Put on heartfelt compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness,
and patience, bearing with one another and forgiving one another, as the Lord has forgiven you. Over all these, put on love.
Let the peace of Christ control your hearts and be thankful.
Colossians 3:12-17
Some of my earliest religious memories revolve around the image of
Mary, Joseph and the child Jesus - the Holy Family of Nazareth! I credit that
to Sister Mary Ancilla, my first and second grade teacher. I remember how
important the Holy Family was to her and so it became important to us, her
students. It was probably a Sisters of Charity thing, having their Motherhouse
in Nazareth, Kentucky, and all!
The Holy Family of Nazareth was presented to us, even as first
graders, as the ideal family and we were challenged to model our own families
after them! That always made me a little more than uncomfortable. I
knew that Rhodelia was not Nazareth and we Knotts were not Jesus, Mary and
Joseph! I always felt we missed the mark by a couple of hundred miles! We were
certainly not holy card sweet by any stretch of the imagination!
I don’t have my own family, but in the seminary I was pumped full of pious ideas about what a “good priest” should be. I could never measure up to those, nor would I really want to these days. I have worked hard to create a priesthood I can live with, one that gives me life and life to the people I serve. I am not at all interested in twisting myself into being a priest in the image of the old 1950 movie, “Going My Way!” So, I have a little understanding of what families go through when the church “idealizes” family life and people feel they can’t measure up to Jesus, Mary and Joseph or some TV family of the 1950s like “Leave it to Beaver.” The traditional family of the 1950s was a brand-new and short-lived phenomenon. We can't return to the days of the "traditional" family because they hardly existed in the first place. Many times, the models being held up as "ideal" did not inspire us to reach for that ideal, they actually made us ashamed of ourselves!
As a preacher, I have always found this feast hard to preach for
that very reason. Families today are going through a great upheaval so pushing
too much idealism can actually make some struggling families feel defective and
judged: single parent families, blended families, interracial families,
adoptive families, same sex families and foster families. These
families need encouragement and support, not condemnation and judgment.
Preachers today have to be careful how they preach on this feast or somebody could
get hurt! But, you know, the more I read the story of the Holy
Family, the more I realize that theirs was not the idealized family that was
presented to me as a child. They had problems too, real problems! What made
them “holy” was not that they were problem free, what made them “holy” was how
they addressed their problems and rose above them.
Mary conceived Jesus before she was officially married. Joseph
considered divorce at one point. Mary gave birth in a barn, away from home.
Joseph and Mary were so poor that all they could offer was two doves when Jesus
was presented in the Temple. We are told in today’s gospel that Jesus, Mary and
Joseph were refugees in a foreign country, trying to avoid a child-killing
maniac king. As we read in another gospel, when Jesus was 12 years old, he was
listed as a missing person for a few days on one of their trips to Jerusalem.
Joseph seems to disappear in the gospels after that, so Mary was probably a
widow and single parent at some point early in Jesus' life.
Jesus was almost lynched by a mob of angry parishioners after a
sermon in his own hometown of Nazareth. At one point in his ministry, some of
Jesus relatives showed up and tried to take him home, convinced that he had
actually lost his mind. Mary had to watch Jesus tried and executed like a
common criminal. What made the “holy family” “holy,” was not that
they were problem free. What made them “holy” was the way they handled their defects
and problems!
It does no good whatsoever to beat families over the head with
some idealized and romantic notion of family life. Whether we like it or not,
families have changed, and I believe that most families are doing the best they
can --- and many of them are doing it against great odds! They need
encouragement, not judgment!
I struggled again this year with what to say about families on
this feast of the Holy Family, but after thinking about it for several days,
this idea came to me over the holidays.
Families don’t just happen! They must be created! As long as our parents were
alive, we were a family because of them. We automatically got
together with them, but after they died, after we sold the family home, being a
family became a decision. These days, somebody has to take the lead
to get us together. I used to do it years
ago when I first moved to Louisville. My sister, Nancy, had been hosting most
of our sibling Christmas dinner each year. Two years ago, my sister
Lois took over. Each year, I always said
at some point at those family gatherings, “We need to love and appreciate each
other because one of us may not be here next year!” A few months after I said
that one year, my youngest sister died of a brain tumor, followed by two
brothers-in-law, an aunt and two cousins! I said it again this year. We have no
idea who might be gone by next Christmas!
One
Christmas, I got the best surprise Christmas present ever from my family. My
youngest brother gathered up some of my nieces and nephews and their kids and
brought dinner to my house. I usually have to go to them. A few years ago, when
they left, they gave me a box of letters from my 20 nieces and nephews,
thanking me for all the times I have “been there” for them and how proud they
are of me! I was deeply and profoundly moved because it was something totally
new and unexpected.
This
year, we did not get together as siblings for the first time since our parents
died. Maybe because my oldest sister is now living in an assisted living place
in Elizabethtown, another sister has died and the others have children, grandchildren
and even great grandchildren. My youngest brother, also single, came up
Christmas Day and I fixed dinner for the two of us! It’s not like it used to
be, but we made the most of it and tried out a new tradition or two to celebrate
the changes within our aging family.
As
times change, even those of us who are single should try to create surrogate
families, even circles of friends if necessary, with whom we can share and
celebrate and even commiserate. To have friends, we must be a friend! We have
to give to others, what we want from them: respect, love, support, honesty and
fidelity. Friendships, like all forms of family, are a matter of intention and
work, not luck!
On this
Feast of the Holy Family, I salute all the families here today, in all your
great variety! Some of you are nothing less than heroic in your efforts to
maintain your families. Don't beat yourselves up if you are not some idealized
"cookie cutter" family, just do the best you can with what you
have!
Whatever
family we have created for ourselves, the values on which we can build a “holy”
family remain the same. They are the values mentioned in the readings selected
for this feast: (READ SLOWLY) heartfelt compassion, kindness, forgiveness,
humility, gentleness, patience, gratitude, care, respect and love. When
all the members of a family strive to live by those values, they build not only
a family that is mutually lifegiving, but also a “holy” family!
