Family & Friends

John 15: 9-17

This pandemic has been front and centre of everything for longer than we probably care to remember - it has affected all of us in profound ways. But whatever we happen to be facing at any time in our life, it is never all bad - even though it may seem so at times. There is always some good.

During the year and a half of having our lives upturned, we all can probably identify the good things that we have experienced - things that we may not have otherwise experienced or appreciated. One of the things I am thankful for is the time that I have been able to spend with my family. Time to laugh together and pray together; to share our concerns, reassured that we are not facing them alone, or to just sit in silence, knowing that in each other, there is love on which we can depend. It is good to be able to spend such quality time at home with my family.

Home and family are among the greatest blessings we can experience. To have a place where we are safe and where we can rest. A place where we can share experiences and create memories with people whom we love and who love us.

To be part of a family is one of the truly defining experiences of our lives.

But we know that home and family are not always the blessing that they are meant to be and can be. Life takes us through many experiences. Sometimes we find ourselves in a home filled with people and filled with love. Sometimes we find ourselves in a house filled with people but devoid of love – a place of indifference and even pain.

And sometimes we find ourselves home alone - alone with heavy hearts, or alone with hearts and minds filled with loving memories and thankfulness for those special people who shaped, and are at the centre of those memories.

Today is Mother’s Day, and we also observe today as Family Sunday. We thank God for those special people with whom we are linked by blood or marriage or adoption, whether they are near or far, as well as those who are no longer with us but whom we remember with joy and gratitude.

But family is more than that; most importantly, a family consists of those with whom we share a bond of love.

In an op-ed column written for the New York Times, Frank Bruni writes about his friend Elli. He says, “Elli has never given birth, never adopted, never taken primary responsibility for an infant, a toddler or an adolescent. But on the far side of 65, she finds herself playing the role of mother.

At the beginning of each school year, she is likely to be helping one of her college-age boys move into his freshman dorm. At the end of the year, she is at a commencement, beaming as another of her boys finishes his four years and receives his diploma.

The boys are from Zimbabwe, where Elli has spent extensive time and where she met many poor, bright teenagers determined to study in America. She not only guided them through the application process but also remained one of the central figures in their lives.

And they became essential to her. They consult her about everything and confide in her, and on holidays, they converge at her house to be fed and fussed over.”

And says Bruni, “By any definition that matters, she and her boys are a family.”

Family is fashioned by love and for love. It is defined by love and expressed in caring. With whomever we are joined in a bond of love, we are family.

In today’s Gospel reading, we are reminded of the bond of love that holds us together. The bond of love that exists between Jesus and God. Between Jesus and us. And the same bond of love that should characterize our relationship with each other.

Everything that has to do with being followers of Jesus has to do with love. Everything that has to do with being in relationship with others has to do with love. It is both simple and incredibly profound. It is both easy and extremely challenging. To love each other as scripture teaches and as Christ has shown us, is to do what is good and right, and in the best interest of others, even when it comes at a personal cost. It is to extend ourselves to others in ways that are enriching and renewing, rather than self-serving. And none of that is easy.

But that’s what families should be about.

That’s what builds strong and healthy relationships.

That what builds flourishing communities.

That is how we embody Christ.

To help us to understand the mutual affection and interpersonal bond that should exists in families and communities, Jesus names those who love as he loves, as his friends from whom nothing is withheld. He says: “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”

Let’s face it; there are families for whom the only bond that they share is a biological bond. Otherwise, they may just as well be strangers or passing acquaintances. But Jesus is drawing us into relationships of friendship.

A relationship of friendship does not diminish what we share as family; rather it deepens that relationship. It extends the relationship beyond a mere biological connection. Unlike kinship, friendship is a choice. It’s an expression of mutual affection. It’s an acceptance of another as a valued part of our lives. That’s why Jesus says: “Greater love has no one, than to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

That’s the type of love that should exists within our families – a sacrificial love, a love that will move us to give what we can for the health and wellbeing of others.

What should mark our families is how we love; not who the members are and what they bring to the family.

I was once asked what I considered to be my number one duty to my family. My answer was “to love them and ensure that they know that I do”. I may not always succeed, but I will keep trying.

Our primary calling as members of a family, is to love one another, so that together, we may bear lasting fruit – things that are sustaining and enduring. This image of lasting fruit that Jesus uses, speaks to the fact that loving as Jesus does, is not something that we do only when we are in the mood, or when it is convenient, it is that which we should be striving for all the time. Loving as Jesus loves is a standard to which we are all equally accountable, and the result of so living is both sustaining and enduring.

What is more, is that when we learn to love that way, it is easier for us to extend that love beyond our families to those who need such love. What better places our communities would be, if only we can love one another the way Christ loves us.

Families are the places where such love is best taught and nurtured and practiced.

With all our faults and shortcomings, families are still the best thing there is to embody and reflect the love of God.

Let us give thanks for our families.

Let us offer forgiveness where there is hurt, and work for reconciliation where such is needed.

Let us honour one another, especially our mothers and those through whom the motherly love of God flows.

Let us love one another as Christ loves us.

Thanks be to God.