Thought for the Day-Our Family of Faith

Egon Schiele, Mother with Two Children III, 1915–17. Oil on canvas, Belvedere, Vienna.

A Thought for the Day given at a lunchtime service of Holy Communion at St Olave Hart Street on Tuesday 22nd September 2026 based on the text of Luke 8.19-21.

In the world of law, politics and the social sciences, the family is often described as the bedrock of society. The first place we learn how to interact with others. How to care for them. Where stories and values are received and woven into our own stories. Where love is exchanged.

Blood is thicker than water—so the saying goes. Family ties run deeper and stronger than relationships formed through necessity or shared interests. We do not cease to belong to it when our interests change, when we fall out, or have nothing useful to offer. These bonds inevitably create a boundary. Some are part of our family. Others are not.

In today’s short Gospel reading Jesus takes the family—the basic unit of belonging—and breaks open its boundaries.

His mother and brothers have come to see him but can’t get close because of the crowds—so they send a message to him.

Jesus replies:

“My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.”

Words which at first hearing sound harsh. But he is not dismissing his family. His mother Mary has already heard the word of God and responded.

“Let it be with me according to your word,”

she said to the Angel Gabriel at the Annunciation.

She is Jesus’s mother according to the flesh but also his disciple. One who hears the word of God and acts upon it.

Today Jesus enlarges the boundaries of his family by including all those who follow Mary’s example: those who hear the word of God and act upon it. They too are his mother and brothers.

The Christian faith draws us to inhabit a larger, more glorious and more amazing world—not a smaller one. The Word of God, when heard and acted upon, changes the way we see everything around us, including one another. Today Jesus asks us to see our relationships differently. The families we are part of at home and at work, and the relationships we form through shared interests, are all important. But there is more. Jesus invites us to recognise in those gathered around him not strangers, but brothers and sisters.

We belong to one another through our relationship with Christ. At our baptism, the Spirit drew us into Christ’s relationship with his heavenly Father. We became participants in the very life of God—the divine mystery we call the Holy Trinity. And so we belong to God and to one another.

By hearing the word of God and doing it we learn to see the world in this way. We see beyond the boundaries of professional roles, social or ethnic difference and challenging behaviours.

We learn to see each person before us as someone God has made and loves. As children of the same heavenly family.

Seeing someone else in this way changes how we must treat them. Family ties run deeper than convenience or shared interests. Their joy cannot be irrelevant to my life. Their suffering cannot be ignored. Their value does not depend upon what they can offer us.

In a few moments, this new belonging will be made visible as we gather at the altar. As the bread is broken, we shall say:

“Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread.”

As we receive the bread of life, let us pray for the faith to see the world differently: to enlarge our vision and our capacity to love, and to see those around us through the eyes of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

Amen.


Image: Egon Schiele, Mother with Two Children III, 1915–17. Oil on canvas, Belvedere, Vienna.