the early days would have drastically shaken up their family structures and expectations. Of all the scandalous things that Jesus did, this might be one of the biggest!
But, Jesus isn’t doing these things just to make everything more difficult for his followers. It isn’t some test of faithfulness, as it may seem, but in many ways, Jesus is trying to emphasize for people that becoming his disciple isn’t a decision that they should make lightly. For some, leaving their families behind may not have been something that they were physically or emotionally able to do. If that was the case, then it was better that they stay where they were instead of trying to follow Jesus half-heartedly while they were still attached to everything back home. And, as always, Jesus’ actions serve a deeper purpose.
Jesus is often talking about tearing things down to rebuild them, and family structure is just one of those things that Jesus does this to in the Gospels. When we understand that we have a deeply relational God who invites us into relationship with God and one another, we can recognize that Jesus isn’t trying to destroy relationships for a little bit of drama. But, he is tearing down the walls that surround the word “family,” to help his disciples understand that our relational sphere extends beyond just our immediate families. It is a call toward a new way of being that invites us to see all people as Beloved children of God, a part of our larger human family, instead of dividing ourselves between us and them. It means breaking away from the societal structure of shame and honor to recognize that we can make mistakes and still be worthy of God’s love; that our place in the family doesn’t depend on our perfection or else we are cast aside. When viewed this way, Jesus isn’t condemning families for being a place where people loved and cared for one another, but he is making a whole lot more space for the Spirit of God’s love and grace to move and flow, as the notion of family expands outward. And, if that isn’t Good News, I don’t know what is!
Now, I know that our family structures are different today than they were in Jesus’ time, but I also know that we fall into the same habits as humans. Whether it be divisions around gender, race, religion, nationality, or so many other identifying markers, we are constantly trying to keep rebuilding barriers every time Jesus knocks one down. We want to set limits on who is worthy and who isn’t, who is included in our “family” and who should be kicked out. The prophets have been crying out about this for centuries, and prophets still continue to cry out about it today. This isn’t meant to be a personal attack, as many perceive it, but a way of calling all of us back to a deeper sense of faithfulness in which we see creation through God’s eyes instead of ours.
Every time we take a step towards following Jesus a little more closely, we are going to have people who get upset or don’t know why we are doing what we are, especially if it means that things will change for them. But, as we have been taught since the beginning, sometimes following Jesus means doing what is right rather than what will keep us liked. While the consequences of that are challenging, we trust that the Spirit is stirring up something greater than we can imagine. Drawing us together in one big human family, interlinked with all that God has created and called good. A family in which all are loved and none of cast aside. We’re a long way from ever being there as a society, but we can keep inching close with each act of love and grace that we extend to one another, as we are sent out into this world as disciples of Christ.
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Sunday June 14th, 2026 Worship