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.

 

 

The Fourth Day of Christmas: The Politics of Grief

 

The Politics of Grief

The Fourth Day of Christmas

Monday, December 28, 2020

Jeremiah 31:15-17

Matthew 2:13-18 

“Too often,” argues Stanley Hauerwas, “the political significance of Jesus’s birth...is lost.” 

He explains: “the birth of Jesus is not seen as a threat to thrones and empires because 

religion concerns the private.”

But the idea of religion as private and personal, as opposed to public and political, is foreign 

to the world of scripture. 

And so “Jesus...is born into Herod’s time...in an occupied land, a small outpost, on the edge 

of a mighty empire.”

Already, yesterday, we saw that Simeon and Anna both recognized the baby Jesus as the 

Messiah. Then in today’s reading, Magi from the East have followed a star and come looking 

for the King of the Jews.

But there is already a King of the Jews. And he is none too pleased to hear the news about 

this child.

Herod’s response is what is now known as the Massacre of the Innocents, the hunting down 

and killing of all male children 2 years-old or younger.

“Perhaps no event in the gospel more determinatively challenges the sentimental depiction 

of Christmas,” says Hauerwas, “than the death of these children.”

But this is nothing new: “Matthew reminds us that Jeremiah prepared us for such a horror, 

warning of the loud lamentation that would come from Ramah.”

It’s not just Rachel who is grieving, though. A few verses later, notes Brueggemann, “Yahweh 

himself is grieving and will not turn loose.”

According to Brueggemann, “The prophet is engaged in a battle for language, in an effort to 

create a different epistemology out of which another community might emerge. The prophet 

is not addressing behavioral problems. He is not even pressing for repentance. He has only 

the hope that the ache of God could penetrate the numbness of history.”

And that numbness of history is something we know all too well.

We have grown numb, for example, to the incredibly high infant mortality rate in the Mid-South. 

With 8.3 deaths per every 1,000 births, Mississippi has the highest rate in the nation. Arkansas 

is third, at a rate of 7.5 per 1,000. And Tennessee, with a rate of 6.9 per 1,000, ranks ninth. 

Here in Memphis, the infant mortality rate has been cut in half in recent years, but we still have 

9.3 deaths per 1,000 births. Most of these infant deaths are preventable.

And now, we sit by and watch the COVID-19 pandemic ravage our nation, with Tennessee 

recently leading the world in new cases per capita. Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi 

all rank in the eight states with the most per capita covid deaths in the last week. In Memphis, 

we’ve experienced 849 deaths, with 188 so far in December, our deadliest month yet, with 70% 

more deaths than the next highest month. And over the past six months, we’ve consistently 

prioritized businesses over the wellbeing of our children and families.

Hauerwas calls this “the politics of murder, to which the church is called to be the alternative.”

But we’ve grown numb. We don’t even notice these deaths - we don’t hear their names, don’t 

hear their stories - much less grieve over them.

 

 

“In the time of Jeremiah,” writes Brueggemannn, “the pain and regret denied prevented any new 

movement either from God or toward God in Judah. The covenant was frozen and there was no 

possibility of newness until the numbness was broken.”

And so Brueggemann points to Jesus weeping and says that it “permits the kingdom to come.”

Grieving is political.

“Such weeping,” says Brueggemann, “is a radical criticism...because it means the end of all 

machismo; weeping is something kings rarely do without losing their thrones.”

But here’s the kicker: “Yet the loss of thrones is exactly what is called for.” You should hear an 

echo here of the Magnificat, where Mary sings of bringing the powerful down from their thrones.

May we learn to practice a politics of grief. 

And may we join with the Rachels in our community, who weep and refuse to be comforted, for 

as Brueggemann says, “[t]ears are a way of solidarity in pain when no other form of solidarity 

remains.” Together, our tears can expose and challenge the Herods in our world today.

The Third Day of Christmas: Start With Why

 

Start With Why

The Third Day of Christmas

Sunday, December 27, 2020

Isaiah 61.10-62.3

We’ve been talking about the political life of the church and how there’s no way to avoid 

politics. The question, rather, is what our politics look like.

And to be clear, by politics, we simply mean the ways in which we figure out how to live 

together. More specifically, how we as a church live together, how we journey through 

life together.

But most journeys begin with the destination. Our family, for example, recently traveled to 

Gulfport, Mississippi. Before we left, we knew where we were going.

Before choosing our destination, though, we had to figure out the purpose of our trip. We had 

to imagine what we wanted to do, what we wanted to see, what we wanted to feel. We had to 

paint a picture of what we wanted to be true before we could start planning our trip.

And it’s the same with our journey together as a community of faith, which is why we focused 

on imagination yesterday.

Today’s readings are about a different, albeit similar, kind of imagination.

The Isaiah passage is set upon the return from Exile. The Temple had been destroyed by 

Nebuchadnezzar, and many had been removed from their land and taken into captivity in 

Babylon. Two generations later, Persia conquered Babylon, and Cyrus the Great implemented 

a policy that allowed exiles to return to their native lands.

Of course, the return is not easy. There was conflict between those who stayed and those were 

taken into exile, there was conflict with those who had moved into the region, and there was a 

drought in the land.

In short, it did not seem like the New Jerusalem they had been promised. They had returned 

from exile...to ruin.

But the prophet could see it.

The prophet had the imagination to see the New Jerusalem that did not exist. 

Not yet, at least.

If you look back a few verses in Isaiah, he proclaims that “they shall rebuild the ancient ruins.”

But you’ll also find a description of the Jubilee Year (see Leviticus 25) that Jesus quotes in Luke 4:

The LORD’s spirit is upon me

   as the LORD has anointed me

to bring good tidings to the poor,

   to bind up the broken-hearted,

to proclaim freedom to the captives,

   to the prisoners, release,

to proclaim a year of favor for the LORD

   and a day of vengeance for our God,

      to comfort all who mourn.

In other words, the New Jerusalem is about more than just rebuilding the Temple. The building 

is just a building; without a larger purpose, it’s hollow.

And so the question for us is this: What’s our purpose? Why do we exist?

Before you set off on a journey, you must first choose a destination. But you can’t know where 

you want to go without first knowing WHY.

And that’s why Simon Sinek says, Start With Why.

So what is our WHY?

Reflect on this as we proceed through Christmastide.

The WHY will open our imagination and point it in a particular direction. The WHY will give us 

eyes to see what the future can be.

The Second Day of Christmas: The Politics of Imagination

 

The Politics of Imagination

The Second Day of Christmas

Saturday, December 26, 2020

Jeremiah 26:1-9, 12-15

Acts 6:8-15, 7:51-60

Yesterday, we reflected on the political nature of Christmas. And in case it wasn’t clear, I want to 

emphasize that we’re not talking about Republican or Democrat kind of politics.

At its core, politics is about negotiating differences, finding commonality, and figuring out how the 

heck to live together.

The reason we often want to avoid politics is because American politics is so toxic. But we have 

to imagine what’s possible beyond, outside of, the national political stage. We have to imagine 

another way of living together.

And that work of imagining is, according to Walter Brueggemann, the first priority of the prophets.

 

 

“The prophet engages in futuring fantasy,” writes Brueggemann. “The prophet does not ask if the vision 

can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be 

imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation.”

This is how any good leadership works. You start by painting a vision of what you want to be true...and 

only then do you figure out how to get there, how to make that vision a reality.

But as Brueggemann argues, we are conditioned in such a way that we can’t see beyond the status 

quo; the future seems closed off, and imagining a better future is considered childish and immature.

He points to the first chapter of Ecclesiastes:

What has been is what will be,

   and what has been done is what will be done;

and there is nothing new under the sun.

To protect ourselves, we tell ourselves that there is nothing new under the sun. Doing so keeps 

us from being disappointed.

But it also keeps us from imagining a better tomorrow, from asking questions, from challenging 

those in power. In short, from bringing down the powerful from their thrones and sending the rich 

away empty.

We are right to feel turned off by American politics. But we must not allow that to lead to apathy 

and despair or denial. And we must not allow that to make us numb or willfully ignorant or cynical.

And we must not allow American politics to define how we do politics - how we live together - as 

a church.

As a church, we can do better. We can be better.

We can open ourselves to see the suffering and the death in our world. We can open ourselves 

to feeling pain, to experiencing grief.

And we can open ourselves to imagining something different, something better.

But imagining a different and better future necessarily means the end of the status quo. And 

that’s bad news for those who benefit from the world as it is.

And that’s why, in today’s reading, “the priests and the prophets and all the people seized 

[Jeremiah], saying, ‘You are doomed to die.’”

You see, good news is a matter of perspective.

It’s hard to imagine our small congregation changing the world. But it’s also pretty presumptuous 

to think we control the whole world. At any rate, why would a world that does not know the Christ 

whose birth we are celebrating, why would we expect that world to follow the way of Jesus?

So maybe we start with our congregation.

As Stanley Hauerwas and Will Willimon argue, “the political task of Christians is to be the church 

rather than to transform the world.”

I take this to mean that we, as the church, can embody an alternative way of being together, an 

alternative politics.

But as Brueggeman reminds us, imagination comes first.

So let’s spend these next few days of Christmas imagining what our lives together could and 

should look like. Imagine what it feels like. Dream.

And then read our passage from Acts and pray.

Pray that we don’t throw stones at the Stephens among us. Pray that we will have hearts and 

minds and ears to hear each other’s dreams. Pray that we can be a people who refuse violence, 

in whatever form it takes, as we figure out how to live together.

The First Day of Christmas: Which Savior? Whose Salvation?

 

Which Savior? Whose Salvation?

The First Day of Christmas

Friday, December 25, 2020

Luke 2.(1-7), 8-20

In their commentary on Luke, Amy-Jill Levine and Ben Witherington III explain how Luke challenges 

Roman propaganda, “giv[ing] readers a choice: which savior do you follow, and whose salvation do 

you want?”

We think of “gospel” (good news) as unique to Christianity. We associate “savior” and “son of God” 

with Jesus. But anyone living in the Ancient Near East, circa 1st century, would have immediately 

thought of the Emperor Augustus when they heard these terms.

By attributing these terms to Jesus, “Luke is thus challenging the claims of the emperor,” argue 

Levine and Witherington.

To understand why this is such a challenge, just look back to the previous chapter, to Mary’s 

Magnificat:

He has brought down the powerful from their thrones,

   and lifted up the lowly;

he has filled the hungry with good things,

   and sent the rich away empty.

This is a direct challenge to Augustus, the Emperor, who sits on the throne as Jesus is born. 

Mary’s hymn says that he will be, actually that he already has been, brought down from his 

throne and sent away empty.

And so, like it or not, Christmas is political. 

You see, there is actually no such thing as “not political.” We live together, in community. And 

figuring out how to do that is politics.

In our church this year, we have seen a glimpse of what politics can be. 

As is often the case, our children led the way, collecting food for the Little Free Pantry at Caritas in 

January, February, and again in March, as well as selling handmade Valentine’s cards to raise $365 

for MIFA.

And by the time our annual missions offering was complete, we raised over $40,000 for ArkWings, 

Bridges, Caritas, Church Health, Family Promise, Hospitality Hub, LifeLine to Success, MIFA, Peace 

of Thread, Rachel’s Kids, Samaritan Counseling, our South Africa partners. (We’ve raised another 

$23,000 so far this year.) We also supported the CBF response following the tornadoes that hit

middle Tennessee in early March.

All of this redistribution of wealth is political. And in a self-centered world, even small acts of service 

to others is a form of resistance.

When COVID-19 hit, we found creative ways to continue the political work of the church. We’ve kept 

in touch via phone calls, text messages, emails, and even good old-fashioned snail mail letters; and 

we have gathered on/in Zoom calls, porches, patios, backyards, and parks.

In an isolated world, forming community is a political act of resistance.

We were there for one another during painful times as well, mourning the loss of 13 church members 

in 2020. And in a culture that seeks to avoid any and all thought of death, it is a political act to 

remember, as we do every year on All Saints Day. And so we remember their names - D, W, M, H, 

A, B, L, A, I, P, D, B, V [note: abbreviated here for privacy] - and we keep alive the memories of how 

they shaped our community. Despite what our culture would have us believe, we do not make 

ourselves.

We also welcomed babies S, I, L, and J into our community this year, signs of hope in a world of 

despair. It’s a political act to have children. It’s a political act for us to commit to helping raise other 

people’s children. And it’s our political task to make the future better for them.

And so, on this Christmas Day, we have to ask ourselves, Which savior? Whose salvation? 

Like it or not, Christmas is political.

The question is, what will our politics look like?

Last night, on Christmas Eve, the coldest night of the year, we gathered to light the Christ candle, to 

spread the flame, to bring light and warmth into the world. 

In a dark and cold world, there are those who would keep the light and warmth to themselves to build 

up their power. And there are those who would use their wealth to buy up light and warmth for 

themselves, keeping it from others. No wonder Mary sings of bringing them down from their thrones 

and sending them away empty.

The lesson of Christmas is of the divine refusing to keep the light and warmth in heaven, but to bring it 

to earth to share with all. And so the politics of the church is likewise to refuse to keep the light and 

warmth to ourselves, but to freely share it with all as we did symbolically last night.

On earth as it is in heaven.