Our true family in Christ

 Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14

Colossians 3:12-17

Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23

 

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Today a number of themes converge.

First of all, we are still rejoicing in the Nativity of the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary.

Then, on this First Sunday of Christmas we celebrate the feast of the Holy Family: Jesus, Mary and Joseph and their life shared together.

And, on 28^th December each year, we commemorate the Holy Innocents, the title for the infants killed by King Herod as he sought to snuff out the life of the newborn King, Jesus Christ.

Into those themes our first two readings speak very beautiful, and practical, wisdom.

They reflect on what it means to live in a family.

We live in a time when the very word ‘family’ has become a contentious one.

The definition of a family seems up for grabs; its benefits are dismissed and it is generally deemed ‘problematic’.

Very sadly the family has become seen as a stifling environment to be escaped; and tragically that is the reality for some people.

When assertive individualism lets rip, with ‘me, me, me’ at the centre of everything, all on my terms, then the family is inevitably a casualty.

The Christian vision for the family is as a school for learning good and healthy relationships, the place where love of God and love of neighbour is fostered and encouraged.

So what do we see in our readings today?

In the first reading we see graciousness towards, appreciation of and respect for parents, our elders, even when their understanding is lacking.

We see interdependence, not independence.

In the second reading St Paul describes how the family should relate to one another, and stretches that vision further into the life of the Church.

And where better to learn this art of putting on ‘compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other’ than in the trust of committed close relationships?

We need that formation in virtue.

The reality is that human babies, unlike other mammals, need much longer in the domestic setting.

A calf or lamb can get up and walk within minutes of being born, and after suckling their mother for a couple of weeks can start grazing on grass.

By contrast, the human baby might crawl around from around 8-9 months and only start walking around 12-15 months.

And so too our socialisation: we need to learn and mirror behaviour, language and interactions from those around us.

That’s why the family should not be introspective, but outward looking and sociable.

The threat to the family is to make it so loose it has no means to form and nurture a child, and at the same time make it so stifling and ‘child-centred’ that it becomes an exercise in indulging parents more than forming human persons.

That is why the model of the family can be applied to the Church, as a nurturing household in which all flourish by rejoicing in the word of Christ dwelling richly in our shared life, of teaching and admonishing in wisdom, and doing ‘everything in the name of the Lord Jesus’ (Colossians 3.xx).

The Son of God himself is born into the life of a human family, and he both forms that family, and they form him.

It is not too speculative to picture Christ on the lap of his mother being taught the psalms and the stories of Adam and Eve, and Noah; of Abraham, Issac, Jacob; of Joseph, Moses and Miriam; of Samson and Deborah; of the prophets Jonah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and so on.

We can picture him too working with his guardian Joseph, the man entrusted with being an early father for him.

And there’s his extended family of cousins, including John the Baptist, who he will have shared his early life with.

We know from St Luke’s gospel that he goes on pilgrimage to Jerusalem from Nazareth, travelling with a large group of people and initially Mary and Joseph confidently and trustfully assume he is with them, before they realise that he is lost.

The family years of Jesus, apart from that incident when he is about 12 years old are silent to us.

So the last we hear of the infant Jesus is when Herod comes to destroy him.

Herod’s searching for Jesus is to destroy him.

Our searching for Jesus is surely in the spirit of the shepherds and Magi who come to receive his beauty and goodness and truth.

As he seeks to destroy Jesus collateral damage is incurred; the Holy Innocents, those children who are deemed utterly expendable.

Roman society saw children as expendable and in Hebrew society they were seen as a gift from God, and expression of fruitfulness, but they had no status.

Indeed, it is only with the advent of Christianity that children, including the unborn, are seen as being of any worth and valued for being a person made in the image of God.

That’s part of the scandal of the Incarnation, that God not only assumed our human nature, but did so as an infant child.

But the infanticidal Herod cared nothing of the children he murdered in order to kill the biggest threat to him – which was, let’s not forget, a child unable to crawl, utterly dependent on his mother, Mary, for sustenance and his guardian, Joseph, for protection.

But Herod did see something more: this infant is a threat to him. If Jesus is the ‘newborn king’ the Magi sought, then that is not great for Herod, or for any tyrant, or indeed for anyone who thinks of themselves more highly than they ought, as a little king over their family, workplace and friends, who puts themselves in the place of God.

This same pattern is seen in the Pharoah who seeks to wipe out the Hebrew boys, during which time Moses is preserved so he can lead God’s people from slavery to freedom in the Promised Land.

Egypt is a place of terror for the Israelites – Joseph will not want to have gone there because it represented the dark, paganism that the Jews rejected.

Yet that is what the angel commanded, and what righteousness, obedient, Joseph did.

It was out of the Herodian frying pan into the Egyptian fire.

Yet God knows that to redeem his people he needs to go into the darkness to bring them to the light: ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’. (Matthew 2.XX)

Jesus Christ will go into the Egypt of death, to defeat death, and bring all nations and peoples into the Promised Land of life in him.

The new life he comes to bring forms a new family in his name.

As St John tells us:

Standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother's sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home. (John 19.25,26)

May Christ find his home in our families and lives, and may we know ourselves to be at home in his family, the Church.