Who are my mother and brothers?

I come from a traditional family.   My parents have been married for forty years.  My grandparents were married for longer.   The only step anything I have are nieces/nephews, and one cousin, who I do not call my step cousin, just my cousin.  I have seen--and benefited from--effects of a traditional two parent home.   I know what it means to belong without actually fitting in to a family.   I have also noticed that the older I get the more I realize how absolutely blessed I am to have been born to these people.   We have our problems, same as everybody else, but at the core of it we still love each other and when it hits the fan, we back each other up. 

I'm convinced that's what makes my family functional.   Functional in the sense  that at the moment everyone is speaking to everyone else and that we're all part of each other's lives.   Today's gospel reading made me think today that maybe Jesus' family was functional in the same way.   They may have thought he was nuts, but in the end, especially in the end, they showed up anyway.   Jesus, likewise, seems annoyed but uses the moment to make a point:

  Mark 3:31 Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him.
3:32 A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."
3:33 And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"
3:34 And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!
3:35 Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."

Notice that the ties that bind could not have possibly been severed completely because we have his brother James showing up in the Book of Acts at the Council of Jerusalem and his mother follows him to the cross.  No one is throwing anyone away here.    He's just widening the circle.  Widening the circle big time.

I once had the big brass lady balls to say at church that my family never shows up and I have no one to spend Midnight Mass with.   I was immediately corrected.   I say big brass lady balls because those people have been putting up with me since I was 15 years old.   I should know by now that those people are my family.   Put a qualifier of church family on it if you must, at this point, I think we're stuck with each other.

There's more than one way to be family.   I saw La Cage aux Folles Friday night with my good friend and her fiance and saw that played out on the stage.  The crazy maid, the straight son, the drag queen mother, and the father trying to play referee between his son's desire to get past his future in-laws and his partner's need for recognition for his role in raising the boy.   What makes a family?  Is it children?  Long suffering each other's company?  Who was more of a mother?  We didn't see much of her, but I think Ann's mother was more interested in keeping that corn cob in its place than in making her daughter happy.  I think in that family it was the mother.  He wasn't just his father's partner, he was the one who turned their house into a home.  That deserved respect.   Jean Michael deserved respect too.  He turned out different than his parents without turning his back on them, and dealt with all the trauma and drama that comes from the way people reacted to his family when he was growing up.  

There's more to raising kids and living right than being in a traditional relationship and having the equipment to produce offspring.  I know families that are incredibly dysfunctional that are not broken homes in the sense that the parents are divorced.  They are broken in the sense that the love just isn't there.   The father tries to kill the daughter and no one, especially not the mother, calls the cops.  The daughter doesn't think she has any business getting angry about not being protected.  It's just broken.  Never mind that there's not a divorce decree involved, that family is broken.

So what makes a family?  Blood?  Affection?  In the case of Jesus, whoever does the will of God?

The Son of Man was also the Son of a Woman

"But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them."
~Luke 24:11

I know, more feminism. Yesterday I'm defending Barbie and today I'm doing...this. I guess I'm on a roll.

I have never understood certain things about men. One of them is this story. Three women that these guys know come back and tell them that something completely bizarre has happened. They ran into some angels at the tomb of Jesus and they tell them:

"Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. 6 Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, 7 that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." 8 Then they remembered his words, 9 and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest.

These aren't just any women. Nobody mentions that Mother Mary was a drunk, Mary Magdalene smoked too much weed, and Joanna had a few marbles rolled out of her jar. These are reputable people from what I can tell. The gospel writer has the men writing it off as an idle tale like they'd just be telling stories to tell stories. About this? Seriously? I'm starting to understand why Mary Magdalene was the first person to see the risen Christ. She was the only one who hadn't reverted from miracle land all the way back to bland reality already.

But did you notice that even after telling them to stop being silly Peter gets up and goes and looks for himself?

Yes, Jesus was a man. He was the Son of Man but he was also the Son of a woman and I think that went a long way with how he handled things sometimes. It's like that old joke about compelling evidence that Jesus was a woman:

But the most compelling evidence of all - 3 proofs that Jesus was a woman:
1. He had to feed a crowd at a moment's notice when there was no food.
2. He kept trying to get a message across to a bunch of men who just didn't get it.
3. Even when He was dead, He had to get up because there was more work for Him to do.

Yup, my Lord understands. He understands more than we care to admit sometimes.

Lift your voice rejoicing, Mary

"Lift your voice rejoicing, Mary, Christ has risen from the tomb; on the cross a suffering victim, now as victor he is come. Whom your tears in death were mourning, welcome with your smiles returning. Let your alleluias rise!" ~ Episcopal Hymnal 1982, tr. Elizabeth Rundle Charles

Easter hymns have a certain bitter sweetness. They all talk about death and life in the same breath. "Raise your weary eyelids, Mary... see the wounds for you he bore." Christ rising from the dead wouldn't have meant much if he'd died of pneumonia, after all, and his death on the cross wouldn't be particularly note-worthy if he hadn't been raised from the dead. The Romans, after all, were quite good at crucifying people, mostly because they practiced so much.

But it did happen that way, and so we sing. We sing because God has conquered death--not that he couldn't before but that he hadn't shown us. More than that, God has conquered death for us. And for Mary, who had started down this road because an angel essentially talked her into it, this really is the light at the end of the tunnel. I imagine that she'd been worried sick for three straight years. Never mind the strange beginning, he'd been doing things and saying things that were obviously dangerous for a long time. Her worst fears were realized and then relieved. But what if the hymn is talking about Mary Magdalene? The man who'd delivered her from a living death (legend has it she had been the victim of possession) had been murdered and he was alive. Raise your weary eyelids, Mary, indeed. I suppose if I wanted to I could find out who the hymn is about--but why spoil it? It's really about us. Look up, dear. Stop crying dear. Breathe dear.

Did you notice in Church today that it was a woman who found the empty tomb? It was a woman who stayed around long enough to be the first to see the risen Christ. The ones who stuck around during the crucifixion were women. The men scattered. The women stayed. The men were around when it was all about power and glory. The women tended to Christ through and after his death---even if only through their presence.

"Life is yours forever, Mary, for your light is come once more and the strength of death is broken; now your songs of joy out pour. End now the night of sorrow, love has brought the blessed morrow. Let your alleluias rise!"

Have a blessed Easter everybody... try not to over indulge on the chocolate and eat the ears first.