A few years back the local Portland, OR news glommed onto a minor scandal. That year Christmas day fell on a Sunday, and across the city large evangelical churches were canceling services. Reporters–all too eager to abandon their beat at the mall food court interviewing stressed out shoppers–tracked down pastors from the city’s largest churches. The pastors’ responses to questions about service cancellation on Christmas were nearly unanimous: “Christmas is an important holiday for families and we want to respect that.”
One report segued to Dr. Paul Metzger, a Professor of Theology at Multnomah Bible College, for commentary. He said it was ironic that Christians would cancel church to celebrate their Lord’s birth. He went on to describe this as a capitulation to a culture that has turned the Christian calendar into occasions for consumption. And he concluded by reminding viewers that familial loyalty, when prioritized over the church, can all too easily become a kind of idolatry. Christmas + family = idolatry? A surprising equation! Who knew theology could be such a Grinch?
Dr. Metzger wasn’t wrong. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Jesus asked. “Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.'” (Mark 3:33-35). Here Christ proclaims the discomfiting notion that our shared faith is a more significant and lasting bond than our biology. Blood may be thicker than water, but the blood of Christ is thicker still.
This is troubling news. It confronts our provincial views of the world and ourselves; our identity is not finally grounded in categories of race, ethnicity, political party, nationality, etc. (Gal. 3:28). It confronts our competitive and consumptive view of the world; the world is not one great competition for limited resources between us and them.
But this is also great good news. For in giving up these sources of security and identity we gain more than we could possibly lay aside. Jesus explains,
No one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields–and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life. (Mark 10:29-30)
Our adoption into Christ’s family, “the household of faith” (Gal. 6:10), grants us a family larger than we ever imagined, and it grants us more possessions than we could fit under the tree.
We should celebrate Christmas with our family. On this point we can all agree. But like Jesus we must ask, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” Who is my family?
I’ve come to believe that Dr. Metzger’s televised warning made little sense to most viewers. They could not fathom how family affection could ever become idolatrous? But there were some watching–widows and widowers, orphans without families, strangers and aliens whose biological families were far away–who knew just what he was talking about. For them church was the one place they could go on Christmas and not be alone. The problem with canceling services that Sunday was that it neglected these, the loneliest members of our Christian family. Precisely those most able to help us understand Mary’s and Joseph’s plight that Christmas night so long ago.
