Mt 12:46-50 To Stand Outside of the World“Someone told Jesus, ‘Your mother and your brothers are standing outside.’”
Even now, I will often hear the song “We are family!” I hear it most at weddings. But I will occasionally hear it on the radio.
But I ask myself, “How are we a family?” What is it that binds us together?
On their website, Planned Parenthood calls their founder, Margaret Sanger, “the movement’s greatest hero.” It may very well be, but most people would never consider a racist, a bigot and an American Nazi sympathizer a hero.
Thomas Robert Malthus, a 19th century cleric and professor of political economy, believed a population time bomb threatened the existence of the human race. He viewed social problems such as poverty, disease and war as evidence of this “population crisis.” Margaret Sanger embraced Malthusian eugenics. She strongly espoused racial supremacy and purity, particularly of the “Aryan” - Thoroughbred - race.
In an address at Vassar College on August 5th, 1926, she said,
“It now remains for the U.S. government to set a sensible example to the world by offering a bonus or yearly pension to all obviously unfit parents who allow themselves to be sterilized by harmless and scientific means. In this way, the moron and the diseased would have no posterity to inherit their unhappy condition. The number of the feeble-minded would decrease and a heavy burden would be lifted from the shoulders of the fit.”
Here dream came true fifteen years later when the so-called “feeble-minded” were put to death in Nazi hospitals. All carried out by painless and scientific means.
The advice given above sounds eerily familiar to the 1999 controversial Children Requiring a Caring Kommunity (CRACK) program. The program offered to pay drug-addicted women two hundred dollars if they underwent sterilization. The ads were placed in inner cities.
Equality is a concept we hear very often. In fact, it must be repeated on a constant basis because it is a concept that very few us believe in. The writer, George Orwell, reminds us, with a bit of animal humor, what we really think: “We are all equal, but some of us are more equal than others” (Animal Farm). At least this is what we, the superior, think.
There are still a few too many people, in our modern and progressive culture, who consider themselves superior through sheer guts, talents, and brains. But is there really anything to look up to when "superiority" is achieved by stepping on top of the bodies of others to gain height and advantage? G.K. Chesterton once wrote, “I will believe in a superior race the day someone believes they belong to an inferior one.”
We are family. But how? The answer my surprise you. We are family because we are all sinners, equally. And we all need a Savior, equally. No one falls outside of this standing world. The Lord blesses the natural family and expands it universally – catholically - by proclaiming “whoever does the will of my heavenly Father is my brother, my sister, and mother.” All are welcomed to enter into this household. All are welcomed to stand outside this fallen world. All are welcomed to be a Saint; to be a tree that has leaves and bears fruit. All are welcomed to be fully human. But not all are willing.
Not all are willing to humble themselves and die to themselves. Not all are willing to admit their guilt, seek forgiveness and cleanse themselves. Not all are willing to bend their knees, lower their heads and clasp their hands in prayer to seek God’s will. Not all are willing to die on a cross, lay down their life for a friend and forgive their enemies seven times seventy times.
No wonder why not many are outstanding or stand outside of this world!
No wonder why not many have risen from the dead.
