Charity begins at home – a reflection of Mark 9:30-37 and James 3:13-4:3, 7-8....

In the kitchen of the house in Bournemouth where my wife Sue’s parents lived, there was a small wooden plaque on the wall – the sort that one buys on holiday as a souvenir. The words painted on the plaque said “HOME – the place where we grumble the most, and are treated the best!” I suppose this is really just an amusing ‘take’ on the well-known proverb “Charity begins at home” – the idea that a person’s first responsibility is for the needs of their family and friends.

I’m sure that most people would agree with the sentiment of this proverb. It’s therefore ironic that, in many ways, the values that predominate in society are incompatible with the importance of caring for our nearest and dearest.

To illustrate this point, let’s think about commonly applied measures of success. For some, success is equated with wealth – an expensive car, a big house, a yacht, a private plane. In business, commerce and even other areas such as academia, success may require being competitive, assertive, even ruthless. In party politics, success equates with getting into power, and then staying in power – never admitting to being wrong, and claiming that one’s opponents are nearly always wrong.

So what about happiness, contentment and fulfilment? Well, again, an irony of human nature is that although many people would agree that these things matter, they live their lives as though they cannot be achieved without wealth, power or status.

In the Gospel reading today, we heard how even the disciples fell into this trap. Although they didn’t want to admit it, Jesus was well aware that they’d been arguing about which of them was the greatest. The response from Jesus wasn’t to scold them for being so petty, or even to tell them that they were all equally important. His response was to turn the commonly accepted worldly values on their head: he said that “anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all”.

This is echoed in the reading we heard from the letter of James where he states that ‘worldly wisdom’ leads to envy and selfish ambition, whereas as ‘true wisdom’ is manifest in acts of humility. He goes on to say that this wisdom that comes from heaven is peace-loving, considerate and submissive; and that “Peacemakers who sow in peace reap a harvest of righteousness”.

So, showing humility and making peace – these are the attributes that the Christian message tells us are of utmost importance and are associated with true success in life.

In his book about the life of Jesus called ‘The Wrong Messiah: The Real Story of Jesus of Nazareth’, Nick Page says, “The family was the most powerful defining force in ancient society. Broadly speaking, your family set the default values for your life. Your kin affected what job you did, who you married.....what network of friends you had, who your patrons were. It also, to a huge extent, defined your religion and your politics.” So, returning to the words of Jesus to his disciples, it’s in this context of ‘family values’ that he goes on to emphasise his message about humility as follows: He took a little child whom he placed among them. Taking the child in his arms, he said to them “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”

Of course, as is so often the case with the words of Jesus, his message here works at many levels. Firstly, to repeat the proverb: “Charity begins at home”. God wants us to love everyone, and that should start with those closest to us – both emotionally and physically! And establishing homes that are centred on values of love and peace-making must be the best foundation for those values to then spread more widely through society and, indeed, through the whole world.

So, secondly, Jesus’ commandment is that we should “love our neighbour as ourselves”. This is graphically spelled out in the description by the Reverend Howard Storm of his ‘conversation with Jesus’ during a life-changing, transcendent experience: he recounts Jesus saying, “I have a purpose for you. . . . Your purpose is to love the person that you’re with.” And I said, “Yeah, okay, great. I got that. What do you want me to do?” And he said, “No, that’s it.” And I said, “That’s it?! Love the person I am with?” And he said, “That’s your whole purpose.” And I said, “What good will that do?” And he said, “It will change the whole world.” I said, “Come on, there’s billions of people in the world. How in the world would me loving someone change the world?” . . . He laughed and he said, “If you love the person that you’re with, they’ll love the person that they’re with and they’ll love the person that they’re with. And that will multiply.”.....He said, “Whether you believe it or not, whether you like it or not, it’s God’s plan. It will work. Just love the person that you’re with.”

This message clearly relates to our current theme in this Creation Season of the Earth, and everything in it, as our home that needs our care: God’s plan is that, by loving the person we are with at each and every point in our lives, this will ripple through our neighbourhood, through society and even through the whole of Creation, thereby achieving the aims of God’s Kingdom – a Kingdom of love.

Of course, when a lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” he answered that question by telling the parable of ‘The Good Samaritan’, in which the Samaritan shows love and kindness to a badly beaten-up Jew who, under other circumstances, would probably have despised the Samaritan and treated him with disdain. Furthermore, the Samaritan stopped to help the Jew in circumstances where he also was in danger of being mugged by bandits!

So, loving our neighbour and, if we’re honest, sometimes loving members of our own families, is not always easy or comfortable. Indeed, this is how Howard Storm goes on to describe his task of following the instruction of Jesus to “Just love the person that you are with”: Howard said, “So, that’s what I’ve been struggling with for 30 years. Trying to do that. It’s not as easy as it sounds. As a matter of fact, it’s the most interesting challenge I have ever had . . . Jesus should have told me to become a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist, because that would have been a whole lot easier than what I’m trying to do.”

So perhaps it’s no wonder that we need a good dose of humility and must strive to be peace-makers in order to show the love that God wants us to show, both inside and outside our homes. As we noted earlier, Jesus used a little child to demonstrate this point to his disciples. And maybe it’s no coincidence that, on another occasion, Jesus said “Blessed are the peace-makers, for they will be called the children of God”.

If you’d like to follow up on this Reflection during the coming week, here’s an idea for you: think of one person to whom you could be more loving....and do it!