This morning, I want to begin with a confession. 

It’s about Thanksgiving.  

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday.  (That’s not the confession.) 

But there’s one thing I can’t stand about it. 

That thing is cranberry sauce.  

There.  I’ve said it. 

Since I’m confessing, I will also confess that I can’t stand mint jelly on lamb.  

This will be the subject of my 2025 Easter sermon. 

But really, it’s cranberry sauce that I don’t like. 

I like cranberries; I like sauce.  But not the combo. 

I tell you this because it was something that I hid from my family for years.  

You see, my family is one of those families where you don’t just load your plate.  

The person at the head of the table, my dad, serves you. 

Each plate gets passed down.  

And each person, each link in the chain, looks down and kind of feels free to comment on your choices.  

“Wow…that’s a lot of mashed potatoes.” 

“Wait, since when do you like dark meat?”

“You know, I don’t observe a lot of color on this plate.” (That’s my mom.)

The year my cousin Penny came from California and shared that she was vegetarian was something we discussed and adjudicated among ourselves for the next decade. 

The fact that, at some point, my cousin was no longer vegetarian did not moot anything, at least for my grandmother. 

In fact, this coming Thursday, it would not surprise me if the topic came up yet again, even though both my grandmother and my cousin are now gone.  

That being the case, you can see why, even early on, I always made sure to get cranberry sauce, at least a little, on my plate. 

I knew they suspected.  

My grandmother always inspected the plates back in the kitchen before my mom tackled them.  

She would have seen that little schmear untouched. 

But plausible deniability can be an important part of living in families.  

I rode it as best I could, and I rode it for as long as I could.  

Families are so powerful, aren’t they? 

Their ways of marking love and belonging, rewarding loyalty, identifying disappointment, nursing heartbreak, what they’re determined to hold onto and what they’re ultimately able to let go —these all shape us in their way.  

Each one is a community of memory at its most hyper-local. 

At best, the strength of those memories keeps us grounded. 

At worst, it keeps us tethered.  

That grounding and tethering are not always easy to sort out.  

This was a truth that even Jesus knew.  

In our gospel this morning, we’re returning to a story that I may well have preached on earlier this year.  

It is Mark’s account of an early moment in Jesus’ ministry, as he is first beginning to attract real crowds but has not ventured too far afield from his own hometown.  

He is preaching in a house, and the place is full. 

In fact, it’s so full that the crowd has spilled out well into the front yard.  

The disciples have had to give up their own seats. 

They’re outside, doing their best to shush people and keep them from walking all over the flowers—but truth be told, the whole scene is a little chaotic.  

Nobody is quite prepared for the impact that Jesus’ words and his growing reputation already seem to be having. 

And it turns out, the ones who are least prepared for this impact are Jesus’ own family.  

The story doesn’t say so explicitly, but it seems likely that they think he’s in desperate need of help, even a danger to himself and others.  

They come to collect him…to get him back home to Nazareth.

They floor it all the way there to stop this flood of preaching and so-called healing they’ve been hearing about.  

They come out of love.

For all the best reasons, they are trying to do the very thing that the many nay-sayers standing there will ultimately do out of spite: to shut Jesus up.  

But there is no “plausible deniability” for Jesus on this. 

And so, when the disciples pass the word down the chain from the front yard to the living room, like people passing the Thanksgiving plates down an enormous table, Jesus makes a stand.  

Mark writes, “A crowd was sitting around Jesus when word was brought that his mother and brothers were outside asking for him. 

‘Who are my mother and brothers?’ he replies. 

And looking round at those who were sitting in the circle about him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers. Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’” (Mark 3:31-35)

It’s not a confession.  

It’s not even a declaration of independence, although in some ways it may sound like one. 

We know from Scripture that his mother stays close throughout his ministry straight through Good Friday and Easter, and that his brother James, in particular, would go on to become an early leader of the church after Jesus’ death.  

It’s important to note that this story isn’t marking a moment when he cuts ties with them. 

He doesn’t do that.  

But he’s declaring that he doesn’t belong to them in quite the same way as he did before, because now he knows that first and foremost, he belongs to God…and not for nothing, so do they.  So do we all. 

This will have some consequences for him, and also for them. 

In the short term, it means that his days in the family carpenter’s shop are over.  

More to the point, he is inviting them to give up a way of love that is hyper-local and exclusive for something more expansive, more generous, and infinitely more surprising.  

This isn’t so easy. 

As we know for ourselves, it can be hard for our families when we give up their customs and their loves.  

It can be even harder when we seek release from some of their worst impulses and downright prejudices. 

Loving without lecturing doesn’t always come easily, especially as we are trying to find our own way and doing our best to live as those who are grounded but not tethered. 

Jesus is blessed, indeed, that this seems not to have been so difficult for him. 

So many of those he loves take him up on the invitation to live differently.  

But as we do, we are gathered into a new family—a family not only of common ancestry, but truly of the heart. 

It’s a family that does not shrink by slow attrition, but which is forever expanding, always making new things possible, reminding us how to love one another again and again.  

Rather than binding us, it gives us wings. 

All other loves are, well, relative. 

As we meet one another once again around the table at Thanksgiving, may love prompt us to be patient and generous, but also unafraid to be ourselves.

And may we always know the presence of Jesus there in the midst of us, calling us to the heart’s true home in him. 

Amen.