Familiarity Breeds Contempt
Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Genesis 3:8-15, Psalm 138, 2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1, Mark 3:20-end
Familiarity breeds contempt. I’ve been at St Margaret’s two and a half years now. I’ve felt the twinges. I’m not the new vicar anymore. Familiarity breeds contempt.
In today’s Gospel those who know Jesus best, reject him. For those of you who read through Mark’s Gospel with us in Lent, I spoke of a particular way the author often puts his material together. He takes a subject, in two related passages, and then intersects them with something a little different – but is a key to understanding the other two parts. So today we have two stories of Jesus’ family. To begin with they hear of the crowds and popularity of Jesus, and go out to restrain him – With as little effect as I have with Oberon. Secondly, we hear of his family trying to find him, and Jesus effectively renouncing them, accepting instead his disciples as his true family. Between these two passages we have a stronger condemnation of the religious authorities who claim he is possessed by an evil spirit and performing black magic, rather than performing the will of God by the Holy Spirit. These we are told, darkly, will not be forgiven.
What we see in common in these incidents is a misunderstanding of who Jesus is by those who should know him best. And as Jesus acknowledges in the key middle section - a house divided against itself cannot stand. Presumably this is as true for the house of God as any other.
But we can understand this lack of appreciation in families – can’t we? When your annoying little brother grows up to be a judge; The thought of our little piglet doing any job is hilarious, but I do hope he does get a job one day. Perhaps as a hair stylist. Joseph for all his gifts didn’t fare very well at the hands of his family either, and the claims Jesus made for himself are pretty extraordinary – if you imagine your sibling, your child suddenly claiming to be the Son of God. You probably immediately remember how they cried when you took away their submarine, or how, with great delight, they wee-ed in the bath. He’s not the Messiah – he’s a very naughty boy.
Mark is highly aware that those closest to Jesus have rejected him. By the time of writing Jerusalem has fallen; The synagogue has ejected Christians. The church knows what it means to be a house divided. The Church that remains faithful, is Gentile. Of all those closest to Jesus, his family, the first disciples, the crowds, none are left. Those who are responding to Jesus now are un-familiar. Growing throughout the Gentile world is a new family of Jesus, those who do the will of God.
Familiarity breeds contempt. But what’s the opposite of an attitude of familiarity? You can’t really have an attitude of unfamiliarity! Familiarity is really about a sort of closed-mindedness. An expectation that things will be as they’ve always been. Where everything is known and already anticipated. The Church of England has a comfortable relationship with familiarity.
So the opposite of familiarity is really wonder. To walk outside this church, which you may have been in a thousand times, and see the billion exciting things happening in the garden which walking quickly you brush past; just as our ancestors walked in the garden in the cool of the day. [Our garden of course, is not beset by nasty surprises like serpents.] Or you could even head down to the East windows and notice a detail in the glass you’ve never bothered to look at. Or have lunch with your partner of thirty years and not think – I know you; I know everything you’re going to say; and to ask them a question without anticipating their answer.
Familiarity breeds contempt. Wonder begets praise.
In one of CS Lewis’ best loved sermons he begins by trying to talk about wonder – which as adults we mostly experience through a certain sort of beauty. Often it’s a half remembered ache of transformation we felt when we heard a string quintet that somehow registered the peculiar pain or loneliness we felt aged 19; a line from some Romantic poet or a quiet Bible study that has always stayed with us; the first time we saw the ocean rolling in a storm; or it may have been Roberta Flack or Lauren Hill strumming your pain with her fingers, singing your life with her words; [Incidentally that song’s inspiration was the 19-year-old Lori Lieberman feeling that way to Don McLean singing Empty Chairs. Good Pop Master knowledge there.]
It’s harder to recapture that moment as you age. We often look forward to an opera, remembering how music can restore that feeling – call it wonder, connection, transcendence – only to find ourselves asleep by Act 2. But the music hasn’t changed; as Louis let on: the world is no less wonderful; it’s just our hearts have grown a little colder.
In extreme situations wonder returns. No one on having a child – even for a second time – escapes the baffling sense of wonder. Last year I was moved to tears by the generosity and self-sacrifice I witnessed from time to time; and also the undisguised humanity laid bare in grief. Further back, I remember being shouted down by staff, training with the parachute regiment, when I marvelled at the beauty of the Yorkshire hills we were relentlessly running up and down. Pain and fear are no object to wonder – quite the reverse. You never love the world so much as when you feel you’re about to leave it. But, as I said, wonder begets praise. Or as St Paul says in today’s epistle: ‘grace, as it extends to more and more people, may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God’. When we feel that wonder – we catch a glimpse of eternity – In the world fitting together, in our own acceptance, in perfect beauty and harmony; a reminder of the divine promise that this fallen world and all time will be restored – will be filled with glory: ‘Even though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day.’
The ethical problem for us if that if this world is to be filled with glory, our duty now is to respond to it in that light. So Gladys, who whistles through her teeth when she speaks and has the opposite view to you on Brexit. She must be approaches as the immortal vessel of God’s grace that she is. Oberon in all his chaos, shall be like Christ, judging angels in God’s temple. We are all being prepared ‘for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure, because we look not at what can be seen, but at what cannot be seen [and] what cannot be seen is eternal’. We should not take each other too seriously – but as CS Lewis says, ‘there are no ordinary people… it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub and exploit… Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object present to your senses’ – in her, Glory is hidden.
Familiarity breeds contempt. But psalm 123: ‘O Lord, have mercy upon us, for we have had more than enough of contempt.’ Perhaps our families will surprise us. Perhaps they will judge angels, or mortals. But let us be more full of wonder; more wonder-full. Let us appreciate around us this wonderful world, and in our neighbour find the hidden glory of God. Amen.