Saturday, June 21, 2008

Blogging Towards Sunday
June 22, 2008
Matthew 10:24-39
(NRSV) (The Message)

Family Values

The scripture selection proposed by the Lectionary list this week is a section of Matthew's re-telling of Jesus' teaching, ministry and life that talks about what it means to follow Jesus as master, teacher and savior. Jesus calls us to understand family - the basic unit of human community - in a new way. Is it genetic?; learned?; nature?; nurture?; chosen? - or something else? It's about following. Those that follow Jesus in their life, words, actions, relationship, work and rest - constitute a new sort of community, a family that transcends our established, in-the-box-defintions of community. To follow Jesus means to find a totally new, radically different self-identity. It means giving everything up in order to receive everything. An iconic and ironic mystery.

In a week that began for me celebrating the marriage of some dear friends at City Hall and concludes with my experience of the larger Presbyterian Church community at the General Assembly in San Jose, I'm struck by the notions and my experience of community. How often do we exlude others out of fear, or lack of experience? Isn't that what Jesus was talking against? The exclusion or denial of those that the culture of his day avoided, excluded and feared: lepers, the sick, prostitutes, foreigners, those that were considered "un-whole"?

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