How does the Incarnation of Christ bring rest in chaotic family relationships?
How does the Incarnation of Christ bring rest in chaotic family relationships?
This week we celebrated Thanksgiving, which turns our hearts toward Advent and the coming of Christ - and to a lot of get togethers with family and friends. For some of us those times are beautiful. For others of us those times are hard. For still others of us we don’t which it will be.
The good news is Jesus had a family of origin as well. This week’s CBR began with the genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3) and just today we read Luke’s account of Mary and her sons coming to collect Jesus because they thought he’d gone crazy. Jesus’ family was full of characters and mischaracterizations.
When we find ourselves in similar situations we need help in two distinct yet related ways. First, we need help with the ways we feel hurt. Family dynamics can hurt because they strike at our sense of love & safety. But then we realize, in becoming human, God the Son himself chose to place himself in a family that didn’t always leave him feeling loved and safe. Jesus experienced the same difficult family moments we do. And yet we find in his willingness to submit himself to that type of chaos and hurt on our behalf he shows us that even if we don’t always feel loved by our families we’re obviously loved by our Lord.
Second, we need help with the ways we hurt others. So often our lives make good on the quote “hurting people hurt people”. When we’re harmed we regularly hurt back. All of us do it, except for one family man - Jesus. In taking to himself a family, in his incarnation, Jesus was perfect for you in all the times he returned hurt with love. And so you know in every failure and insufficiency you have in your family relationships Christ stands to be sufficient for you and this removes the guilt and shame that often makes the hurt worse.
So the Incarnation helps us find rest in our relationships because it reminds us that we’re loved and safe even when we feel unloved and unsafe and it helps us through the guilt and shame that makes harm worse. In the Incarnation Christ heals our humanity.
This week we celebrated Thanksgiving, which turns our hearts toward Advent and the coming of Christ - and to a lot of get togethers with family and friends. For some of us those times are beautiful. For others of us those times are hard. For still others of us we don’t which it will be.
The good news is Jesus had a family of origin as well. This week’s CBR began with the genealogy of Jesus (Luke 3) and just today we read Luke’s account of Mary and her sons coming to collect Jesus because they thought he’d gone crazy. Jesus’ family was full of characters and mischaracterizations.
When we find ourselves in similar situations we need help in two distinct yet related ways. First, we need help with the ways we feel hurt. Family dynamics can hurt because they strike at our sense of love & safety. But then we realize, in becoming human, God the Son himself chose to place himself in a family that didn’t always leave him feeling loved and safe. Jesus experienced the same difficult family moments we do. And yet we find in his willingness to submit himself to that type of chaos and hurt on our behalf he shows us that even if we don’t always feel loved by our families we’re obviously loved by our Lord.
Second, we need help with the ways we hurt others. So often our lives make good on the quote “hurting people hurt people”. When we’re harmed we regularly hurt back. All of us do it, except for one family man - Jesus. In taking to himself a family, in his incarnation, Jesus was perfect for you in all the times he returned hurt with love. And so you know in every failure and insufficiency you have in your family relationships Christ stands to be sufficient for you and this removes the guilt and shame that often makes the hurt worse.
So the Incarnation helps us find rest in our relationships because it reminds us that we’re loved and safe even when we feel unloved and unsafe and it helps us through the guilt and shame that makes harm worse. In the Incarnation Christ heals our humanity.
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