The Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 5B)
1 Samuel 8:4-11, 16-20 
Mark 3:20-35
All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Austin, Tex.

In my work as a campus minister I spend a lot of time with young adults who are navigating their own sense of who they have been, who they are, who they are expected to be. For some this is relatively painless and for others it is more difficult. There often comes a point where a parent reminds their child, “This isn’t who we raised you to be.” Sometimes it’s a matter of testing boundaries or one’s own newfound sense of power in the world – I’m thinking of the time at a previous parish when we were having some work done in the parking lot and a freshman took a forklift for a joyride. That’s easy enough to fix. Don’t do that! We raised you better. But sometimes it’s deeper than that, as one’s sense of themselves emerges into the light and the family has to deal with it, perhaps for the first time.

In our reading from Samuel we hear from a nation of people who are in such a moment of growing pains. Last week we heard of the prophet Eli, “whose eyesight had begun to grow dim so that he could not see… [but] the lamp of God had not yet gone out.” In fairness to the people, Eli’s successors, his sons, had proven themselves to be untrustworthy and corrupt, and now it seems Samuel’s sons are doing the same. And so the people decide it is time for regime change, throwing the baby out with the bathwater as they reject the plan of the God who had led them out of slavery the first time and showered them with nourishment. The message comes from God, loud and clear: This isn’t who I raised you to be. God’s people are always called to be different, a light to the nations, offering an alternative to those who insist on shaping society and lives through the threat of violence. But so the rest of Israel’s history goes, a cycle of conquering and being conquered, down through the centuries to the time of Jesus, who comes crashing onto the scene seeking to usher in a new way of being that is better than the enslavement to power and certainty that God’s people have yoked themselves to. In Luke’s gospel he claims the mantle of the prophet Isaiah as he reminds everyone who his mother raised him to be: filled with the Spirit of Lord, bringing good news to the poor, releasing the captives, bringing sight to those who wander in darkness, proclaiming that the time of God’s favor and grace and mercy is now, now, always now. He’s lost his mind. Maybe he even has a demon.

Jesus comes out as who he has always been, from before the dawn of time, and his own mother does not recognize him. I tend to have a relatively pious imagination when it comes to the relationship between Jesus and his mother, and perhaps this is because I enjoyed a close relationship with my own mother, as imperfect as it often was. So for as many times as I have encountered this passage, it never really landed with me until this week how harshly Jesus breaks with her. In Mark’s telling of the story, Jesus has spent nearly all of his time traveling back and forth in the countryside around his hometown, a crowd of strangers trailing in his wake as he heals the sick, tells people they are closer to God than they realized, and scolds the religious leaders for having their priorities backwards. He is causing a ruckus. He is bringing shame on the family. And so today when he returns home, they have to do something about it. We hear it at the beginning and the end of the passage as those with Jesus tell him, “Your mother is asking for you.” “Who? I don’t know her.” Does he say it as cavalierly as we imagine? Or does he pause and grapple with the weight of what he is about to say? We do not know, and we are also left to imagine how Mary responds to this.

My own transition into adulthood was not without conflict, particularly in the months of the summer and fall when I was 22 as my family began to reckon with the full truth of who I was as a queer man, who I intended to go on being. We had all known it for years, and it was time to talk about it. I don’t know if the words were there, but the sentiment often was: This isn’t who we raised you to be. We raised you better than this. And the hard truth we all had to learn to live with was that no, they didn’t. You raised a queer, mom, whether you meant to or not, who you always told to tell the truth and to be gentle and kind even when you fight for the right. “Woman, here is your son.”

How often this is the reaction to simple acts of goodness, to the fruits of God’s Spirit. Our commitment to the status quo, or saving face, or preserving what little influence we have so often overpowers our ability to say yes to God’s movement in the world, if we see it at all. We love the world to be more complicated than it is, to let the tender vines of certainty and the status quo sink deep into the mortar of the bricks of the house and eventually pull it down. Good news so often flies in the face of what we’ve been told will keep us safe in this world and in our own hearts.

And so Jesus gives us the solution, offering us safety in his family. Every time we gather here in this church, we gather in the house at the feet of Jesus with that crowd, and he reminds us that to follow him to go a little mad, to take the mind that the world has given us and lose it. What need do we have of a family that sneers at healing and forgiveness? In the household of God we have no family but the one in front of us, the one that God calls into being anew each and every time we kneel at this altar. We don’t see Mary again in Mark’s gospel, but John reminds us that Jesus births his new family again at the cross. “When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, ‘Woman, here is your son.’ Then he said to the disciple, ‘Here is your mother.’ And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.” (John 19) It is here that Jesus founds his family. It is that family, our family, that we gather here today to re-member at this altar with his Body and Blood, kneeling at the foot of the cross. I don’t mean that as an abstract concept, or just if you consider yourself a member of this parish. God has called each of you to this place, this exact combination of people for this very hour, to help us remember that to follow Jesus is to come out as one of God’s chosen and beloved, and in the eyes of those around us, to go a little mad.

Artwork: detail from “As You Are” by Jess Payne, @terraandsage