Jesus Today. . .

ON BEING KIN TO JESUS

Whoever shall do the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother. - Matt. 12:50

It is a remarkable promise: that we are most kin to Jesus in doing the Father’s will! Even more than blood kin.

One of the most interesting persons Ouida and I ever knew was a mentally disturbed brother who supposed he was Jesus. Years ago I wrote about him in this journal, a sympathetic treatment, for I always had positive feelings toward him. He was a grandson of Decima Campbell Barclay, the tenth child of Alexander Campbell. Julian Barclay was a majestic looking man, standing well over six feet and weighing far more than 200 pounds. His long beard and rough clothing made him something of a sight in Bethany when we went there to teach two decades ago.

Julian set me to thinking of how it must feel to think of yourself as Jesus. Can you conjure yourself into such a mood? The poor brother would sit in our livingroom (as on one occasion) and open his palms to us, explaining that sometimes the nail marks would show, and would talk to us as if he were the Lord himself, all in perfect sincerity of course. While he seemed harmless, the president of the college warned the students not to take chances, for he was indeed a very ill man. We were thankful that he did not have to be institutionalized. Unmarried and free, he wandered here and there, mostly around Bethany, always peacefully and always Christlike.

Some years back we received word that dear Julian died on a bus while on a farm-labor circuit, and it was sometime before they could identify him. They brought him back to Bethany and buried him near his great grandfather, Alexander Campbell. It all impressed me as very ironic. But there was a tradition of insanity in the Campbell clan, Alex’s own brother being suspect, a doctor who tampered with the dead after they were buried, or so it was rumored. It is also rumored that when the brother died, Alex buried him in an unknown, unmarked grave, lest his enemies take vengeance. But enough of that kind of thing.

It must be something else to think you are Jesus, insane or not. After all, what is insanity? Ouida was always impressed with Julian’s brilliance, and one might not notice, ordinarily, that anything was wrong. He could hold his own with any of the professors around and on any subject --- all from reading and thinking! And yet the man was crazy, or so they said. At Christmas time each year when the college choir sang the great Hallelujah Chorus we would all stand --- in honor of the Christ who lives, but up in the balcony sat Julian Barclay, off to himself, enjoying the honor! He would send all of us Christmas cards, signed by the Lord himself!

The redeeming feature to this fantastic story is that Julian, who lived as a recluse on a nearby hill, was like Christ --- gentle, self-effacing, humble, forgiving, nonviolent. When some of the college boys had some fun at his expense, hurling him to the ground and relieving him of his beard, he responded with loving forbearance, when he could have (and should have!) given them all the whipping they deserved. I would sometimes say to Ouida, There is one real Christian in this village and he’s crazy! Shades of Dostoevski’s village idiot in The Idiot.

I must concede utter failure in supposing myself to be Jesus, and I do little better in imagining myself in his situation before the Sanhedrin or at Gethsemane, or even in a teaching situation alongside the sea of Galilee. This must be because there is no way for us to fathom infinite suffering and injustice, or a person who is infinity itself. There is no way for mortal man to comprehend Jesus, and one would have to be beside himself to presume he has done so.

That makes the promise of kinship with him all the more remarkable. Closer than a brother or sister, a blood-kin sibling! Or closer than a mother, the one who gave him birth! We are closer to Jesus than that, if we do the will of the heavenly Father.

What do you suppose Jesus meant, precisely, by that condition? Kinship that is closer than a brother, sister, or mother is based upon obedience to God, implicit and exact obedience, we may presume, according to one’s understanding. That is the condition. Since Jesus gives no specifics, not in this context at least, we may conclude that he refers to general obedience. This does not mean, of course, that we obey the Father in a general kind of way, allowing only certain pet sins into our lives. Rather it means that we are committed to Him, body, soul and spirit, and are resolved to obey Him in all things, limited only by knowledge and frailty.

Out of weakness we will fall short of perfect obedience; out of ignorance that is unwillful (since an insatiable desire to know is part of obedience ignorance will never be willful) we will fail to do all that we should. So, doing the Father’s will is for one to lovingly and eagerly do all that he knows God wants Him to do. This would be general obedience, which means that there may be some particulars within the Father’s will that one has not yet learned, but that he is obedient insofar as he understands.

Jesus is really talking about sincerity before the Father, the real meaning of sincerity. Sincerity seeks God, hungering and thirsting for light and more light. There may yet be darkness in his life, but he accepts the light as it breaks into his life.

The Lord is saying that this is the person that is really kin to him, closer than any fleshly relationship. This is far different from conforming to some church’s check-list of “things to do” in obeying. It means to long for God as the hart pants for the water brook or like a babe hungers for milk. One may be a weak person and yet obedient in the sense Jesus is talking about, for he wants righteousness. We “do the Father’s will” more by what we really are and what we want to be more than by our goodness. One does not have to be an expert musician to love music or an artist to appreciate art, and so one might be very inexpert about “virtue” and “goodness” and yet be what Jesus is talking about.

This is why some prostitutes were closer to Jesus than some Pharisees, with all their expertise. It is reassuring that we do not have to be righteous to be blessed, but to hunger and thirst for it. When Jesus identified those closest to him by saying “Here are my mother and my brothers,” he pointed to his disciples. But they were not the reverend clergy of his day, but men from the common walks of life who were not “righteous” except in the sense that they were being made new by the new dimension in their lives.

This shows us that spiritual kinship comes before the physical, however honored the physical may be. Perhaps this is what Jesus was teaching when he told one of his disciples who wished to turn back and bury his father: “Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their dead” (Matt. 8:22).

Again Jesus points to this truth in Matt. 10:37-39: “Anyone who prefers father or mother to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who prefers son or daughter to me is not worthy of me. Anyone who does not take his cross and follow in my footsteps is not worthy of me. Anyone who finds his life will lose it; anyone who loses his life for my sake will find it.”

As believers we are kin to our Lord, his very closest kin, and we are to prefer that relationship to all others. Following in his steps must mean that we are to do the will of the Father as he did, and in doing this we must be willing to suffer in this world as he did. If we are out to “find ourselves” in this world, which must refer to an ego-centered life of fame, fortune, and pleasure, then we lose ourselves. But if we are in this world to “lose ourselves,” which refers to doing the will of the Father, wherever that may lead us, then we find ourselves. The glorious contradiction: we find ourselves by losing ourselves. The world is not prepared to understand this great truth, and too few believers are willing to accept it as their rule of life.

But when we do accept it and thus make God’s will paramount in our lives, obeying Him lovingly and without reservation, we become closer to Jesus than a brother or sister or even a mother. That promise should make all the difference in the world. --- the Editor