“Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. – Mark 3:33

Today’s Scripture Reading (August 17, 2014): Mark 3

For the past few decades we have been mourning the death of the extended family in the cultural west. Increased mobility has made it possible for people to move away from the places where they grew up. But there is a cost to that movement – as we leave our homes we also leave our extended family and the support structure that is present in that place. The problem, which we are just starting to realize, is that we seem to be designed to live within the extended family structure. We need not just our parents but our grandparents and aunts and uncles if we are going to be well adjusted and healthy people. Researchers long ago noticed as the extended family began to break down, the nuclear family (husband, wife and children) started to show serious signs of stress. It seems that one cannot exist without the other.

For health reasons, my parents, sister and I became one of the family groups that left the ancestral breeding grounds and the support structure that had been present in that place. Most of my family can be found either in the Southern portion of Ontario, Canada (where I was born) or in the far east of the country (especially in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick). But my family when I was young left Southern Ontario and moved 3400 km (2100 miles) west. The result was that the support system for the family was removed. We now had to make it on our own. And as a result, we had become vulnerable.

Maybe one of the healthiest things that my family was able to do was to adopt new family members that lived close to our new home. I still have fond memories of adopted grandparents who were of no relation to me, but who I called Grandma and Grandpa anyway. As well, we had a host of new aunts and uncles. And they did not replace what we had lost, but they did provide more immediate support structure than was possible from our now distant extended relatives.

This is one of the true strengths of the Christian Church, especially in a highly mobile society. Together we become the support structure that is often missing but desperately needed in the lives of those around us. We become father and mother and sister and brother to a host of people in need of just that. Jesus was speaking directly into the needs of a mobile nation when he asked the question “Who are my mother and my brothers?” It is not (as some have tried to argue) that the church literally replaces family. No one can do that and we continue to be in need with our blood relatives, but the church can replace the damaged support structure and, if the church is working well, can be the support to the Nuclear family that is essential if the family is going to survive.

The truth that Jesus knew was that focussing on the nuclear family would be an activity that was doomed to failure. If the family was going to survive, it would only survive because the church was successful in replacing the support structure that had been stolen away. This is the community of Christ. This is how we successfully move into the future.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Luke 6