The latest reincarnatin of this blog that will never die: an occasional place for sermon thoughts to go when they don't quite make it into the sermon.
So today's sermon, on Mark 3:20-35, tries to grapple with one of those sayings of Jesus which we'd prefer Jesus hadn't actually said. His family has come to get him, and not necessarily with peaceful intent, and when the crowds tell Jesus that they're outside calling for him, Jesus drops this backhanded bombshell on them:
Who are my mother and my brothers?
Here are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.
*Smack*.
We don't really handle this one very well, even failing to realize that in many cases this rejoinder is good news, for those for whom what our society worships as the "nuclear family" is not at all a place of refuge or safety. The reasons can be more numerous than the stars: abuse of many different kinds from physical to emotional, of every horrifying type; parental or familial rejection for such "sins" as having the gall to come out or to vote for a Democrat or to choose to take a job far away from the old home place (I have known people who have suffered all of the above, fwiw); parents incapacitated by drug abuse or alcohol abuse or mental illness or again, a wide variety of things, and simply incapable of caring for a child; fights or disputes over a girl or a job or a house or who knows what; the list can be frankly endless of things that can irreparably split a family. For a person caught in any of those forced isolations, Jesus's declaration is a message of hope indeed.
Still, the rest of this particular society doesn't particularly warm to this bit of instruction. To be sure, enough politicized verbiage over "family values" has been shoveled upon us over many decades now, and it would be hard to blame anyone for feeling that, contra Jesus's words, "nothing's more important than family."
Hmm. I've heard that phrase, but not from a politician. Actually, I heard it from Coco.
Coco, in this case, is the 2017 Disney/Pixar animated film about a young boy, wanting to be a musician but ferociously opposed by his family, who blunders into the land of the dead of Mexican tradtion to seek the great-great-grandfather who is his musical inspiration/aspiration. Miguel finds out things were not what he thought, but suffice to say that in the grand tradition of such animated fare everything does work out in the end, despite his family threatening his music even as it is the only thing that can prompt his great-grandmother, the titular Mama Coco, to remember that great-great-grandfather and thus preserve his existence in the land of the dead. (The power of music to affect memory is, of course, something any good music therapist could have suggested.)
And it is in such a context that Miguel utters the line noted above, "nothing's more important than family." Even as his family (in both the realms of the dead and the living) are doing all in their power to prevent him from learning and setting right the wrongs of their family's past, "nothing's more important than family."
Don't get me wrong, I love this movie, and its dramatic climax as he finally plays for Mama Coco was literally breathtaking - I actually forgot to breathe during it, in the midst of all the ugly-crying and nose-running. But that line is grating on me more and more every time I hear it.
This is a fairly recent example of a strong tendency in this particular animated tradition (others can talk up the live-action films like the various Mary Poppinses), taking in both classic Disney animation and more recent Disney and Pixar contributions to the genre. Perhaps one of the most extreme examples might be Cinderella (in whichever version), which draws on an old fable to play up the horrors visited upon the title character when she loses her parents and is forced to live with the prototype wicked stepmother and stepsisters. This bit of suffering from lack of family is only fixed (as is so often in these things) by Cinderella's rescue by a hansome, charming prince, which opens up a whole other can of worms.
To be honest, the phenomenon of missing mothers (or sometimes fathers) in especially the classic Disney animated fare is awfully prolific. Think of orphans or otherwise parentless figures such as all those Lost Boys in Peter Pan, Arthur in The Sword in the Stone, Penny in The Rescuers. Add those who are prominently missing one parent; Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Nemo in Finding Nemo, even Pinocchio being "raised" by the "single parent" Geppetto. Throw in those actually lose parents as part of the film; Tod in The Fox and the Hound, Mowgli's mother in The Jungle Book, Quasimodo's mother in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mufasa in The Lion King, and both of Elsa and Anna's parents in Frozen (and Kristoff is somehow an orphan too). Plus, do I even need to mention Bambi's mother?
Throw in wicked stepmothers and -others (besides Cinderella, you can also point to the Queen in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Mother Gothel, Rapunzel's kidnapper-cum-"mother" in Tangled) and you've got a long list. Source material in fairy tales and fables contributes to this a great deal, of course, but you know, you could look at other sources after a while. Even then, though, the single-parent theme seems awfully persistent: Tiana's father was a WWI casualty in The Princess and the Frog, and where is Andy's father in the Toy Story movies? Coco is almost an outlier for having such a prolifically present family.
Rescue by a handsome prince still crops up an awful lot in such cases where princes make any sense; even as late a contribution as The Princess and the Frog throws in a handsome, charming playboy prince, and of course princes abound in the classic fare. Rapunzel is ultimately restored to her parents in Tangled; Mowgli gets adopted in a Jungle Book sequel; Simba mates with Nala in The Lion King.
In short, there aren't many such movies in which some form of family restoration (either marriage or finding parents or adoption) is not the ultimate solution. Frozen can count as one, although Frozen II suggests that Anna and Kristoff do finally get together. Marlin and Nemo muddle through in Finding Nemo. I think the ultimate example of family resilience, as opposed to family restoration, in the Disney corpus is probably the least Disney-ish Disney animated film of all: Lilo & Stitch.
When the destructive little alien Stitch crash-lands on one of the Hawaiian islands and gets "adopted" by young Lilo, much against older sister Nani's wishes, a family, however unwitting, is "made," even if it takes a while to set in. Stitch (originally no name, just Experiment 626) has no real capacity for anything like "family" relationship - the only purpose built into him was to destroy. Lilo and Nani are orphans; their parents' death is described by Lilo barely in passing - "it was raining, they went for a drive." Nani, only a teenager herself, is losing her grip as Lilo's guardian, constantly on the verge of losing her to state guardianship. Yet after many misadventures (no point in spoiling the film), the three are finally a family, as claimed by Stitch himself as he is about to be taken into intergalactic custody:
Grand Councilwoman: Who are you?
Stitch: This is my...family. I found it,...all on my own.
It's little...and...broken...but, still good. Yeah. Still good.
Folks, that'll preach.
Finding a family, when there's no such thing as family, must feel like a miracle. When Jesus turns to the motley crowd in Mark 3 and says "these are my mother and brothers!", who knows what kind of flabbergasted and amazed reactions that received - not from the disdainful biological mother and brothers or the bullying religious authorities, but from the crowd itself. The level of grace in such a claim overwhelms. There is the following statement that "whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother."
Respect those families made from grace, when all hope for that place of belonging seems lost. Respect those families made from struggling together. Respect those families that are made, the way Jesus made one.
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