Scripture Readings: Leviticus 23:10-14, Romans 8:14-17, Mark 3:31-35

The nature or nurture debate is one of the oldest in the study of psychology; is it our inherited traits or our life experiences that shape who we are?

One of my all-time heroes Nelson Mandela firmly believed that nurture rather than nature was the primary moulder of personality. I was captivated by his story from the first page of his autobiography, ‘A Long Walk To Freedom’.

I think it took me something like three days to complete the 751 page book. Part one is dedicated to describing his character shaping childhood – growing up in a small rural village in South Africa’s Eastern Cape. By age five Nelson was a herd-boy, which meant looking after the sheep and cattle in fields that were his family’s source of food and wealth, and considered a blessing from God as well as a source of happiness. Young Nelson learned out in the fields how to use a slingshot, which sounds to me rather like King David of the Old Testament, – but he also learned to gather wild honey and fruits, edible roots, to drink warm sweet milk from the udder of a cow, to swim in clear cold streams, catch fish with twine – and essential to any African boy, he learned how to stick fight.

Without this firm foundation of identity rooted in his childhood experiences of family and adventure in rural South Africa – I wonder, would he have been able to endure the long arduous walk to freedom?

In my opinion the world did not have his leadership long enough – but we are blessed forever with the legacy of his example.

Today, with all the evidence gathered by researchers, we realise that there is no clear division between nature and nurture – instead it is a dynamic and complex interplay of both which shapes us. However, there is little argument that the family we are born into is the most important contributing factor in a child’s development and success later in adulthood.

So, in today’s Gospel reading we are a little taken aback as Jesus asks, “who are my mother and my brothers?” And then around a table of His disciples and friends, He says “Here are my mother and brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” This is frequently viewed as a difficult passage – a moment of separation from our relations by birth, and a turning away from them to God. But I hear this as a call to unity not separation. I see the arm’s of a loving Father being opened – I hear an extension of God’s family – a widening of our perspective of what it means to be family.

Through obedience God is placed as the head of the family to whom we all belong. Obedience is an inward choice of the heart, a giving of ourselves – a sacrifice of ourselves – to otherness. All relationships are in some way a sacrifice of the self, that is, a participation of our self with an other.

But our relationship with God does not mean to separate ourselves from the world around us. Home is found in the love we have for God, self and other. Love is not born in isolation. God had a relationship with Adam in the Garden of Eden, yet He said, ‘it is not good for man to be alone.’

The underlying ideas we have about our reality are formed by the relationship we’ve made between ourselves and the external world we see before us. This is all a part of forming identity – who we are in relation to what we see – a finding of where we fit.

Let us consider what happens if we say, God is my strength, and God loves us – surely that makes every moment of our lives ok? Well, not always, the craftiness of the serpent knows how to twist this. We can reason that if God works in us, then we can depend on Him and therefore retreating within to ourselves is the answer. But where does this lead us except on a path of making our world smaller and lonelier? No-one else loves us but God – never mind, God is enough. This has then set us on a path of subconsciously saying the world does not matter only God, but if the world does not matter then it must be meaningless. If the world is meaningless and does not matter, then I am only here to love God, and other people cannot matter either. But deep down we know love does matter, people do matter – so, then reason says we must be worthless – misfits, mistakes, bad or stupid, because this is the only way of reconciling what we see with our beliefs.

If we say God loves us, we can also reason that God loves everyone, so therefore we cannot be special, everyone is loved the same. The lie then is that God must not be able to judge rightly because we see difference around us – no one is the same, so God must not be able to judge correctly – but we can – we see that effort is rewarded, we see that action brings change, we can change circumstances and ease our distress, or become successful at a thing. Therefore, we put our value into externals – because it is these things that make us special.

So, we’ve ended up with a falsely reasoned narrative that God wants to save everyone because he loves everyone equally and therefore doesn’t see the specialness of us as individuals. We work to gain and possess because God’s got it wrong, and we are the ones who see correctly and know the reality.

So, this clash of inner belief and outward perception distresses us, and we look for what separates us because this is what we believe gives us our value. We become the judge – we must do, we must be – because we are good judges not God. This is of course the reasoning of Eve, and we are always searching to reinforce these beliefs, because the world then makes sense as we believe it does, and this is comforting.

In order to see as God sees, we must find the root cause – which is ultimately our need to be loved, and our need to accept difference.

But relationship is that place of being special, of being unique, known and loved. Recognition of God as our Father, through the obedience of worship together, prayer and other spiritual disciplines is an inner sacrifice of ourselves, and is the place of being unique, known and loved by Him who is the Creator and Source of us all.  

As Christians we are to not to walk in isolation with Him – but as a family of God, self and other. Mother Teresa once said “We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked, and homeless. But the poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty, and so we must start in our own homes to remedy this kind of poverty.”

What good does it do the world to walk only with God? The point of our encounter is transformation. The point of our blessing is to be a blessing to others. In the words of St Francis ‘it is in giving that we receive.’ There is no receiving if no one gives, or like Isaac Newton’s first Law, an object will not change its motion unless a force acts on it, then neither will the world be transformed unless we are out in it, participating in all its struggles and challenges – but not just for ourselves but for each other.

In our Old Testament reading God says to His people ‘when you come into the land I give you, and reap its harvest you shall bring the first fruits of your harvest as an offering’ – that is the family’s source of food and wealth, their blessing and a source of happiness.

It is a sacrifice of possession, a sacrifice of what is seen and of great value to them. But we now, who are called to be in relationship with Jesus who is God made flesh, our first fruits include the fruits of the Spirit, which become the sacrifice of what is within us, given freely to others.

Love is sacrifice, to be patient is sacrifice, as is self-control, gentleness, generosity, faithfulness and so on.

What good is it to love those who love us? And if we greet only our own people, what are we doing more than others? How great is God’s love that He chooses to adopt us as His children? And in the image of our Father, we too adopt others into relationship, and into our family, through these fruits of the Spirit.

Even whilst hanging on the cross, Jesus does not forget His mother, but extends Mary’s motherhood to embrace all who like her said yes in obedience to God’s call. To love others is to share in the sufferings of Christ.

Sigmund Freud once said, “we are never so defenceless against suffering as when we love.”

So, when the writers of Letters in the New Testament say there is joy in suffering, they are rejoicing in love. The good news is that love is ‘all’ things that work together for each other – that means no matter how big or small the gift of ourselves to one another – it is enough.

Amen.