From time to time books are published
that suggest that Jesus might have been married, and they usually suggest that
his wife was Mary Magdalene. It is interesting and even entertaining to observe
the controversy that swirls around every time such a book appears.
It is usually conservative Protestants
and Roman Catholics who are most scandalized by the thought that Jesus might
have been married. Personally, I believe
that it is extremely unlikely that Jesus ever married. If Jesus had been
married, where is the evidence? There is certainly nothing in the canonical New
Testament about Jesus’ wedding or his wife or children. There isn’t even
anything in the earliest non-canonical Christian writings about it or even in
the schismatical and heretical writings.
I think the strongest argument against
the idea that Jesus was married is psychological. How long can you keep a
secret? There is something in human nature that makes is impossible to keep
secrets. If Jesus had been married, that would have been just about the biggest
secret in human history, and I am certain that someone would have felt
compelled to spill the beans, but there is simply no record that anyone ever
did.
However, there is something odd in the controversies
that erupt over the idea that Jesus might have been married. Doesn’t it strike you as odd that it is precisely the
people who are most upset by the suggestion that Jesus might have been married
are also the ones who are most vociferous about so-called “family values”?
“Family values”
has become the rallying cry of the religious right, and in many ways, I think
they are on to something important. Drug
abuse, crime, education, divorce, unwanted children, domestic abuse… Certainly
better parenting and healthier families would do a lot to alleviate these and
other social problems.
So, of course,
we would expect Jesus to be on the side of family values. What did Jesus have to say about
family values? Listen to these words
from today’s gospel reading:
"Whoever
comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers
and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.”
Uh oh... I hope
the Forum on the Family doesn’t hear about this. They might try to have the National Endowment
for the Humanities cut off his funding.
I’m not trying
to be facetious, but it’s a little difficult to see Jesus waving the banner of
family values as understood by many on the religious right. Jesus’ relationship with his own family
seems to have been very troubled, and the trouble started at the very
beginning. When Joseph learned that his
fiancée Mary was pregnant before the marriage, he seriously considered calling
the whole thing off, and was only dissuaded from it by a direct message from
God delivered in a dream.
When he was 12
years old, the boy Jesus remained in the Temple rather than returning to
Nazareth with Mary and Joseph. When they
found the boy missing from their traveling party, they returned to the Temple
and found him conversing with the learned men.
Mary scolded Jesus rather sharply and said, “Son, why have you treated
us so? Behold your father and I have
been looking for you anxiously”. And
Jesus replied equally sharply, “Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s
house?” (Luke 2.49) By identifying the Temple
as “his Father’s house” rather than Joseph’s house in Nazareth, the 12 year old
Jesus was already declaring his independence from his family. Wouldn’t that be an interesting Gospel
reading for Father’s Day?
And when Jesus finally launched his ministry
of teaching and miraculous cures, his family believed that he was possessed by
a demon and tried to seize him and bring him home with them. It was as though a family in our day and time
were trying to abduct and “de-program” a child who had joined a cult. When Jesus learned what his family was trying
to do, he looked around at his disciples and said, “Who are my mother and
brothers? Whoever does the will of God
is my brother, and sister and mother”.(Mark 3.34) In effect, he disowned his earthly family and
announced the creation of a new, spiritual family.
Jesus and family
values are an uneasy combination.
Between the beginning of his ministry and his crucifixion his family
consisted of a motley group of disciples that included both men and women. Many of them seem to have abandoned their own
families. The gospels tell us that when
Jesus called Peter and James and John that they dropped their fishing nets and
followed him. In other words, they
simply walked away from jobs and families to follow an itinerant prophet. This “family” that followed Jesus wandered
from place to place. They seem to have
supported themselves by asking for handouts.
No wonder Jesus made the authorities nervous!
Now, don’t
misunderstand me: Jesus did not endorse disobedience
to parents nor did he encourage husbands to leave their wives or vice
versa. Jesus was no advocate of
irresponsibility. But the teachings of
Jesus radically challenged the idea of family in the first century and perhaps
in our world, too.
In the first
century, family was everything. One was
a Jew because one’s mother was Jewish.
One didn’t choose the Jewish faith; one was born into it. That was why Nicodemus found Jesus so
puzzling. “You must be born again,”
Jesus said to Nicodemus, and the learned Nicodemus replied, “How can this
be? Can one enter again into one’s
mother’s womb?” (John 3.4) Nicodemus saw
no need for a second birth. He had been
born a Jew and a Pharisee and no greater heritage was imaginable. We’ve become so accustomed to the phrase
“born again” that we do not see what a
revolutionary idea it was in first century Judaism. It implied a radical rejection of the whole
structure of Judaism. One was to be born
again not by blood but by the spirit.
One was to be born not into an earthly family but into a spiritual one.
One’s earthly ancestors became completely irrelevant.
It was not just
first century Judaism that made the family central. It was true of the Roman Empire, as well.
Family was everything. The family was
the central institution in Rome. The
father of a family was known as the paterfamilias,
and he had almost absolute power over those in his household. But Jesus taught his disciples to call no one
father except God. (Matthew 23.9) With a
stroke, Jesus severed the ties that bound his disciples both to their earthly
families and to the larger societies of which families were and are the basic
units.
“I have not come
to bring peace but a sword. I will set
father against son and mother against daughter...” Jesus came to found an entirely new kind of
family. And it didn’t take long before
first the Jewish authorities and later the Roman authorities realized just how
dangerous his ideas were.
A tribe is just
an extension of the family or a collection of families. It is odd at the beginning of the 21st
century to find tribalism reasserting itself.
Everywhere we look in the world, we see hatred and even wars that are
based on kinship, that is to say, on families.
Protestant families against Catholic families; Muslim families against
Jewish families; Hindu families against Muslim families. People are hated and
killed simply because of who their parents and grandparents were.
At their best,
families are places of love and warmth and nurture. And I would venture to say that the
healthiest families are those in which there is enough love not only for those
who have a claim to it by their birth but also for those outside the circle of
the family. God is constantly probing at
us and our families to see if our love excludes or includes, if we will
constrict the circle of our love or open our arms wide. Jesus challenges our idea of family values
because he preached a gospel of love without limits. Nowhere does Jesus
encourage neglect of family. Rather, he
asks us to love the poor, the hungry, and the homeless alongside our own
parents and children. Jesus preached a
“both/and” love, not an “either/or” love.
Did Jesus preach
an impossible ethic? Yes. Does that mean that the bar is set so high
that we might as well not even try? Not
at all. Instead, Jesus expects us to
learn to love by loving those in our families and then extending that love to
those outside, to those with no claim on our love, to those whom no one
loves.
God put us in
families because families are schools of love.
Our families are schools of love, because it’s very difficult to love
someone you share a bathroom with! We
are put in families because it’s usually easiest to love those who are similar
to us, but unfortunately, that’s where we stop all too often. Loving those whom we know, loving people who
love us, is only love’s most basic arithmetic, but Jesus challenges us to go on
and learn love’s advanced calculus. We
must love our families, to be sure, but that is only the first step on love’s
journey, a journey whose ultimate destination is to learn to love those who are
completely different from us and perhaps even repellent to us.
So love your wife
or husband or partner. Love your
children. Love your parents. Love your sisters and brothers. Love yourself. But don’t let your love stop at the front
door. Instead, keep your hearts and your
homes wide open, because Jesus is coming to knock on your door.
