Sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts:
Amos 7:7-15;
Ephesians 1:3-14;
Mark 6:14-29.

Families can be great and they can also be messy. All families have systems by which they operate for better or for worse. Individuals within the family follow patterns that are set early in life without our conscious awareness. Sometimes these are healthy and functional. Sometimes not.

So it can be remarkably helpful to become aware of the patterns by which you participate in your family system. Pioneering work in this area was done by psychiatrist Murray Bowen who theorized that human relationships are governed by emotional system that evolved over several billion years. Family therapist and Rabbi Edwin Friedman taught the family systems theory to leaders of spiritual communities which function as families.

Even though Israel was divided after the tenth century BCE it was still a family. Not only by kinship and tribal identity, but also by their covenant with God. So, they were family by blood as wells as spiritual family by their contract with God.

Therefore, when Amos who belonged to the southern branch of the family began to criticize his kinsman the king of the northern branch of the family, it didn’t go well. Here’s the back story. Jeroboam’s reign had been long and peaceful, yet anxiety was building in Northern and Southern Israel. Relations with bordering nations were growing perilous.

Within the kingdom, wealth and power had become concentrated among the elite. Justice belonged to those who could afford it. Amos brought word that God had judged the northern kingdom and king to have departed from the ways of righteousness – the moral and spiritual plumb line. And this would come to a sorry end.

At this point the priest Amaziah, in charge of the northern kingdom’s temple at Bethel inserted himself into things. There’s always someone, right? Along the lines of I was only trying to be helpful, which are probably seven of the most destructive words anyone can utter, Amaziah informed Amos that Jeroboam was really mad, and then banished Amos from northern Israel.

This indirect three way conversation between Amaziah, Amos, and Jeroboam is called a triangle in Bowen Family Systems theory. Triangles are never good. You know, two sides against one, and all that. Regrettable things are said.

In his rant, Amaziah revealed a terrible truth about the king and kingdom. You know what? This temple at Bethel belongs to the king, not to God. It’s a family secret, a thing of shame that people have known, but no one has been willing or able to say out loud. Now it can’t be unsaid. The king rules here, not God.

Amos responded to the priest with a first millennium version of I’m just saying… He was pretty much done with the prophecy anyway. He finished up with a word of hope. God’s grace would one day bring restored life to the family.

Mark’s gospel also takes on a family system. The extensive and convoluted Herodians.

Again, everyone in this story is part of the same family. You need a chart to sort out all the similar sounding names. And this may have been Mark’s point. It is an increasing concentration of legal and emotional bonds that threaten to strangle the health of the greater family.

As before, the greater family is formed by more than blood kinship; they are also God’s family called into being by the covenant. The Herods are part of this family. So too are John the Baptist and Jesus.

John had the temerity to point out that the family was playing fast and loose with God’s covenant. Though John’s subject was unlawful marriage within the family, he was criticizing something greater – the collusion of Jewish and Roman power and the loss of Israel’s spiritual identity, wisdom, and leadership in the world.

Herod was not actually king, he was the tetrarch of the region. He aspired to kingship though and hoped that Rome would grant him the title. He needed to show control over the region’s Jewish population. He feared John’s public criticism far more than God. However John feared God, not Herod and dared to speak the truth about Herod’s moral and ethical choices.

As happens when threatened and feeling anxiety, the family system struck back. The target was John the Baptist. You know the end to this sorry story. And also that we are not just talking about things that happened several millennia ago. It is about right now too.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. As Ephesians 1:7 says, we are a gifted family. God lavishes grace upon us and infuses us with the Spirit so that we don’t run empty of the energies we need to live into a more promising future.

Re-imagining family systems, identifying and defusing anxiety, and restoring emotional health in broken relationships is a deeply spiritual task. The gospel is God’s word of promise through Jesus that no family or family member is beyond redemption.

We are called to spread this message far and wide. We can apply it at every level.  It is good news that we can undertake at home, in our church, in our schools, at our places of employment, in our county, in our state, in our country, in our world. Because, according to God, we are all family. All beloved.  No exceptions.