A CENTERED IDENTITY

Have you ever sat in the pew and felt like an outsider?  Wondering about your relationship with Christ.  We want a personal relationship with Christ and envy those who seem to have it.  Spiritual people are different.  They are the saints who don’t get their hands dirty with everyday life.  Or are they?  Do they have bills to pay and a family to raise?  We may consider life’s burdens an obstacle to having a close relationship with Jesus.

When we consider the nation of Israel’s history as it ebbed and flowed through the many peaks and valleys in their relationship with God.  The prophet Micah, in today’s reading, offers a prayer reminding God of his promises to the people and urging Him to act as He has always done, with mercy and compassion.  Israel’s prayers always appeal to the exodus. Whether asking for forgiveness, seeking assurance, or promising amendment, Israel recognizes that her very identity is bound up in the covenant executed by God’s rescuing the people from slavery and bringing them to the land of promise.

In the Gospel we find Jesus’ family described as “standing outside” the circle of the crowds, with Jesus’ disciples in the center.   In the Gospel of Matthew, Mary is not a significant character as evidenced by the infancy narratives. So, halfway through this Gospel, Jesus’ family remains undecided about his identity.

Addressing the relatively open statement of a bystander, Jesus asks rhetorically “Who are my mother and brothers?” (Mt 12:48) He then answers that his redefined family are those who do his Father’s will.  Stretching out his hand to his disciples, Jesus adopts them as his family and challenges them to exemplify the Church in carrying out God’s will.

We are the adopted children of Christ.  To think of we are as anything less is like deciding to be “standing outside,” cut off from, the amazing grace of knowing Christ.

Now we know there’s been some bumps in the road and dark valleys in our own lives.  We also know that Jesus lived in the middle of all the action.  He embraced life surrounded by ordinary people living ordinary lives.  He laughed with his friends and cried at funerals.  He talked about fishing, planting seeds, and going to parties.  He lifted his disciples up when they felt low, rebuked their wrongs, and forgave their disbelief.  

Jesus was a regular guy who was also extraordinary.  He shows us the way to have a relationship with God.  Being a spiritual person is simply living the life we have been given.  We gather around the Eucharistic table regularly to pray the exodus prayers of acknowledging our own faults and reminding God of His great compassion and mercy so we can be counted in the center of the crowd around Jesus.  This is how we know that our identity, as ordinary a life as we may have, is in the center, to be a member of his family.  “For whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Mt 13:50)