Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.” Mt. 10: 37
A long time ago, I heard a sermon in which the priest made a peculiar, but intriguing statement. It was this:
“Water is thicker than blood.”
What he was referring to was the question St. Paul poses in today’s second reading from his letter to the Romans: “Are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried with him through baptism … so that … we might live in newness of life.”
Matthew, the author of today’s gospel, is making a similar statement when he makes the puzzling and often upsetting assertion that “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”
To begin to understand this, we must remember the time and the place in which Jesus was making this claim. Jewish families in Jesus’ time were controlled by the unquestionable authority of the father. Everyone in his household lived in total submission to him. This kind of domination often led to abuses of one kind or another.
What today’s sacred writings are reminding us is that Jesus and Paul recognized that this notion of family was too small, too narrow, too restrictive. The larger, and far more important reality was the conviction that the waters of baptism can create a new kind of family – a family that is composed of people who have discovered that an entirely different style of living is attainable.
This is how the waters of baptism can truly be thicker than blood.
What Jesus and Paul are both saying is that our baptism matters. It changes us. It calls us to re-think our value system, to re-view what truly counts in life, to re-commit ourselves to what will surely last against all odds.
Our baptism is a marker point. It is an immersion into a life that is out of the ordinary, that introduces us to a lifestyle that is wholeheartedly focused on the reality of God.
Since we were mere infants when this sacred ceremony took place, it’s important for us as adults to review and to meditate upon the powerful words that were spoken on our behalf at that time. In doing so, we will be reminded that we were originally “bathed in light,” and given the mission to be “followers and witnesses to the gospel.”
Ultimately, then, what Jesus is trying to teach each of us by these very challenging words in today’s gospel are two things:
First, Jesus is calling us to share his own passion for God. He wants us to light a fire that will burn in our hearts just like it did in his. He is asking us to not just praise him and adore him and worship him, but most important of all:
Follow him.
Do as he did. Love what he loved. Be committed to what he was committed to: service and compassion.
Second, Jesus is asking us to join him in creating a new type of family. He wants us to leave behind the kind that was so prominent in his time, and begin forming a family united by the common desire to do God’s will.
In a word, Jesus wants us to become re-baptized.
In doing so, Jesus is in effect asking us to re-imagine what the word “family” can mean, namely, a community of people dedicated to witnessing to the world what life could be like if we were willing to be transformed, changed, re-baptized.
Admittedly, that will not be easy. It will involve stretching us, pulling us out of our small selves, introducing us to something bigger and richer and fuller. It will involve taking us to a whole new level of living.
Even to one where “Water is thicker than blood.”
Ted Wolgamot, Psy.D.
11809194.1
6/29/17
