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.”
He was referring to the question St. Paul poses in today’s 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 passage, offers a similar thought with his puzzling and often upsetting assertion that “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”
To begin to grasp this, we must consider the time and the place in which Jesus made 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.
Today’s sacred writings remind us 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 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.
Baptism matters.
This is what Jesus and Paul are both saying.
Baptism 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, and introduces us to a lifestyle that is wholeheartedly focused on the reality of God.
Since most of us 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 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 teaching 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 and adore 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 of family 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 asks 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.
NOTE: In the midst of a ferocious pandemic and the sustained outcry over the police killing of George Floyd, many white Americans seemingly have felt compelled to acknowledge that anti-black racism is prevalent in the United States – even to the point of examining their own culpability for it. For example, according to the New York Times, “large numbers of white Americans have attended racial justice demonstrations, purchased books about racial inequality and registered for webinars on how to raise children who are anti-racist …. Others are going to tattoo parlors to cover up images of Confederate flags, swastikas and Ku Klux Klan symbols on their bodies. Many white Americans have chosen places to live, places to send their children to school, places to vacation, jobs to pursue, in ways that allow them to avoid thinking about racial inequality. Some of these same people are beginning to ask themselves: ‘What kind of nation is this, that can be comfortable with a police officer kneeling on someone’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds?’”
Still other white Americans are beginning to discover a whole historic part of America that they were never taught in school. It’s called the “Black Codes.” According to Wikipedia and other sources (my special thanks to Lynn Barnett for pointing this out!!), one year after the 13th Amendment (that ended slavery) was ratified, a whole series of southern states began to lease out convicts for labor (peonage). This made the business of arresting Blacks very lucrative, which is why hundreds of White men were hired by these states as police officers. Their primary responsibility was to search out and arrest Blacks who were in violation of Black Codes. Once arrested, these men, women and children would be leased to plantations where they would harvest cotton, tobacco, and sugar cane. Or they would be leased to work at coal mines, or railroad companies. The owners of these businesses would pay the state for every prisoner who worked for them: prison labor.
The 13th Amendment declared that “neither slavery nor involuntary servitude could occur except as a punishment for a crime.” Lawmakers then used this phrase to make petty offenses crimes. When Blacks were found guilty of committing crimes, they were imprisoned and then leased out to the same businesses that lost slaves after the passing of the 13th Amendment.
The majority of White Southern farmers and business owners hated the 13th Amendment because it took away slave labor. As a way to appease them, the federal government turned a blind eye when southern states used this clause in the 13th Amendment to establish the laws that came to be called Black Codes.
It is believed that after the passing of the 13th Amendment, more than 800,000 Blacks were part of this system of peonage, or re-enslavement through the prison system. Peonage didn’t end until after World War II began.
There is much more to this story (especially the culpability of northern states and the development of Jim Crow laws) that could be written about this horrifying issue. I recommend Wikipedia for a far more complete and detailed record of this criminality – none of which was taught in our history books.
A Prayer:
“Dear Lord,
In our efforts to dismantle racism, we understand that we struggle not merely against flesh and blood but against powers and principalities – those institutions and systems that keep racism alive by perpetuating the lie that some members of the family are inferior and others superior.
Create in each of us a new mind and heart that will enable us to see brothers and sisters in the faces of those divided by racial categories.
Help us to create a church and a nation that embraces the hopes and fears of oppressed people where we live, as well as those around the world.
Heal your family God, and make us one with you, in union with our brother Jesus, and empowered by your Holy Spirit.”
Pax Christi
