There is an instance in the Gospels where, while Jesus is speaking, a woman from the crowd calls out to him: “Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you!” (Luke 11, 27).

In effect, she is saying: “You must have a wonderful mother! Look how you turned out!” Jesus responds by saying: “Rather, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it.”

It’s easy to misunderstand his answer because on the surface it sounds like he is downplaying the compliment to his mother. But his response is really: “Yes, I have wonderful mother, but it’s not because she gave me biological birth that makes her special; it’s her faith that makes her special and particularly wonderful as a mother.” In essence, he’s saying: “Yes, my mother, like all mothers, is wonderful in her biology, but my mother is particularly wonderful in her faith.”  When Jesus says, blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it, he has his mother specially in mind.

The renowned scripture scholar Raymond E. Brown points out that the apostolic community gave Mary such a special place, not particularly because she was Jesus’ biological mother, but because of her special faith.

Among the various lessons contained in that is this: For Jesus, faith trumps biology. For him, real family is defined by faith, not biology or anything else. Who are my actual brothers and sisters? For Jesus, it’s those who hear the word of God and keep it.

I write this next part only with this caveat: Biological family is a foundational anthropological structure, coming from God and nature, and it needs to be nurtured and defended, especially today when it is under siege from many sides. A healthy society needs healthy families; a healthy Church needs healthy families; a healthy country needs healthy families: a healthy world needs healthy families; healthy liberals need healthy families; healthy conservatives need healthy families; and healthy individuals tend to come from healthy families. Moreover, many of our deepest joys are experienced within a biological family. The biological family needs to be defended. The same holds true for all our other families.

But, that being respected, we must also have the courage to say that, for Jesus, faith trumps biology, denomination, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ideology, and gender. Our deepest, real, forever family has faith as its root.

• Who are our brothers and sisters? Our biological family makes for real family, but our deepest, forever family is made up of all others who have faith in God, which does include our biological family if they share faith with us.
• Who are our fellow church members? Our fellow church members are all fellow Christians, irrespective of denomination, who have a sincere faith in Jesus Christ. In faith we are all one family.
• Who are our fellow pilgrims as we journey through this world? Our deepest, forever fellow pilgrims are all women and men, irrespective of their religion or honest agnosticism, who are sincerely searching for truth, goodness, beauty, and justice.
• Who is our real ethnic family? It’s everyone on this planet, irrespective of skin color, mother tongue, or racial history, who is sincerely searching for a community within which differences will make for harmony and unity.
• Who are our fellow citizens? Our fellow citizens, fellow patriots, are not necessarily those with whom we share a country and a common history; more deeply, it’s people from every country in the world who, with us, share one land given equally to us all by God. For Jesus, there can be no Christian nationalism.
• Who constitutes my ideological, political family? It’s not those who share a liberal or conservative temperament and ideology with me. My deepest, forever ideological family is made up of those for whom truth and justice lay waste to all ideologies, both liberal and conservative.
• Who is my family in terms of gender? Male? Female? LGBQ? My real family is inside the Body of Christ, within which “there is no male or female.” (Galatians 3, 28)

When Jesus asks who are my brothers and sisters and then identifies them with those who are listening to him, (Matthew 12, 48-50) he is teaching that our true, forever family is not rooted in biology, denomination, religion, ethnicity, nationality, ideological temperament, or gender, but in a shared faith which transcends all of these.

So, like the woman who wanted to compliment Jesus’ mother, go out to that good friend of yours who is a pious Muslim, and to that honest colleague of yours who voted the opposite of how you did, and to that struggling immigrant you’ve ignored whom you see living in a fear you have never shared, and go out to that gracious, bubbly New Age neighbor of yours, who has just brought a casserole to your door and who once gave you a rainbow keychain, and say: You must have a wonderful mom! Look how you turned out!