Blended Brothers

Understanding how the family of Jesus becomes our family

09/23/2020

Luke 8:19-21 The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to him but were unable to join him because of the crowd. He was told, “Your mother and your brothers are standing outside and they wish to see you.” He said to them in reply, “My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and act on it.”

                Some people think that “blended families” are a modern and recent phenomenon, but they are in fact quite ancient. The name is what is new. I would suggest to you that Jesus himself hailed from a blended family. But first, what is a blended family? That is where parents who have children from a previous marriage marry each other and form a new family. The most famous blended family is probably the “Brady Bunch.”

Do you remember their theme song? Here’s the story of a lovely lady who was bringing up three very lovely girls, all of them had hair of gold, like their mother, the youngest one in curls. It’s the story of a man named Brady, who was busy was three boys of his own. They were four men, living all together, but they were all alone.” And you know the rest of the story. The rest of the story, which made the sit-com both endearing and enduring, was the sibling rivalry, the jealousy, and one very saintly housekeeper named “Alice.” In other words, it is not easy to unite a blended family but in the end it can become something very beautiful.

All four gospels refer to the “brothers of Jesus,” and Matthew 13:55 adds that Jesus had “sisters.” Today’s gospel from Luke 8 reads: “The mother of Jesus and his brothers came to see him but were unable to join him because of the crowd.” Now, the reason we Catholic Christians do not accept the simple face-value meaning of “brothers of Jesus” as being other children of Mary and Joseph is to protect Mary’s perpetual virginity. From the early centuries of the Church, Christians have held firmly that Mary had no other children besides Jesus. Interestingly, the great Protestant reformers, Martin Luther, John Calvin and John Wesley professed faith in Mary’s perpetual virginity, too.

Let me briefly outline three theories suggested by early Church Fathers about how Jesus came from a blended family like the Brady Bunch. St. Epiphanius argued that St. Joseph had been previously married, and brought the so-called “brothers of Jesus” into his second marriage with Mary. In that scenario, these men would be “half-brothers,” although not really by blood, because Jesus is not the “Son of Joseph,” but rather the Son of God. St. Jerome, who translated the bible into Latin from Greek and Hebrew in the early 5th century, believed that Mary had a sister named Mary – who names two daughters both “Mary”?? – and she was the wife of Clopas. The so-called “brothers of Jesus” in this scenario would be Jesus’ cousins.

A third explanation was proposed by Hegesippus, in which Clopas was St. Joseph’s brother, and therefore the “brothers of Jesus” would, in this telling, have been Jesus’ “cousins” but again not technically “cousins” by blood because Jesus was not really the “Son of Joseph.” Did you follow all that? My underlying point is twofold: (1) Mary was a perpetual virgin and had no other children besides our Lord, and (2) the Church has held this belief from the beginning, even though we have different explanations to demonstrate its plausibility.

Folks, there is one important practical point for us in this explanation of Jesus’ blended family in Nazareth. We, too, are called and incorporated into Jesus’ divine Family of the Holy Trinity by virtue of our baptism. By baptism we are “adopted” into the Family of God and therefore, we, too, become the “brothers and sisters of Jesus,” like it says in the gospels. But the blended family in this case is not that of Mary and Joseph, but the blended Family of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. In other words, our baptism makes Jesus “a brother from another mother,” as we say these days. Our Mother is the Church, who gives birth to us by “water and the Holy Spirit.” Jesus has a lot of “brothers and sisters.”

You might want to go back and watch some reruns of the Brady Bunch. Why? It is not just the story of a lovely lady and a man named Brady. It also gives us a clue into the story of Jesus’ blended family of Nazareth. And ultimately, it helps us grasp the story of our life in heaven with the Blended Family of the Holy Trinity.

Praised be Jesus Christ!