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The Matrix of Divine Life

Holy Family : 29 December 2013  : Matthew 2: 13-15, 19-23

When I was in my early teens my Grandmother died, and my Grandfather came to live with us. Since they used to spend every second weekend with us, and we spent the summer holidays with them, it didn’t seem that much of a transition. So I grew up in a family with three generations under one roof. Later, when I left home, I came to understand this was a slightly unusual arrangement.

In my family, life revolved around the meal table. My parents had met each other debating against one another in the junior national party, and in a sense the debating never stopped. The house was full of books, we were a reading family, and when we arrived at the family meal dining table we were expected to hold our own in debate. So between meals we retreated into our private worlds where we read and thought, and then arrived at the dining table with fresh ammunition for the hot topic of the day. My mother had a passionate, prejudiced take on contemporary developments. She once described modern youth as, "a moving tide of pollution," so we inherited the same colourful turn of phrase and full palate of vocabulary. This was a training in being a wordsmith that money couldn’t buy, but it did have its down side. My sister and I discovered when we left home that when we let fly with the kind of biting phrases and ironic humour that we had grown up with we could cause offence to those who had been nurtured in families where language was a more bland, anodyne background motif. So we have learned to cool it, and to try and watch our language, until we are sure whom we are dealing with.

A few years ago, at a social gathering, someone observed that I have many of my Father’s mannerisms, his way of moving and gesturing, as well as looking very much like him. The physical resemblance I know about, but the rest of it was a bit of a surprise. I tend to think of myself as being somewhat emotionally hard wired like my mother – still, other people see truths about us that we cannot.

It is very appropriate that on the Sunday after Christmas the Church directs our attention to the Holy Family. This is a season when families are together more than any other time of the year, and for many of them it is the best of times and the worst of times. While some are enjoying each others company in a relaxed low key way, others are discovering the truth of Jean Paul Sartre’s famous saying that "hell is other people," and the follow on quip from one wit, "and their children."

With all of this family togetherness going on we may be inclined to have a think about who and what our families have made us, and that of course is a stock taking exercise we can extend to the Holy Family, as we consider the contribution they made to Jesus’ identity.

This morning we saw Joseph protecting his family by leading them to safety away from persecution. He provided the security so that their remarkable child could grow up in a stable environment. He also gave his son a skill to live by, and we can forget about all that stuff about Jesus being born into the lowest of the low, and the poorest of the poor. As a skilled artisan Joseph had an assured income that made him the equivalent of a member of the Galilean middle class. That was a help to Jesus for, as it says later in the gospels, he had a house in Capernaum, so by the age of 30 he had achieved the Kiwi dream of owning a mortgage free house.

Life in the family of Mary, Joseph and Jesus wasn’t entirely trouble free. You may recall that very upsetting incident when Jesus slipped away to debate with the doctors of the Law in the Temple without telling his parents. And later, visiting his hometown with his disciples, he had some hard words to offer about putting the community gathered around him ahead of his own family. They in turn did not take kindly to this message, or that visit.

There is a double-edged attitude that Jesus has to family. On the one hand he endorses and affirms the high priority his Jewish culture gives to honouring the family and valuing marriage. On the other hand he repeatedly teaches that his followers should put membership of the gospel community ahead of loyalty to their own family. This was, and still is, something of a scandal to Jewish people, for whom family comes first. I might add that many Christians today struggle to accept that membership of Christ’s body the Church comes ahead of loyalty to tribe, or race, or blood lines, or social class, or intimate friends.

We can note too that Jesus and Paul were so single minded in their devotion to their mission as proclaimers of the Kingdom that they did not marry, despite this being the role expectation of every Jewish male. It also sets them apart from Moses and Mohammed, the founders of the two other major monotheistic religions.

Yet on the other hand the Church in its developed sacramental theology prizes marriage, and teaches Christians to steer clear of divorce wherever possible. It has a wonderful message in tune with some of the most profound parts of Paul’s letters that God has chosen this particular kind of relationship out of all the other relationships that exist between human beings through which to make himself known in the world. God takes the positive energy flowing between a man and a woman in the attachment relationship of marriage, and works through the details of their developing bonding to disclose his love in the world. There is something about marriage that makes it particularly appropriate and suitable to make the love of God available to others in an almost evangelical kind of a way.

We live in a time when many couples merely cohabit together rather than marry, out of a fear of commitment. This can never be an acceptable way of life for Christians. God has made men and women to live together in a covenant relationship of tenderness and trust. As they grow into the promises they make to each other they reap the rewards of believing in each other to that extent. Married Christians too have their eyes fixed on more than just the mutual fulfilment possible in this life. As one recently married groom once memorably put it, "Now we can help each other get to heaven."

Many of our contemporaries believe that you can find out if someone is marriageable material by living with them. But this taking someone for a road test theory of relationships simply doesn’t work, as longitudinal studies show that those who live together and then marry are more likely to divorce later on.

While we are living in a time when many families have partially disintegrated in the traditional sense, there is also a parallel movement to make something of an idolatry out of a contemporary version of the family. I am thinking about those households where it would appear that the children and teenagers are in charge, and not the parents. This comes about because some parents want their children to be also their friends, and are afraid to lose their approval and affection by using the word "no" too often. Yet adult, mature love of our children sometimes requires us to oppose their wishes in order to keep them safe, and to protect them from folly, even if that means risking their hostile reaction. For the reality is that we are only temporary stewards of our children, and there is no guarantee that they will turn back to give thanks to us in their later adult life, or to seek out our friendship. If they chose to do that it is all bonus, but we cannot insist on it, or bribe them in to liking us.

Perhaps that is the most important message that Jesus has for us, drawn from his own life experience. Our family are incredibly important for us as the matrix and moulders of the kind of people we turn out to be. But we cannot let our families be the be all and the end all of our lives, because we will then put too much weight on them, will expect more from them than they can deliver, will turn them into somewhat suffocating realities, and will give them the kind of ultimacy and importance that only God should have in our lives. To him be glory and praise forever, for he is our true home.