The Humble Headship of the Father

A Sermon for the Feast of the Holy Family

Luke 2: 41-52 

Luke 2:49 “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”

Our Father who art in Heaven; at the very beginning of our prayers is the language of the family. It is repeated all through scripture, and is characteristic of Christ’s teaching about God. He could have used the language Lordship, “you call me Master and Lord, and rightly so, for so I am.” (John 13:13) But he preferred the titles of relationship and love: Son of Man; Son of God. He said that anyone who does the will of the Father is “my sister and mother and brother.” (Matthew 12:46-50) The language of family relationships is used in Scripture to describe the profundities of our relationship with God: the church is the “bride of Christ” and Christ is her Head as the husband is the head of the household. (Ephesians 5:25-33) Despite the failure of some fathers, and concern about  patriarchy; despite the complications of our many relationships, the language of family is given to us in Scripture as the means by which we may understand how God has come to us. And in this season on our cards and at the crib we see the image of the Holy Family, “Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in a Manger.” (Luke 2:16)

Christ Pantocrator in the Church of the Pamacharistos, Istanbul

First let us be clear that we do not turn away from this language because it is either too rustic for us in our intellectual superiority, or because it is unacceptable to us in our modern understanding of gender. The Bible is not inviting us to extrapolate to God from the human beings we see about us. Rather it is the other way round. It is because we know something about God the Father we can understand something about fatherhood, about, for instance, Joseph, the husband of Mary.

To contemplate the Eternal Father is, shockingly, to see sacrifice. He was always Father, because the Son was God from the Beginning, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father and the Son. But the Father was not always Creator; by His mercy in creation He limits Himself, becoming the Father of all worlds, and Father of you and of me. The creation was an act of Love, and His continuing love for His creation when it fell away from him in sin, led to His sending his Son, to be born in a stable, to die on the cross, and to rise again in glory that our fallen humanity might be reunited with His eternal divinity. The basis of all things is a gift; the Father’s gift of life, and salvation is a renewal of that gift given again at the cost of the life of His Son.

This is the opposite of the hauteur of the Roman Paterfamilias, who ordered his family only so that he could be exalted. There is a definite hierarchy in the Holy Family which mirrors that which the eternal Father has ordered for the universe. The Father is head of the household, in a headship which enables equality. Because Joseph takes up the Headship of the Holy Family, the Mother is not cast aside in shameful divorce but is given the care and help that she needs to flourish and fulfill the vocation to which God has called her. The Son is obedient to his parents, and does what His father and mother tell him. His place in the family enables that extraordinary humility which He took upon himself when he was born of the Virgin and lived among us. His place as son in the Family allowed the Son of Man to set off on the path of obedience and humility which led ultimately to the cross, and then to the resurrection. The humility on which our salvation depends was revealed in the life of the Holy Family.

Our own families may learn from this. They are called to an order which enables equality and diversity, rather than to the disorder of disobedience which refuses to accept humility and service and seeks instead rights and insists on position.

The Mother of God, Hagia Sophia, Istanbul

But this does not mean that we should go away with the impression that our families should be configured to a particular pattern. Families come in many forms, shapes and sizes. The Holy Family was hardly at the center of social acceptability. It starts pretty terribly, particularly for our modern world, with an old man betrothed to a young girl. Then the pregnancy before they have come together, and all the fuss about cousin Elizabeth in her old age, Zechariah’s inability to speak, and the rest of it. Without letting go of the sanctity of marriage, and the proper ordering of relationships, in His humility and mercy, God reminds us through the Holy Family that all without exception are called to be members of His family. No relationship or lack of one prevents or precludes us from being subject to his call into his church, though He calls us to renewal of relationships in Him, and to the costly humility to seek their ordering in Him.

For whether we are married or single, part of a large family, or all alone in the world, we are called into the church to grow as the boy Christ did in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.  (Luke 2:51) Our individual souls, our little families, the great family which is the catholic Church, are to be places in which we learn the faith, just as much as we learn how to walk and feed ourselves, how to speak and read, how to live and die. Some of us have a direct duty to particular individuals, to our children, to other members of our family, to help them to learn to pray, to serve God, to know and love him. Others of us, even those who seem to be entirely alone in the world, by prayer, word and example, share in the same duty within the Body of Christ.

Once again The Holy Family gives us an example. The boy was obedient to his father and mother, learning from them the ways of his eternal Father. But His very obedience taught them; Mary pondered these things in her heart. (Luke 2:19) She learned from Him, and her greatness lies in the thoroughness with which she learned; of all women the most blessed, (Luke 1:42, 48) grace was heaped on grace in the lessons she learned from her son. “Did you not know I must be about the business of my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:48-49) Once again the key is humility, which enables us to learn from those whom we teach. The duty to offer the teaching, and to exercise the headship to which we are called is not removed by the humility with which we teach and lead within the household of God. But that humility will enable each of us to learn and to grow even as we help others to flourish. So within this family which is the church, we are all pupils of the Child who leads us into His Father’s House.