Having a family, whether by blood or adoption or fostering, is a universal human experience. And the emotional range we experience—challenges, frustrations, pain, joy, love, encouragement, even deep animus or betrayal—is part of what makes us who we are. In Christ Jesus, God is no different. In today’s Church, we can casually bandy phrases that represent centuries of hard-fought theological battles. “God in three persons, blessed Trinity,” we sing in that congregational favorite, Holy, Holy, Holy. Each week we declare that Jesus is “eternally begotten of the Father” and that he “became incarnate from the Virgin Mary and was made man.” How often do we say the phrase “of one Being with the Father” without reflecting on it? Even my children, from an early age, were able to assert that Jesus is fully God and fully human.
The idea of a deity appearing to mortals is not a uniquely Christian idea. But Christians claim something much more difficult to comprehend—and more cosmos-altering! Our gospel is not that God made an appearance among mortals like Zeus taking on human form, nor that God manifested an Avatar of Vishnu. No, the good news is that God has become one of us. The Council of Chalcedon affirmed that Jesus Christ is “of one substance (homoousios) with the Father as regards his Godhead, and at the same time of one substance with us as regards his manhood.” It is this second reality that is often harder for us to appreciate and digest. It’s not difficult for many of us to imagine a God who swoops in—a deus ex machina—and interrupts the workings of the world. It’s a bit harder for us to grasp the idea of a human God.
When we think of Christ’s perfect humanity, the focus is often on the divine kenosis—the self-emptying that the second Person of the Trinity voluntarily undertook. He, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness” (Phil. 2:6-7). He submitted to growing and learning, to emotions and feelings, to pain and sorrow, as well as joy. But there’s another aspect of his true humanity that perhaps less often plays on our imaginations. Broken or not, functional or dysfunctional, to be human is to be in a family.
Through the stretch of Advent-Christmas-Epiphany we mark again that Jesus received his flesh, his human nature, from Mary’s humanity. But Mary’s humanity didn’t exist in a vacuum. She herself was a daughter and a granddaughter. Moreover, Jesus doesn’t simply have a mother. He has grandparents, uncles, cousins—both by blood and by adoption through Joseph. In the Eastern churches, the second Sunday before Christmas is dedicated to the ancestors of Jesus and the Sunday after Christmas is dedicated to three of his relatives in particular: King David, his ancestor; the righteous Joseph, his foster father; and James, the brother of the Lord. Jesus, human that he is, was embedded in a family. And, though his humanity was perfect, his families’ was far from it.
This is a comforting truth, especially during holiday celebrations. When families get together in proximity for extended time, even the most functional of them can experience friction. And for those who find themselves in broken or problematic families, the holidays can be the most painful time of the year.
Jesus, son of Mary, brother of James, foster son of Joseph, grandson of (the traditionally named) Joachim and Anna—this Jesus knows family dynamics. He had family members trying to restrain him when it was said that he had gone out of his mind (Mark 3:21). John tells us that at one point, “not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:5). Jesus—that is, God—knows and redeems the messiness of family life.
But there is also the other side of it. Family life is not intended to be all trial. Marriage—and by extension the family—is, as the prayer book explains, is intended for joy, for help, and for comfort. The sweetness of family life is also something known and sanctified by God’s living within a human family. While much of his day-to-day life in Joseph and Mary’s family is left to our speculation, we do see his respect for his mother at Cana and his tender concern for her at the crucifixion.
Whenever humans get together in intimate spaces—whether those are family gatherings or other close-knit communities—we have the most acute opportunities for both the joy of our human existence and the pain of human fallenness. In the Incarnation, God knows both sides of that coin intimately. And those who were close to him—James and Joseph and Mary and, if you will, Joachim, Anna, and others—knew God himself as one of their own. Jesus’ family watched him grow, ate with him, played with him, and—no doubt—grew frustrated with him. He shared the joys and sorrows, milestones and disappointments, of human family life. And in doing so, the Word made flesh has sanctified all families.
The Rev. Geoffrey Mackey is rector of Trinity Episcopal Church, Parkersburg, West Virginia. He spent over 20 years in Christian college and seminary contexts in administration, teaching, and student pastoral care. He studied at evangelical, Catholic, and Anglican seminaries and previously served as a parish priest in the Catholic Church’s Byzantine Rite.
