The Fifth Day of Christmas: The Politics of Family

 

The Politics of Family

The Fifth Day of Christmas

Tuesday, December 29, 2020

Matthew 12:46-50 

“Jesus of Nazareth,” observes Dale Martin, “was not a family man.”

With such a “focus on the family” in American churches over the past century, this 

statement might surprise or even offend. 

But scripture is clear, says Martin, that Jesus “rejected marriage and family ties and taught

 his disciples to do the same.”

We see this in today’s gospel reading:

Jesus replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?”

He stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, “Look, here are my 

mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of my father in heaven is my 

brother and sister and mother.”

As Martin observes, “Jesus refused to identify with his traditional family and instead 

substituted for it the eschatological community that shared his vision of a new, divinely 

constituted family.”

This is not an isolated incident either. As Stanley Hauerwas notes, “Jesus has already 

challenged loyalty to family through the calling of the disciples, his refusal to let the one 

desiring to be a disciple return to bury his father, and his prediction that in the coming 

persecutions brother will deny brother and fathers will rise up against their children and 

children will put their parents to death.”

And so: “If there was any doubt…,his identification of his true family as the disciples 

makes clear that his challenge to the family is radical.”

It’s not just Jesus. “Contrary to most contemporary opinion,” Martin argues, “there are 

many more resources in Christian Scripture and tradition to criticize the modern family 

than to promote it.”

And that’s why Martin says that contemporary American Christianity is in a state of 

“idolatry.”

Let that sink in for a minute.

American churches have made an idol out of “traditional family values.” Nevermind that 

this “traditional” family didn’t even exist until the 1950s.

The result: An increasing number of people don’t feel like they “fit” at church. According 

to Pew, only half of American adults are married, down 9 percentage points since 2000, 

and down from the 72% peak in 1960. Meanwhile, divorce rates are up, Americans are 

staying single longer, and the number of unmarried partners living together has risen 

sharply.

Is there any wonder that these groups have found church, with its increasing “focus on the 

family,” largely irrelevant.

It’s not just some accident of history, by the way, that Jesus never married. He would have 

been expected to marry and have children. But as Martin explains: “The household was part 

of the world order he was challenging.”

And so, for the church, family is no longer defined biologically. Likewise, the religious 

community is no longer an extension of the family or tribal unit.

Rather, the church is now family, a family of strangers transformed and joined together into 

one body, for a common purpose, where Hauerwas says “we are all called to be parents, 

brothers, and sisters to and for one another.”

This is a huge shift.

And it’s political. Let’s call it the politics of family. 

Remember, at its core, politics is simply a group of people figuring out how to live together. 

And living as family is a radical way to live together.

Even before COVID-19, America was experiencing what former Surgeon General Vivek Murthy 

calls a “loneliness epidemic.” According to Kaiser, over one-third of adults over 45, and nearly 

half of adults over 60, say they always or often feel lonely, posing a health risk similar to 

smoking 15 cigarettes per day. And so the family found in church can be a protective health 

factor. 

Also, many of us in recent years have lost jobs or otherwise experienced financial hardship. 

And we’ve received meals, Kroger gift cards, help with bills, and more. Lest we take this for 

granted, know that this is not normal. Not in a dog-eat-dog world of competition and scarcity.

And this politics of family reveals what true family is about. It’s not about what you can contribute. 

It’s not about productivity. This can sometimes be hard to see; I learned it from children, as well 

as persons with disabilities, in church.

Contrary to the message our culture hammers home daily, we don’t give our lives meaning. 

Rather, as Hauerwas argues, “our lives are located in God’s narrative.” And the politics of 

family is living together within that narrative.