Feast of the Holy Family
Sirach 3:2-6, 12-14 | Colossians 3:12-21 | Matthew 2:13-15, 19-23
Oh God, who pleased to give us the shining example of the holy family, graciously grant that we may imitate them in practicing the virtues of family life in the bonds of charity and so, in the joy of your house, delight one day in eternal rewards. Through our Lord Jesus Christ, your Son who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever, amen.
There’s something so fascinating about the Old Testament when it comes to focusing on the birth and life of Jesus, and that is simply that there is over 300 references in the Old Testament to who this Messiah would be, where he’d be born, where he would live, what his name would be. It’s amazing. I even discovered, in getting ready for this homily, that the very term Nazareth comes from a Hebrew word that means branch, and when Jesus ended up, through a series of insights that Joseph received in a dream and they end up living in Nazareth and raising him there, it so fits the image that we started the season of Advent with, where this great tree, the Old Testament, in a sense was cut back. A new branch, a new twig started growing, and the place where this twig grew up is called the branch.
Interesting, but in all those images, we see something coming that is radically, radically new. I think of all the things that I think about Christianity is we believe part of it, but we won’t take in the whole message. We won’t grab the whole thing and swallow it and let it come in, because it’s too different. It’s too transforming, changing. It changes everything, and I know, and you know that human beings both long for change, because they want to grow, and they develop. But they’re also terrified of it when it takes away the things that are familiar, things they’ve always done, and sometimes people can make an actual virtue of saying, “I’m never going to change. I’ve always thought this way. I’ll never change it. I’m not susceptible to all these new ideas.” And nothing would be more tragic for a person who is open to the Christian tradition to say, “I don’t want to change,” because the one thing about the Old Testament is it was focused on something quite different than the New Testament. And it was supposed to be different, because people were different. But the reason I chose that song, Deep River, is because the main theme of the Old Testament is God entering into people’s lives and wanting to take them on a journey from slavery to freedom — slavery to freedom, the Promised Land, milk and honey, everything wonderful. Who was the slave in that whole story? What were they enslaved to? Obedience to a law, obedience to external rules, obedience that was designed to help people who were in a situation that I would like to describe as simply very, very young. It’s like you don’t give a child at four or seven or eight or eleven or even sometimes fifteen or sixteen freedom to go and do whatever they think is best. They’re bound to authority. So it’s interesting.
On this Feast of the Holy Family, we’re going to be talking about the transition between Old and New Testament in a certain way. At least that’s my theme for this homily, and what I think is so fascinating about the holy family is that it ushered in an entirely new vision of what it was like to live in community — community, the family, the family. It’s impossible, I think, to put the holy family out there as a model of family life. After all, Joseph had married Mary, and according to the Catholic Church, one of its teachings is that they never consummated the marriage, that they had only one son. That’s the tradition in the Catholic Church, and so here is a man who never had sex with his wife, who has one son, and he’s God. You imitate that. How do you do that? Now, there’s something in the holy family that you have to imitate, and what it is is who each of them are, who they are. And they’re not an average mother and an average father and an average child. So how do you understand this family dynamic, this incredibly interesting father who’s willing to give up everything to surrender to a mystery that’s way beyond him and a woman who’s taken a risk and risked her whole reputation, everything, to follow this mysterious messenger, this angel, and this child Jesus who comes along who doesn’t get married. And he’s basically something unique. He’s not just another human. He is 100 percent human, but he also happens to be a human that possesses this unique quality that we are all working toward, and that is the quality of having God inside of him. So we have a God incarnate, a celibate couple. So who are they? Think of them this way. This is a stretch maybe, but think of fatherhood. Who is our Father? God. So this dynamic, this trio, this unity is between a father, his son and his mysterious, feminine, unique figure who I want to call Spirit. It’s the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the part of us, that spiritual part of us that can understand and receive the mystery of something inside of us growing that isn’t us. And that thing that’s growing in us, along with our broken humanity, is the divinity of God. That is the mystery. Each of us become, in a sense, pregnant through this mysterious thing called redemption where God actually enters into us and lives there, and we give birth to him every time we live the way he’s invited us to live. Every time we are who he calls us to be, every time we resonate something out of them, out of ourselves, it’s him.
So let’s look at this first reading again. Maybe it’s the first time we’ve looked at it, but it says very much that a Father is the main figure. You must obey the Father. The Father is everything. You tell any child today that their total obligation their entire life is to do exactly what their father says. They’ll look at you to say, “Well, that’s risky, depending on who the father is.” So you can’t take it literally, but what it seems is being said in the Old Testament is your job, in the Old Testament, before you grew up enough to have your own capacity to make decisions based on a wisdom that comes into you through God’s presence in you, you’re going to have to follow authority. So the Old Testament is all about following authority, and we don’t like letting go of it. And the church loves the authority and hates to see us let go of it. Do what your Father says, and you’ll always be all right. And the Holy Spirit, your mother, she loves it when you’re surrendering to the Father, because the Father is truth. So if you can understand — in the image of the holy family, yeah, the truth is there. You need to surrender to it always. You need to be in touch with the feminine side of you that’s open to receive that mysterious truth, and then you’ve got to put it incarnate in the world through this power and presence of God inside of us. That’s the family we’ve got to imitate, but look at the next reading.
After we’ve listened to an Old Testament reading that says, “You have a debt, your sins, and one way you can get over the debt that you owe is to do everything you’re told.” Now, that is a very precise, beautiful description of the Old Testament, and we still live there. I’d say — I don't know if I’d say most of us, but certainly most of us have that in our background. That feels comfortable, and it’s the teaching of religion. It’s the teaching of any authoritarian figure in your life. It’s your parents when you’re young. “Do what you’re told.” It’s as simple as that. Into that comes the New Testament reading from Paul. What is he saying about relationships? He doesn’t say obey people. I love this. He says, “The first thing you have to do in relationship is have compassion. Forgive them. Honor them in the sense that they are valuable. Be kind. Be gentle. Be compassionate. Be understanding. Forgive everyone as you have been forgiven.” Isn’t that amazing? Instead of surrender yourself to a higher power, work with that power. When it tells you the truth, that’s wonderful, and when it tells you a lie, you just have nothing but understanding and passion. I understand. I can forgive my parents for teaching me things that were destructive to me, that took me years and years to get over. I can do that. I can forgive a church who has laid guilt and shame upon me forever, and I can still love the qualities of that religion, its ritual, the Eucharistic presence, the community it creates, the forgiveness that it calls us into. I can love, love, love that part of it and still forgive the authoritarian part that just doesn’t want to let go.
So then we look at the gospel, and what’s the gospel about? It’s about this message. It’s not just about a man, Jesus. It’s about the message, this Trinitarian family dynamic, this incredible invitation to be free and to be yourself and all that God intends you to be. That is the message that is being received by the world how? Open arms, excited, “Thank you for freeing me. Thank you for bringing me to a promised, better land”? No, it was always and will always be rejected by some core part of humanity. It’s the part that’s afraid. It’s the part that can’t be free. It’s the part that likes to be under control, because it likes to control other people. So here is this beautiful, incarnate message born into the world, innocent as a child, and a king, the king of the most powerful force in the world at the time, Rome, decides to destroy them, destroy the message. He goes out and kills every child under two years old, and so Joseph is aware that this child is carrying a message that’s going to be hated and rejected. He listens to these three times, four times. An angel comes in and says, “Be careful. Even though you don’t fully know and no one has even listened to Jesus, there’s enough in the prophecies in the Old Testament to terrify the people in control, and they know this king is coming. If this happens to be the one, they’re going to make sure he never gets the chance to give his message of freedom, of joy, of peace, of forgiveness.” There is no more debt to our God for our sins if you understand the teaching and the message and the redemption that comes to us through Jesus. There is nothing for us to be afraid of. All we need to do is to receive this gift, and every time one receives this kind of forgiveness, this kind of understanding, this kind of compassion, they are going to have the best chance they could ever have to be that kind of person in the world. That’s all it is. You’re forgiven. You’re loved. You’re cared for. You really believe that? Guess what. You’re going to start doing that, first for yourself and then for other people.
Does that sound like a scary message? No. So who would it scare? Who would be so terrified of it? Anybody who feels that my job is to control, judge, rule over other people, and there’s a thing in every human being. We’ve got it. It’s a great part of us if we can get it under control, but it’s called our ego. It’s called that selfish, lower-conscious self that just says, “It’s all about me.” It is all about you but not you in control but you on the receiving end. You’re the one drinking in this incredible gift of understanding and compassion and forgiveness and unconditional love. We’re made for that. We are, but those in charge are not ready to give it often, and even those who are longing for it most are afraid of what it would mean to be truly free, to be listening to a God inside of me, to want more than anything else the truth and to want to be loved and love. It’s not easy, but once you do it, it’s life.
Father, your presence in our life is beyond our imagining. It’s really hard for us to fathom your intimacy, your joy in being part of our human nature that you created with all of its weaknesses and frailty. You love it the way it is, and you want to be a part of it as it grows and changes. Thank you for this gift. Help us to see it and believe it and not fall in the trap of hating our humanity because of its weaknesses, knowing that somehow that’s a way in which you’ve planned for us to grow and change and become. So let us begin this new year with a new vision of you and our life and what you’re asking of us, and we ask this in Jesus’ name, amen.