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"My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." -- Luke 8:21


Once after a sermon a man came to me and asked, "Did I hear you correctly? Did you say that Jesus had a lakeside home?" "Yes, you heard me correctly," I replied. "After leaving his family home in Nazareth, he moved to the lakeside town of Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee" (Matthew 4:13). Whether he owned or rented the home, we cannot be sure. And whether it was actually on the water, we do not know. But for all lovers of the water, it was a smart move. Besides, he and his fishermen disciples spent a lot of time on and around the water.

In addition to having a claim on his ancestral home in Nazareth and his lakeside home in Capernaum, Jesus also had a claim on the financial support of some wealthy women. John's Gospel tells us that Jesus and his disciples had a common purse and that Judas was the treasurer of the group, but we never really learn from whence came their money. After all, if they had given up their businesses and jobs to be involved in Jesus' three-year campaign for the kingdom of God, they would need financial support from somewhere.

Luke provides one of the clues. He tells us that a number of well-to-do women who had been healed and cleansed of demons contributed financially to his work. Not only that, they even traveled with Jesus and the disciples, ministering to their needs. Imagine that! In conservative, patriarchal, first-century Palestine, women exercised the liberty of traveling with a group of religious-political hopefuls, supporting their cause financially.

Mary Magdalene, wrongly identified as a former prostitute, was among them. She had been cleansed of seven demons, which in our language would mean she had been healed of mental and psychological disorders. Whether she and Jesus had a romantic attachment, we do not know, but she was a faithful friend right up to the end, and then was the first to discover the empty tomb on Easter morning.

Of Susanna, whose name means "Lily," we know nothing. We can only guess at the "many others" named. But Joanna is wife of Chuza, who is the steward of Herod Antipas, meaning he managed the personal property and finances of the king. We may well imagine that Joanna was rather well-to-do and was a member of the higher social groups. It is fascinating to note that Joanna is involved with a revolutionary leader who, if successful, might unseat the very man for whom Joanna's husband worked.

Many of us have overlooked the important role women played in Jesus' life and movement. Remember that in those days women were not allowed to worship equally with the men. They had to remain behind the screen. Women usually were not taught to read and write. Rabbis refused to teach women, but Mary and Martha sat often at Jesus' feet, and on Easter morning the surprised and ecstatic Mary Magdalene called him "Rabboni," meaning "my teacher, my master."

The upper room where the Last Supper was held may have been in the home of Mary, mother of John Mark. The woman who washed Jesus' feet with her tears and dried them with her hair is an example of the love which arises out of grace and forgiveness, in contrast to the super-religious and self-righteous Simon who had neglected the common courtesies as host.

What would Jesus and the early church have done without the women? Luke especially points out their significance. He mentions Mary, Elizabeth, and Anna in the infancy stories. He calls attention to the two Marys and Salome at the cross and to Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, Jesus' mother, in the garden on resurrection morning.

And in the early church we hear of Priscilla, an important leader in Corinth; Lydia, a wealthy businesswoman and key leader in the church of Thyatira; Paul's sister in Jerusalem who helped arrange his escape; Phoebe, the deaconess of the church in Rome. On and on the list grows. Jesus' inclusion of women was revolutionary, and their support of him, both spiritual and financial, helped bring about his revolution.

So women of the church, be they mothers or not, can point with pride to their immense contribution to the beginnings and growth of Christianity. And we may have overlooked the fact that Jesus' challenge to discipleship may demand decisions and loyalties of them we sometimes think are more reserved for men. But women, like men, have to balance the demands for families, self, and the kingdom of God. What might be Jesus' advice?

I.

Jesus taught that the demands of the kingdom of God take precedence over family.

That was something even Jesus' own mother and brothers had to learn. Luke tells us that his mother and brothers came to see him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd. Jesus had been accused of being a lunatic and there is some reason to believe his four brothers and his mother and possibly his sisters wondered if the accusation was correct. Not only might they have been upset with him for leaving the family business (he was the eldest brother and responsible for it), they may have felt it their duty to take him home so as to save him and themselves from embarrassment.

There have been many mothers and brothers, fathers and sisters, who have wanted to take home a family member involved in public causes. Many young people involved in protest of the Vietnam War were more or less disowned by parents. Young people who have devoted themselves to environmental and social causes, as opposed to making money, are sometimes denigrated.

I remember well when a young man of our church, a four-pointer, talented musician and athlete, announced to his corporate executive father that he was going into the ministry. "Why," exclaimed the father in a rage, "why would you want to waste your intelligence and talent in such a thankless, low-paying, long-hours, hassled profession?" (His remarks gave me pause!) The father went off to Florida for two weeks to recover.

But not only are young men called into the ministry over family protests, so are women. Today the student body of many of our seminaries is almost one-half female. One of the revolutions occurring in today's church is this huge influx of female ministers.

"Who are my mother and brothers?" Jesus asked the crowd rhetorically. "My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it." In another place he uses Oriental exaggeration to make his point. He said in shocking words, "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple" (Luke 14:26). There is for us all, including women and mothers, a calling higher than families and motherhood. It is the call of God.

If it is true that religion has been used to oppress and exploit women (and it has), it is also true that Jesus' intent was, I believe, to liberate them -- to liberate them from illiteracy, from the double standard, from inequality, and from the barriers to sacred scrolls and altars. They are to be persons in their own right, no longer responsible for the lust of men by having to hide behind a veil and robe, no longer to be blamed as victims and made to feel guilty when raped and abused, no longer to be paid one-half to two-thirds as much as men for equal work.

Jesus' words about family may seem harsh until we realize how often we have needed rescuing from oppressive, restrictive, exploitative, and abusive families. Family life can be a prison, a stuffy hothouse circumscribed by prejudices and fears handed down for generations. Emotionally disturbed teenagers in psychiatric hospitals often have been in homes that were just that -- abusive, oppressive prisons. They needed rescuing from debilitating family patterns.

One young college student told me she never realized how narrow and provincial her upper middle-class family and neighborhood were until she went away to the university to see how some of the rest of the world lived.

Young people who used to come into East Harlem to work with us found something greater and more challenging than the comforts and confines of the alcohol-soaked, couch-potato life of affluent suburban families. Young people who travel, who study abroad, who read widely, are ready to challenge outdated family notions on the environment, politics, prejudice, justice, religion, and the economy.

Strange as it may seem, Jesus' call to discipleship may lead many women away from some traditional notions about family and femininity, about motherhood and role models, about womanhood and marriage. Rather than protectors of the status quo and defenders of past prejudices, women today are called to the higher loyalties of the kingdom of God, as are the men.

II.

But note also that Jesus' call to discipleship is not a call to selfishness, but to selflessness for a higher good.

The women who traveled with Jesus and supported him financially eventually went back home. Jesus did not advise Mary and Martha and Lazarus to break up their home and neglect family love. Most of Jesus' disciples were married. And at the end, from the cross, Jesus entrusted the care of his mother to John, the Beloved Disciple. Let no one quote Jesus as a woman hater, or man hater, or family hater. He did not liberate women just so they could oppress men and children. Rather, he liberated them to be committed to God's higher good and nobler cause.

In his best-selling book, The Closing of The American Mind, Allan Bloom of the University of Chicago says that is the problem with many students today. They are not mean-spirited, but neither are they great-souled, that is, they have no greatness of soul. "Their primary occupation is themselves," says Bloom, "understood in the narrowest sense" (p. 83). He goes on to quote Tocqueville who says that "in democratic societies each citizen is habitually busy with the contemplation of a very petty object which is himself" (Ibid., p. 86).

Bloom goes on to lament that in our individualism and narcissism, we have become social solitaries. We no longer have a common bond, an over-arching purpose to hold us together. Our families have become spiritually empty. Aggravated by lack of commitment and the ease of divorce, many children and young people experience loneliness and rejection. Everyone has been liberated, but liberated largely for selfishness, personal success, and the pursuit of one's own pleasure.

We believe in self-expression, self-growth, and self-fulfillment, but often at the expense of the most significant of human relationships. Says Professor Bloom, "Everyone loves himself, but wants others to love him more than they love themselves" (Ibid., p. 118). Therefore, in the absence of selfless, loving people, in the absence of a common good or common will, the disintegration of society into particular wills is inevitable.

Bloom feels many young people today are over-indulged. They think they have the right to total attention and material support and that their parents should live for them without any expectation of returned love and gratitude. One mother said she wanted to give her children all the good things she never had. She provided a lovely home, excellent clothes, good food, fine education, and flashy car. "Now that they have all these things," she said, "they won't leave!"

If women are to be liberated from being second-class citizens and household drudges, they also are to be liberated from perpetual children who cannot wean themselves from their mother's financial and psychological breasts. This is not a time to relegate women to a subservient role, but a time to acknowledge with gratitude their love, their selflessness, their devotion to a cause larger than themselves -- namely us, their children and families.

Jesus' cause would have been seriously hampered without the support of these well-to-do liberated women, well ahead of their time. And Jesus' church today would be in serious trouble without the devoted and enlightened leadership they provide.

But make no mistake about it: Jesus believed we should be liberated to love one another especially in our families. The first commandment with promise to "honor thy father and thy mother" was firmly taught by Jesus. So let us affirm again Jesus' advocacy of the kingdom of God above all, and after that families, motherhood, and well, yes, apple pie. But while you're up, could you please make mine pecan?

Prayer

God of all ages and times and places, whose Being transcends all nations, cultures, and peoples and even the universe itself, we worship you as the Creator of all that is and as our Creator. We are wonderfully and marvelously made, fashioned in your image and shaped into male and female, bearing within the seed of human living to bring forth from our loins generation upon generation. We recognize in our children that we are not creators of life, but pro-creators; not originators of life, but carriers. We praise you, Progenitor of all living things, for the genetic stream from which we come and the great chain of being in which we participate.

Since it has pleased your divine wisdom to bring us into families and to nurture us in homes, we pray your special blessing on our troubled homes and families. Some are bruised by stress and strife, wherein the intimate areas of heart and soul have been abused by selfishness and harshness. Let new understanding and tenderness prevail.

Some have become hectic and harried with over commitment and frenetic activity so that those who should be closest are as ships passing in the night. Ease their anxieties and help them to relax into your grace and true acceptance of one another.

Some have become prisoners of bad habits and dreadful routines, finding themselves in treadmill paths and squirrel cage activities. Show them new ways of escape into the larger, freer, more satisfying life, and give them courage to begin anew.

Some have become subservient to money and have sold their souls to the god of success at any cost, neglecting human commitments and family love, and most of all, love of you, our Lord God. Release them from this ancient and vain idolatry, so that rather than bowing the knee to mammon and using you, they might bow the knee to you and use mammon as good stewards.

On this special day, bless all mothers with an extra measure of your grace and truth. Encourage the discouraged, lift up the fallen, sustain the lonely, single mothers, enable aging grandmothers, grant special strength and understanding to step-mothers, heal the mothers broken and abused, and for all mothers taken for granted, let this be a day when their ears and hearts are flooded with words of thanks and deeds of praise. In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.