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Reflections of Family and Faith
"The family that prays together stays together." - Venerable Patrick Peyton
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Every family has an unofficial archive. It contains faded photographs, childhood nicknames, unfortunate haircuts, and stories that are never permitted to die. You may become a surgeon, a bishop, or the Secretary-General of the United Nations, but at Christmas dinner an aunt will still say, “This is the boy who swallowed a coin when he was six.” Or, “This is the one who got his head stuck between the railings, and the fire department had to come.” Families are excellent at keeping us humble. Sometimes they continue the treatment long after humility has been successfully achieved.
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Matthew tells us Jesus comes walking across the water during "the fourth watch of the night." The Romans divided the night into four three-hour shifts for soldiers on guard duty, and the fourth watch ran from roughly three to six in the morning, which any person will tell you is the worst possible hour to be awake. Because It's not dramatic midnight. It's not the hopeful dawn. It's the hour where your phone is off, your coffee is hours away, and your brain decides to replay every humiliating thing you've ever said and done since the third grade. At three in the morning, even a harmless coat hanging on a chair can look as though it has bad intentions.
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A few years ago, scientists placed sensitive, sophisticated microphones near tomato plants. They discovered something astonishing: plants under severe thirst or injury emit rapid ultrasonic popping sounds. Human ears cannot hear them, but the plants are not silent. A thirsty plant may look perfectly respectable in its pot while quietly producing distress signals beyond our range of hearing. This explains many houseplants. They were not dying peacefully. They were screaming for weeks while we stood beside them saying, “That is strange. What's wrong with it, I watered it sometime around last Easter.”
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Most of us become interested in stitching only when a button falls off ten minutes before we plan to get out of the house for a reception. Then we discover that the sewing kit contains twelve colors of thread, none of which matches with the outfit I am wearing now, and a needle whose eye appears to have been designed only for angels. After several attempts, some people sew the button back. Others decide the jacket over it looks more contemporary and stylish. Yet one of the greatest achievements in human history depended upon women who knew exactly how to guide a needle. When Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969, the world saw the astronaut, the rocket, and the American flag. Almost no one saw Hazel Fellows and the other women who helped construct the Apollo spacesuits. These women came from the International Latex Corporation, associated with Playtex, a company better known at the time for manufacturing ordinary clothes than spacecraft.
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Every family has an unofficial courtroom. It is usually the kitchen. Someone asks, "Who finished the ice cream?" Immediately, four people become constitutional lawyers. One argues there was hardly any left. Another insists the container was already suspiciously light. A third claims not to like that flavor, although witnesses have seen otherwise. The final person says, "Why are we always blaming people in this family?" which is generally understood as a confession. Prophet Micah stages a courtroom too, but he calls unusual witnesses: the mountains and the age-old foundations of the earth. They have no opinions to protect and no grudges to settle. They simply stood there the whole time, watching.
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A doctor once told a patient, "You need to stop smoking, avoid alcohol, eat plain food, go to bed early, and stay away from too much excitement." The man asked, "Will that make me live longer?" The doctor said, "I'm not sure, but it will certainly feel longer." Most of us would gladly accept the miracle King Hezekiah received in the first reading: fifteen extra years. Although, knowing us, we would probably have a few questions first. "Lord, are those fifteen healthy years? Will my knees still work? And does Medicare know about this?"
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