In_Stone_and_Story

16
Family and Solidarity

I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And one’s foes will be members of one’s own household. Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

Matthew 10:35–37; see also Luke 12:52–53

The Family in Theory

The family resided at the heart of emperor Augustus’s plans to rejuvenate the Roman project. If civic order was to be maintained throughout the Roman empire, the bedrock for that was the stronghold of the family and the proper management of the household. Energizing robust families in harmonious relations was the foundation on which a strong empire was to be built.

This vision of how things should be caught people’s imaginations. In practice, however, things were often much different. This was evidenced even in Augustus’s own family. His daughter, Julia, for instance, engaged in a variety of promiscuous and adulterous relationships, to the extent that she was ultimately arrested for treason—her activities contradicting the official promotion of family values and representing a political “sin.” She was sent into exile on the island Pandateria, off the coast of Puteoli (not far from the Vesuvian towns). There she was prevented from seeing anyone unless Augustus gave his prior approval. She remained an embarrassment to her father’s political vision, embodying a character that ran contrary to his own stipulations for the health of the empire, built on the foundations of ordered and strong relationships within the family.

The family usually revolved around the paterfamilias, the male head of the household. The painted frescos on Vesuvian walls frequently reinforce the interests of the paterfamilias. For instance, prominently displayed in Pompeii’s macellum (where meat and fish were sold) are two frescos that seem to have played off each other in reinforcing a message about family values (see figure 16.1).

One fresco depicts Penelope and her husband, Odysseus—both central characters in Homer’s epic the Odyssey; in that narrative Penelope waits patiently and faithfully for Odysseus while he undertakes his journey.

Another fresco depicts the woman Io being kept in isolation by Argus, the servant of Hera (later known in Roman mythology as Juno); Argus was given this task in order to keep Io away from Hera’s husband, Zeus (known to the Romans as Jupiter), who wanted to have sex with Io—and, as the story unfolds, Zeus was successful in his sexual ambitions (as usual).

The two frescos, placed near each other in the corner of the macellum walls, pose questions to the married women of Pompeii: “Are you a good wife like Penelope, who diligently protected her husband’s household through her unswerving faithfulness to him? Or are you like Io, who allowed herself to be preyed upon and, thereby, was a weak link in the bonds of family?”

Figure 16.1. Two corner frescos in Pompeii’s macellum (7.9.7/8), depicting Penelope with Odysseus (left) and Io with Argus (right)

Characterizations in the House of Lucretius Fronto

Figure 16.2. Left: the fresco in the tablinum of the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto (5.4.a), depicting Mars fondling Venus; right: the fresco in the householder’s bedroom, depicting the murder of Neoptolemus by Orestes (both frescos in situ)

The story referenced in a fresco in Lucretius Fronto’s bedroom overlaps with the point referenced in a fresco in his study and meeting room (tablinum). That fresco depicts Mars, the deity of war, reaching into Venus’s clothing to fondle her breast (a motif depicted in a variety of other Vesuvian frescos as well). In each fresco, the iconic male achieves his ambitions through initiatives unrestrained and undiluted. Whatever or whomever the male figure wanted, he simply took for himself, by determined force if necessary; other people either served his purposes or were obstacles that needed to be removed, no matter the cost. Lucretius Fronto had these “life lessons” reinforced for him in the frescos that he chose to have painted on the walls of his bedroom and tablinum.

It is in the other two bedrooms that we see how Lucretius Fronto’s self-image pertained to other members of his household. In those bedrooms too, frescos were object lessons in how the values of the household were to be configured. One room seems to have been the bedroom for Lucretius Fronto’s two children, a boy and a girl (in fact, the same boy and girl whose portraits were shown in figure 1.5). Although the girl (perhaps ten years old) is rather plainly depicted, the boy (perhaps twelve years old) is depicted in the garb of Mercury, the deity of commerce (compare Paul’s depiction of Jesus-followers as those who are “clothed in the garb of Christ” in Galatians 3:27, my translation). Clearly, Lucretius Fronto had high hopes for his son’s entrepreneurial success. (Presumably he hoped his daughter would marry someone as prominently placed as possible within the town’s hierarchy and would manage her husband’s household effectively.)

Two mythological frescos enhance the ethos of the children’s bedroom. One depicts Narcissus staring at his reflection in the water, recalling the story of the handsome young man who became so enthralled with his own reflection that he could do nothing else except stare longingly at it, eventually dying of starvation as a consequence. The other fresco depicts Pero breast-feeding her father, Cimone, recalling the story of the daughter who saved her father’s life by breast-feeding him after he had been sentenced to death by starvation in prison. In the ancient world this story was celebrated as a model of heroic compassion. In fact, as the story continues, the jailer is so impressed by Pero’s innovative compassion for her father that he initiates her father’s release from prison.

Figure 16.3. Two frescos in the children’s bedroom of the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto (5.4.a, in situ), one depicting Pero breast-feeding her father (left) and another showing Narcissus (right; see also MANN 115398)

This combination of frescos makes perfect sense as illustrations of what Lucretius Fronto intended regarding the character of his children—perhaps especially the character of his son. The Narcissus portraiture warned against allowing self-infatuation to distract you from the path to public success; the Pero and Cimone fresco reinforced the importance of strategic altruism—perhaps in particular the care for family members, including parents who might require it later in life.

Frescos in the bedroom of the household’s matron similarly reflect how Lucretius Fronto intended to orchestrate the values of those within his household. The fresco of the deity Venus on one wall sends clear signals: just as Venus was the deity of love, so too Lucretius Fronto’s wife was to service the householder’s needs in love and lovemaking. The fresco that partnered with the Venus fresco depicts two heroes of Greek mythology—Theseus and Ariadne, just before Theseus goes into the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur. In the story, the hero Theseus could never have hoped to reemerge from the labyrinth had it not been for the ingenuity of the heroine Ariadne, who gave him a ball of string, allowing him to retrace his steps and emerge victorious from the conflict with the Minotaur. The message is clear: a wife is to be the helpmate in ensuring the success of her husband.

These frescos in the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto are aligned with the Augustan notion of family values. They reinforce the ideal Roman family, with each member of the family joining forces to perpetuate the success of the household, as determined by the householder.

Figure 16.4. Frescos in the matron’s bedroom in the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto (5.4.a, in situ), depicting Theseus and Ariadne (left) and Venus the deity of love (right)

Slaves and Concubines

As we saw in chapter 15, slaves also played an obvious role in the success of the household. They were purchased for that task, or had been sired within the household for that purpose. Biological offspring of the householder were frequently raised within the household, even though those offspring were not members of the householder’s family (since legitimate offspring were members of his family only if they were birthed by the householder’s legitimate wife). Instead, they were commodities acquired by the household through female slaves whom the householder had impregnated. This was a relatively inexpensive way to augment a household’s workforce.

As we have seen, in this male-dominated world, it was not considered out of the ordinary for a householder to have sex with his male or female slaves. Prostitutes were probably for the economically disadvantaged men to make use of; slaves were for the economically more advantaged.

Nor was it out of the ordinary for the householder to have an officially recognized concubine, one who lived within the house. We might imagine this happening only if his wife had already died. That generous interpretation might be the situation for a Pompeian land surveyor named Nicostratus Popidius, who erected a tomb that he dedicated (in an inscription) to himself, “to his concubine Popidia Ecdoche, and to his family” (Nucerian Gate, at tomb 17a/b OS). But if Popidius’s wife had already died, Popidius might have chosen to marry his concubine or to take another woman as his wife (since a man needed a wife to run his household). So because the tomb inscription fails to mention the wife by name and only mentions the concubine by name, it is most likely that both a wife and a concubine lived in Popidius’s household simultaneously and served different roles. (Judging by her name, the concubine Popidia Ecdoche had first been a slave within Popidius’s household but was then freed by him to live as his concubine within his household.)

Another tombstone of a similar kind (see figure 16.5) reads:

Marcus Vennius Rufus, sevir [a municipal magistrate]

For himself and

Marcus Vennius Demetrius, his father

Vennia Rufa, his mother

Valeria Urbana, his wife, [and]

Fufia Chila, his concubine.

Here again we do best to imagine that, in this stage of their lives, Rufus’s wife and his concubine both lived under the same roof, each one servicing Rufus in her own way—his wife overseeing his household and giving him legitimate offspring, and his concubine servicing him sexually. A Greek orator from the fourth century BCE (whose identity is disputed) had once said: “We keep mistresses for our pleasure [at parties], we keep concubines for our day-to-day bodily needs [at home], and we have wives to produce our legitimate children and to serve as faithful housekeepers” (Against Neaera 122, my translation). Evidently not too much had changed between the fourth century BCE and the eruption of Vesuvius.

Figure 16.5. The tomb inscription of Marcus Vennius Rufus, listing himself, his father, his mother, his wife, and his concubine as beneficiaries of the tomb; the inscription is displayed in the National Archaeology Museum of Naples, but without its inventory number or provenance listed; CIL 4.2496 places a member of the Vennius family (Gaius Vennius) in Pompeii, so perhaps this inscription derives from there also.

Wives and Husbands

In the Roman age there was little expectation that a wife would object to her husband’s sexual involvements beyond their “marriage bed.” The wife’s sexual role was to give the householder legitimate heirs, perpetuating the family line and the household’s reputation. Beyond that, she was to support his efforts in anything he did and needed, conferring honor on her husband’s household by efficiently running his household affairs to suit his goals—sometimes even after her husband’s death (as in the case of Naevoleia Tyche, whom we’ll meet in chapter 19). A husband’s sexual involvements might have been a source of frustration for his wife, but they were not necessarily seen as tragedies of relational dysfunction. In fact, Plutarch, the Roman biographer and prolific essayist, peddled the idea that a man’s infidelity should actually be seen as a compliment to his wife and a sign of respect for her, since he had chosen to share “his debauchery, licentiousness, and wantonness with another woman” rather than degrading his own wife with them (Moralia 140B).

Figure 16.6. A scene commonly depicted in Vesuvian art shows Medea (on right, holding a sword) with her two children and their tutor, after her husband had left her for another woman; in the Greek myth, Medea does not accept the situation but murders the other woman as well as these two children of hers in an act of revenge against her former husband; here she hides the sword that she’ll soon use against her own children (from 6.9.6, MANN 8977).

Proportionately few women could have taken action against the sexual involvements of their husbands. That was the prerogative, perhaps, of the admired deity Hera (later known as Juno). She did everything she could to prevent the sexual promiscuity of her husband, Zeus (later known as Jupiter), even resorting to killing some of the offspring from sexual engagements he had with other females. Most human wives did not have opportunities of that kind, however. They might have mumbled something on occasion or demonstrated dissatisfaction in some minor fashion, but there was no real expectation that anything would change as a result of such protestations. Perhaps most wives didn’t even bother. Many of them probably just trudged along in loveless marriages, in accordance with their social duty in a patriarchal society (a society where well-placed men benefited from what we might call structural selfishness).

Perhaps this is why there seems to be little emotion in the fresco of the faithful Penelope and Odysseus in the macellum (see figure 16.1). She is attentive to him (as he recounts his exciting experiences to her), but it seems to be a distanced attentiveness, even if it is a faithful attentiveness. There is no joy in his presence (contrast the stylized fresco of the amorous couple in figure 1.8). There is no delight in their being together. The marriage is functional in first-century terms, since she had remained chaste during his long absence. But a twenty-first-century painter would have depicted the scene much differently, in alignment with twenty-first-century ideals about a healthy relationship between married partners. In the Roman world, it was not the wife’s prerogative to expect joy and fulfillment in marriage. Her job was to be faithful to her husband, to support his interests, strategies, and goals. If love blossomed in the process, that was welcomed; if not, that was not out of the ordinary.

The dynamics of married life often depended on where the married partners were located on the socio-economic spectrum. Marriages between people higher up on the socio-economic ladder were usually arranged marriages. Their usual purpose was not to bring together two young people desperately in love. Instead, these marriages usually tied together two households and enhanced the prospects of each extended family through the bonding of male and female counterparts. Young women were typically married by the age of fifteen, although we should imagine some having been married even by the age of twelve. They were often wed to much older men who may already have lost one or two wives, usually in the dangerous process of childbirth. These marriages were established in ceremonies in which the male and the female commonly shook hands, symbolizing their agreement to enter this union of households. Marriages of this kind were expedient means of creating new households that reflected well on the households from which the two partners had come.

Of course, marriage may have fostered romance and love in some cases. We might get a glimpse of loving emotion among Pompeian spouses in rare instances. One man dedicated a tomb to his wife’s memory with these words: “Lucius Caltilius Pamphilus, freedman of Lucius, member of the Collinian tribe, for his wife Servilia, in a loving spirit” (CIL 4.1046, at tomb HGE34). Similarly, a graffito containing a woman’s amusingly ironic quip reads: “I would not sell my husband . . . for any price” (CIL 4.3061).

Vesuvian graffiti rarely testify to love within the boundaries of marriage. Notice, for instance, how a Pompeian man named Zosimus used a graffito to propose marriage to a woman named Victoria: “To his Victoria, greetings. Zosimus greets Victoria. I ask you to become the support of my old age. If you think I do not have money, don’t love me” (CIL 4.1684). Here a marriage proposal virtually defines love as Victoria’s support for Zosimus in his old age, based on the fact that he has money. Notice also these graffiti that seem to celebrate recently wedded partners: “Daphnicus and his Felicula were here. Long live Felicula! Long live Daphnicus! All the best to both of them” (CIL 4.4477); “Eulale, may you enjoy good health with your wife Vera” (CIL 4.1574). These graffiti are pleasantly uplifting, but they are not monuments to passionate love; only good health and long life are mentioned.

Love and the Fickleness of Men

In the grand seaside estate called Villa Arianna (south of Pompeii in Stabia), a small room displays a somewhat curious Vesuvian fresco (see figure 16.7). Its scene blends the realistic (that is, three women) with the mythic (that is, three Erotes, or cupids). In one widespread interpretation, it depicts a woman (and her female companion, on the far left) considering the purchase of a cupid of love, three of which have been brought by a female cupid peddler (on the right) for the woman to consider. (The fresco was displayed in a room depicting a number of female figures, one of whom raises her cloak to reveal a garment showing naked figures in various poses.) How is this intriguing scene to be understood? In what way might this scene of love being brought to the woman relate to the experiences of women in general?

A Pompeian graffito might be able to shed light on how the fresco is to be interpreted (CIL 4.5296, from 9.9.f). Scholars are divided over whether the author of the graffito is a woman or a man, and the debate hinges on one word in the fifth line of the graffito—whether it modifies the word that follows (“wasted night”) or references the author (“I . . . wasted/lost”). If it references the author, then the author would seem to be female, since the Latin word “wasted” is in feminine form. Leaving that issue aside temporarily, the first four lines read:

Oh, if only I could hold your sweet arms around my neck

Entwined in an embrace, and place kisses on your delicate lips.

Come now, my little darling, entrust your pleasures to the winds,

Believe me, men have a fickle nature . . .

Figure 16.7. A fresco depicting cupids being brought to a woman and her friend (from the Villa Arianna, MANN 9180)

If the author was a man, the fifth line that follows reads: “Often I have been awake in the middle of the wasted night.” If the author was a woman (which would seem to make more sense of the fourth line), the fifth line that follows reads: “Often I have been awake, wasted [unloved], in the middle of the night.” If the author was a woman, she hoped to embrace her “little darling” and find there a faithfulness that offsets the (sexual) fickleness of men. Is this the context for interpreting the fresco of the women and the cupids from the Villa Arianna?

Figure 16.8. The fresco of a man (perhaps Terentius Neo) and his wife (from 7.2.6, MANN 9058)

(Contrast this declaration written by a Pompeian man [CIL 4.3932]: “Weep, you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye, wondrous femininity!” Perhaps the “girls” of Pompeii were not, in fact, struck with sorrow at this turn of events.)

The fickleness of men is something Christian leaders sought to eradicate within Jesus-groups. In 1 Corinthians 7:2–5, for instance, Paul urged female Jesus-followers to fulfill their “marital duties” to their husbands and instructed that wives should yield authority over their bodies to their husbands. These might look like routine statements undergirded by conventional values of the Roman world, except for the notable fact that Paul gave the same instructions to male Jesus-followers—husbands are to fulfill their “marital duties” to their wives and yield authority over their bodies to their wives. In speaking this way not just to wives but also to husbands, Paul made it clear that male Jesus-devotees were to conform to a form of sexual practice and restraint that ran against the grain of many strong cultural currents of their day. In this, Paul expected Roman men to avoid “sexual immorality . . . so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control [i.e., your fickleness]” (1 Cor. 7:2, 5 [NIV]; for more on this issue, see “Questions to Consider,” chapter 16, question 2).

Figure 16.9. A drawing of a Vesuvian fresco that displayed a householder, with a scroll in one hand and a bucket of scrolls next to him, instructing his inquiring son, who also holds a scroll, while his wife (without a scroll) approvingly observes the pedagogical process (see credits)

Presenting the Ideal Couple

The Vesuvian towns also provide us with frescos of married couples. One, painted in the final years of Pompeii’s existence, depicts an optimistic, upwardly mobile, impressive, and confident household partnership (see figure 16.8). In the portrait, the wife holds a stylus (to her lips, in a pose of contemplation) and a notebook tablet, into which she would write notes with her stylus. Her notes would involve things pertaining to the efficient running of the household—memos, reminders, lists, and the like. As we saw in chapter 12, women are often depicted holding tablets of this kind, illustrating their effectiveness as the matron of the household. This woman, then, is advertised as someone who serves her household with effective diligence. Although we don’t know the woman’s name, her husband is often thought to be Terentius Neo—the name on an electoral campaign notice on the external wall of the residence. He is dressed in a white toga and holds a papyrus scroll. He too is literate, but what he deals with are not the matters of the household (represented by her tablet) but higher matters, things of greater consequence, the things that usually reside within scrolls—literature, philosophy, civic pronouncements, and the like. Advertised within this fresco, then, is a partnership that is effective in its household management (embodied in the diligent wife) and ambitious in its public persona (embodied in the learned husband).

Negotiating Family Bonds among Jesus-Followers

Early Jesus-followers were no different from their contemporaries in wanting the best for members of their families. Jesus was remembered for having expressed the sentiment in this way: “Who among you would give your child a snake if he or she asked for a fish? Or if the child asked for an egg, would you give him or her a scorpion?” (Luke 11:11–12, my translation). Or, “If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out [even] on a sabbath day?” (14:5). Just as Lucretius Fronto wanted his son to succeed in business, so too the mother of two prominent disciples of Jesus came to Jesus and “asked a favor of him,” requesting that her two sons would “sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your kingdom” (Matthew 20:20–21). Most parents can relate to that kind of request in one way or another. Jesus’s reply to her, however, characteristically threw a wrench into things: “Whoever wishes to be great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be your slave” (20:26–27).

We have seen that Lucretius Fronto wanted his children not to think too highly of themselves and to think about the needs of others (especially their parents when in need). The same two emphases emerged in the teaching of Jesus, who was remembered as emphasizing the need to obey the commands, “Honor your father and mother, and also love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19). The same emphasis on familial duty is replicated in various early Christian texts. Ephesians, for instance, contains this exhortation to children:

Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. “Honor your father and mother”—this is the first commandment with a promise—the promise being “so that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth.” (6:1–3)

We usually think that the “children” mentioned here are offspring who aren’t yet adults. Clearly, it would have included them, but there is no reason to restrict the admonition to the young; in the ancient world, it would have been heard as an exhortation to offspring of any age, including adult offspring.

Figure 16.10. A fresco of the deity Juno (or Hera in Greek mythology) being brought in wedding robes to Jupiter (or Zeus in Greek mythology); Juno was the deity of marriage, and she bore many children for Jupiter (from the House of the Tragic Poet [6.8.5], MANN 111441).

These passages, probably datable to the last quarter of the first century, derive from the time when Jesus-groups were realizing the need to settle into their cultural context. The urgent expectation that Jesus Christ might be returning soon had begun to subside, and Jesus-followers found the need to meld into their environment and work more integrally within it. In that context, Jesus-devotion was finding ways to accommodate itself within the culture, as the Christian faith was being handed down from generation to generation. “I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you” (2 Timothy 1:5). It was in the context of the Christian household that fathers were instructed to raise their children “in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4)—just as Timothy could be characterized as having “known the sacred writings” even “from childhood” (2 Timothy 3:15). Older women were to teach younger women how to be respectable Christian women when judged by the standards of the Roman world, including being “good managers of the household” (Titus 2:3–5, here verse 5). The same emphasis appears in 1 Timothy, where widows who are young enough to remarry are instructed to “marry, bear children, and manage their households” (5:14).

But the flip side of the coin was being remembered as well. Late in the first century, the author of Luke’s Gospel recorded some very harsh words of Jesus. “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26; see a harsher version of the same pronouncement in the Gospel of Thomas 55, and a softer version of the same in Matthew 10:37). If these words were astonishing in the context of the Jewish homeland, they were just as astonishing in the urban heartland of the Roman world. Taken at face value, these words run against the grain of every form of civilized culture.

Perhaps in the mind of the Gospel writer, the shock value of these words was to provoke reflection on a person’s ultimate priorities, without allowing the words to be understood with full literal force. After all, the same Jesus who said these offensive words is depicted only a few chapters later as exhorting a man to “honor [his] father and mother” in order to attain eternal life (Luke 18:20). Perhaps the “hatred” that Jesus was encouraging was a hatred of what the bonds of family stood for in the first-century world—prioritizing the needs of the household’s status and placing all other considerations in submission to that goal. Perhaps Luke wanted his audiences to hear that all relationships need to be informed by an underlying form of relationality that usurps all others in terms of importance: one’s own loyalty to Jesus Christ. Perhaps this is why Luke remembered Jesus as saying that he came to set “father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law” (12:52–53; compare Matthew 10:35–36, as noted at the start of this chapter). The ideals of Jesus-devotion were, in some respects, so counter-cultural that even the ideal Augustan household may not survive their implementation.

Fictive Kinship among Jesus-Followers

Family relationships were to be the most resilient of all relationships and the bedrock for all other forms of productivity. Since the ideals of Jesus-devotion often set households on edge or placed Jesus-followers at odds with their peers, it is hardly surprising that Jesus-devotees often employed the language of familial relationships when referring to each other. Paul, for instance, identified Timothy as his “beloved and faithful child in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 4:17; see also 1 Timothy 1:2, 18; 2 Timothy 1:2; 2:1; Hebrews 13:22), and also as his “brother” (2 Corinthians 1:1; 1 Thessalonians 3:2; Philemon 1; see also Colossians 1:1). Similarly, Titus is both his “loyal child in the faith” (Titus 1:4) and his “brother” (2 Corinthians 2:13). Paul identified Onesimus, the slave of Philemon, as “my child . . . whose father I have become” (Philemon 10) and as a “brother” (Colossians 4:9; Philemon 16). And on almost one hundred occasions, the Pauline letters show Paul as identifying other Jesus-followers as his “brothers (and sisters).” In so doing, Paul places Jesus-followers metaphorically within “the household of faith” (Galatians 6:10, my translation). No longer slaves but children who inherit the riches of the household (4:1–7), these Jesus-followers cry out in prayer, referencing the almighty deity as “Abba, Father” (4:6; also Romans 8:15)—the prayer address used by Jesus himself, the obedient son (as in Mark 14:36). This kind of discourse reinforced relational bonds between Jesus-devotees in a fashion that helped them realign their primary reference groups, affirming their Christian relationality as the arena from which they were to draw their primary identity.

The redefinition of family kinship along lines of fictive (i.e., non-biological) kinship has a strong narrative foothold in each of the four canonical Gospels. Mark narrates a scene in which Jesus’s family wants to speak with him, away from the crowds, because he has become something of a public embarrassment to the family’s reputation (see Mark 3:21). The episode continues:

And he replied, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” (3:33–35)

Both Matthew and Luke share this episode in which fictive kinship takes priority over expectations regarding the status of the familial household (Matthew 12:46–50; Luke 8:19–21). Luke also has an episode in which Jesus, as a twelve-year-old Judean (or Jewish) youth, caused his mother and father “great anxiety” when he stayed in the temple for three days discussing matters with the Judean leaders; when he is found there, he responds to parental concern by saying, “Didn’t you know that I must be concerned with the things of my Father?” (Luke 2:49, my translation). Similarly, John’s Gospel realigns family most dramatically as Jesus hangs on the cross in Jerusalem:

When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to his mother, “Woman, here is your son [that is, the disciple].” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home. (19:26–27)

Each Gospel, then, has at least one episode in which Jesus himself legitimates the prioritization of fictive kinship over the biological family. Mark’s Gospel sheds light on why these fictive kinship relationships were so urgently necessary:

Peter began to say to him, “Look, we have left everything and followed you.” Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. (10:28–30)

Those who follow Jesus in exclusive terms can expect to experience “persecutions”—a word that slips into the list of otherwise good things that Jesus-followers are said to gain in return for abandoning familial relationships. When old ties become corrosive obstructions, Jesus-followers are to find new lines of relational support in their fictive kin: “brothers and sisters, mothers and children.”

In these metaphorical relationships between Jesus-followers, notice that no father is mentioned. The absence of a male overseer in this metaphorical list would have captured attention, with the implied head of the household being the deity worshiped by Jesus-followers. They proclaimed themselves to be “children” of a “father in heaven” (Matthew 5:45; 6:8; 7:11; 23:9), who forgives trespasses (Mark 11:25) and gives “good things to those who ask” (Matthew 7:11; see also Luke 11:13). So Jesus is remembered as instructing his followers, “Call no one your father on earth, for you have one Father, the one in heaven” (Matthew 23:9). And just as sons are to emulate their fathers, so too these children are to emulate their heavenly father by being “merciful, just as [their] Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

16 Family and Solidarity

16
Family and Solidarity