Some decisions we make in life are just so clear! We know they are right for us even when they take us outside the everyday pattern of our own lives. In those moments when the only thing we know is that we are doing what we MUST do, and going where we MUST go—it is God in the depths of our being who is leading the way. This is the situation Amos finds himself in as he stands before Amaziah, the priest of the sanctuary at Bethel in Israel. God has sent Amos to confront the Israelites, including the king, with their glaring injustices against the poor and the weak among them. It is a time of relative prosperity in Israel, a time of self-satisfaction and religious arrogance among those reaping the benefits of the nation’s success. In the glow of that success they had lost track of their responsibilities to one another, and to their covenant as a people. Earlier Amos had reminded them where they came from saying: “Hear this word, O Israel, that the Lord pronounces over you, over the whole family that I brought up from the land of Egypt…” It is to this FAMILY—a family that is not acting like a family, a family that is ignoring, even oppressing, its weakest members—that God sent Amos.
Every prophet in the Jewish Scriptures is sent on the same mission—to call the family of God back together. The people need reminders that they are ONE people in a sacred relational covenant with the one and only God. Like us, they forget who they are and what they’re here for. They forget they are a family. At best they resist taking care of the poor and the weak; at worst they exploit the vulnerable for their own economic or political gain. ‘But you are a family,’ Amos tells them. He says this to the king and the priests, as well as the comfortable and the strong. “All of us, including those you are mistreating, are God’s chosen people, God’s family.” Amaziah refuses to hear what Amos is saying and tells him to get out.
God’s idea of FAMILY was, and still is, so much larger than we’re able to fully embrace emotionally. We struggle with it constantly on a practical and political level. It’s just so inclusive! That perspective seems to be something closer to James Joyce’s famous words defining the term Catholic. He said it means “here comes everybody.”
FAMILY is on the mind of the Church right now as bishops debate last October’s Synod on the Family and prepare for its follow-up next October. And family is also on the mind of our nation as we live into the recent Supreme Court decision granting equal status in marriage to lesbian and gay couples throughout the country.
What constitutes a “family” has changed through the centuries and continues to change across cultures. On a spiritual level, however, we are only just beginning to glimpse the underlying notion of ‘family’ the author of Ephesians poses when he says
God chose us ‘before the world began.’ Even before God created the physical world, we were ALREADY God’s children, already God’s family. If we try to follow the author’s thinking we are forced to move beyond rational understandings toward a Cosmic dimension of spiritual awareness. That effort lands us in the middle of an old concept called the Mystical Body of Christ. In modern terms we might call it ‘the Cosmic Christ.”
Christianity’s master theologian, Paul, takes us straight to that doorway when he talks about all of us being members of the Body of Christ. He says it in Romans 12:5—“in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each belongs to all the others.” He says it in 1 Cor 10:17—“we, who are many, are one body.” “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it (1 Cor 12:26).” Colossians 1:18 echoes this same theme—“[Christ] is the head of the body” and “the whole body…grows as God causes it to grow (Col 2:19).”
“We were chosen to be holy and blameless and full of love,” Paul tells us. That’s who and what we are at our core. It’s that true purity and innocence we see in Angelina, untarnished and absolute; it is the heart and soul of who we each are at the center of our being where God resides. When Jesus sends the disciples off in pairs to preach repentance and to anoint the sick with oil and heal them, he is sending them to restore the torn and broken fragments of the family.
It is that larger family of God into which we initiate Angelina today. In reality she’s already there, but sacraments like Baptism make tangible and explicit what we know and is true on a deeper, inner level. We initiate her into God’s family and anoint her with oil for strength. We clothe her in Christ and give her Christ’s own light to guide her on life’s path. As a sacrament of the Church, Baptism tells Angelina she is a member of our inclusive family of faith. She belongs.
On an even deeper level, Baptism recognizes that she is, always has been and always will be part of the Mystical and Cosmic Body of Christ. She is God’s own beloved daughter, even as she is the cherished daughter of Elizabeth and Brian. As God’s extended family here in this place tonight, we say to you Angelina, that wherever life takes you we are with you in Spirit. Our home is your home. You will always have a claim on our heart.
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