Rebirth is about being adopted into a new family –
without borders… Jesus is using some
strong language to stretch our vision of family and kinship, extending rather
than stifling our love.
Shane Claibourne
____________________
I once read (Tony Campolo) about the principle of least
love.
The one who loves the least, has the most power!
Scary idea, that!
The idea that if I don’t care about you, but you do care
about me,
I have more power over you than you do over me.
Because you will try not to hurt me (after all you love
me)
But, as for how I treat you?
I just don’t care!
I can treat you poorly, because you don’t count (unless I can use and
manipulate you)
I’ve been thinking about Christmas.
Yeah, I know, it is not even Thanksgiving!
But I have a Christmas Eve Service to prepare, and so I
have been pondering
What can I say in this time of darkness!
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great
light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness— on them light has shined?”
Yeah! But…
It doesn’t feel as if those words are real!
I believe that they are, or will be.
But we still seem to be sliding into darkness
Into one of those episodic dark moments when hate has the
upper hand
In such a time how do we make Christmas real?
I keep thinking about Jesus
And I think perhaps the key is keeping Christmas Weird
And keeping Jesus Weird
We can’t domestic Christmas, nor the One who came
(although we try)
If anything is obvious about Jesus
It is that he came to tear down walls.
He came to tear down the wall between people and God/the
Sacred
He came to tear down the walls between people
Paul makes this perfectly clear when he writes
“For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both into
one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us” (Ephesians 2:14)
We see it from the beginning!
Where is Jesus born? Among the animals!
Who attends his birth?
The poor. The
dirty. The rejected. The unimportant
Strangers, immigrants, heretics (The Magi)
When he does this ministry, who does he gather around
him?
With whom does he “break bread.”
Pretty much everyone!
Fishermen.
Farmers. Tax Collectors. Soldiers
Pious prigs. The
entitled rich.
And what does he teach?
He teaches, in so many ways, love
Sometimes he just says it. “Love your neighbor!”
But Jesus also realized that we are experts
At narrowing our love down. Or to put it another way, building walls.
That we define our “neighbor” in such a way as to
exclude.
So sometimes he said things that shocked and confused.
“If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and
mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a
person cannot be my disciple.”
Wait! What?
Love your enemies!
Bless those who curse you.
Does Jesus really expect us to hate our own family
And love people who want to destroy us, or deny our reality?
Those who want to harm us or control us?
Seriously?
What Jesus is saying (I think)
Is that when we are reborn, we have a new family
The family of God
And (as Claibourne insists) this new kinship EXTENDS our
love to include everyone
We have a new family
That includes everyone!
But we can’t get to this new extended family unless
At some level, we die to our old definition of family
So I have a family.
My biologically family
But I have to die to the idea that is my true, my primary
family
I have my faith family, my ideological family, my tribal
family (nation, party)
But all those definitions of family
Are limited
They limit my family to those like me, or those I like
And we must let them go, in order to embrace a family
that is “broader than biology… deeper than nationalism”
Right now, we have people, a movement
That is pushing us toward division, toward defining our “family”
along hard lines
Toward a narrow, tribal, fearful definition of family that
calls on people to hate. To
exclude. To reject. To control. To
suppress. To use and manipulate
To dehumanize
This is the antithesis of what Jesus taught
Unless one hates one’s (let’s count this down here)
Ideology
Tribe (nation)
Political party
Political leaders
Personal rights and wealth
Church (religion?)
Extended family
Biological family
One’s own life….
Unless one is willing (to put it another way)
To let go of all those allegiances and have one
allegiance
To love
And one family, the family created by Sacred love
We have no part of Jesus
The bottom line is this
Our earthly allegiances create a narrowness that stands
in the way of God’s vision and justice and denies the Kin-dom of God
This Christmas, in this pluralistic time
We are called to die to the divisions we embrace (and
even cherish)
And become born again
Into a new family
A messy family
The family of God
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