Mark 3:31-35 CEB His mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside and sent word to him, calling for him. A crowd was seated around him, and those sent to him said, “Look, your mother, brothers, and sisters are outside looking for you.” He replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” Looking around at those seated around him in a circle, he said, “Look, here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does God’s will is my brother, sister, and mother.” I saw an article this past week sharing how the 2023 holiday traveling season will be the second biggest since 2000. That’s really no surprise since so many take time during the Christmas season to travel home. As Perry Como croons in his single, “Home for the Holidays,” 'Cause no matter how far away you roam, When you pine for the sunshine of a friendly gaze, For the holidays, you can't beat home sweet home.”[1] Of course, there’s the ideal that Como sings about, but there’s also the reality for many that going home is not a cause for joy. Not simply because of weather or the cost of travel, but because a true home eludes many of us. Rev. Tracy Daub’s book, Holy Disruption, gives us a good working definition of home, and through that definition, we can see why home is so elusive for so many. When we think of home, we often think of the town we grew up in or our family. Mark’s gospel redefines home as something more than our hometown or our family of origin. Rather, Mark shows us how we find our home in Jesus Christ, and in turn, we are invited to become homebuilders – kingdom shapers, creating places of belonging where all are welcomed.
In a different kind of Home of the Holidays, this one a 1995 film starring Holly Hunter as Claudia Larson, viewers experience a different kind of homecoming. Claudia arrives at her parent’s house for Thanksgiving just after losing her job. During Claudia’s holiday at home, she fights with her siblings, discovers her father’s minor infidelity, and worries over whether her daughter is making the same mistakes she made. At one point she and her sister even wonder aloud if they would even interact if they weren’t family, with Claudia’s sister even saying, “If I just met you on the street... if you gave me your phone number... I'd throw it away.”[2] A far cry from Como’s chorus of “If you want to be happy in a million ways, For the holidays, you can't beat home sweet home.”[3] We all desire home, but our own home lives and families can be fraught with bitterness and hurt. We can find ourselves lonely and longing in the midst of home, wondering what actually makes home, home. Holy Disruption defines home as “that place of belonging where we are accepted, loved, and safe.”[4] Home is where we belong, and the way we know we belong is by being accepted, loved, and safe. All three are necessary for a real home, not just the ones from the holiday postcards and Christmas songs. To unravel where we find home, I think we need to understand what each of these qualities looks like. We have acceptance. What does it mean to accept something or someone? Do we simply tolerate them? In other words, do we put up with something’s continued existence, like taxes, but we really would be fine if it went away? Acceptance means we accept, “receive willing,”[5] something or someone. You see it or them as good and true and want their presence in your life. To say someone is loved is to say that their good is pursued above all. To love is to act for another’s benefit. Love should not harm or hurt. God is our highest example of love, and God seeks always and forever to love each and every single one of us by constantly pursuing our good and our benefit for all of eternity. Home, wherever that may be, must have some echo of this kind of love in it. Finally, a home should be safe. In other words, someone who is home should not come to physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual harm in that place or with the people there. Remember, none of us get to define what another’s hurt looks like. To make a safe home means that we abide by the things that will do no harm to another. To do harm is to do what is evil for another, and where harm and evil happen, no home exists. How about it? Are our homes a place of belonging? Is this how we even think of home? We should because this is the kind of home that God is building for us in the kingdom. Christ signals this kind of homebuilding by creating a space where we all belong. There, in John 1:14, it reads, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (NRSV). The scripture translates the Greek as “lived among” but a more literal translation is that God has come “to ‘pitch a tent among us.’”[6] God has come to build a home in our midst, one that welcomes everyone inside its walls. Jesus in Mark establishes a revolutionary kind of home. Jesus does not base it upon ties of kinship nor on place of origin, instead, the kingdom home is built upon belonging. In our scripture reading today, we see how disruptive this kind of home can be. Here Jesus is teaching in a house and his mother and brothers arrive for an impromptu family reunion! However, instead of receiving them upon their arrival, Jesus responds, “‘Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?’” Quite the statement! To those listening and to us today, it sounds very much like Jesus is dismissing family as the source of our belonging. Instead, Jesus is saying family of origin does not define a home, a place of belonging for Christ, instead, the condition he sets is “‘Whoever does God’s will is my brother, sister, and mother.’” Jesus expands on how we should think of home and kinship by saying that those who do God’s will are true kin. What defines belonging and family are our actions, not accidents of genealogy. By pursuing God’s will for each other, we create a true home where all of God’s beloved children will thrive. How do we get there? What does God’s will from home look like? Mark again gives us some guidance in chapter 12 through Christ’s exchange with a legal expert about the greatest commandment. Jesus responds with “‘The most important one is Israel, listen! Our God is the one Lord, and you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your being, with all your mind, and with all your strength. The second is this, You will love your neighbor as yourself. No other commandment is greater than these’” (Mark 12:29-31 CEB). The legal expert agrees with Christ completely, saying that these “two commandments are more important than any of the elaborate religious rituals people carry out at the temple, where he himself makes a living.”[7] Upon hearing the man’s response, Jesus tells him “‘You aren’t far from God’s kingdom.’” (Mark 12:34 CEB). Not family, not hometowns, instead, you are not far from God’s home when you love God and love your neighbor as yourself. We find “our way into the kingdom of God when we accept God’s love for us and then when we turn around and follow Jesus”[8] by loving all our neighbors. That’s how we find our way home. Belonging lies in the kingdom of God, and the kingdom of God is all around us. Author Tracy Daub invites us to imagine the kingdom of God as a “parallel universe, and all around us are portals to this other domain.”[9] When we love our neighbor as ourselves, when we provide places where others are accepted, loved, and safe we find ourselves crossing over into our true home. Home is more than family and our hometowns. Being a true family is bringing others through these same portals by creating spaces of belonging where others feel accepted, loved, and safe. Christ came to create this space of belonging by inviting us into God’s kingdom by coming into our midst to build it up through his life and actions as well as through his death and resurrection. God brought home to us through Christ’s coming into the world. Can we turn around and do the same for someone else this Advent season? Can we show them how and where they belong? There is space in God’s home for all of us to dwell and to act like true kin to each other. After all, there’s no place like home for the holidays. Amen. [1] Perry Como, (There’s No Place Like) Home for the Holidays, PerryComoVevo, YouTube video file, 2:59, https://youtu.be/NT8pIpzDX0g?si=Jo4zyXdzQufvBOIh (accessed December 14, 2023). [2] Chris Radant and W.D. Richter, Home for the Holidays, DVD, directed by Jodie Foster (Beverly Hills, CA: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., 1995). [3] Como 2023 [4] Tracy S. Daub, Holy Disruption: Discovering Advent in the Gospel of Mark (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2022), 65. [5] The American Heritage Dictionary, 4th ed., s.v. “Acceptance.” [6] Daub 2022, 75. [7] Ibid., 84. [8] Ibid., 85-86. [9] Ibid., 88.
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