Who is my family?

The day after my last post I was with the homies in the apartment and we were looking at Mark 3:22-35. In a couple sections Jesus mom and brothers come to take him away because they think he is nuts. Jesus turns toward his followers and asks, "Who are my mother and my brothers? Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother."

We talked about the invitation of Jesus to leave one family and join another - a crazy level of loyalty. I asked Teddy what was happening for him with his decision to leave the gang. He said he had talked with a couple senior gang members - shot callers - who are in prison. They asked him why he wanted out of the gang and he told them. So they blessed him out!

One of the shot callers I am aware is having big Jesus interactions in solitary confinement and will be a part of our ministry when he gets out, but I had no idea that such a thing was possible. It is so beautiful, it takes my breath away! What a huge answer to prayer! Thank you Jesus.

Who are my enemies?

And then he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. And he appointed twelve (who he also names "sent ones") so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons. He appointed twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); James and John the sons of Zebedee (to whom he gave the names Sons of Thunder); Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

This is a passage we mostly breeze right by. Yeah, so there were twelve. We were reading through Mark when we hit upon this (Art, Teddy, Ramon, Saul and me), and we got talking. "What do we know about the guys on this list?"

"Some of them were fishermen."

I pointed out that Matthew was another name for Levi the tax collector mentioned in chapter 2. Tax collectors were not just sinners, they were traitors to their own people, working for the occupying forces and taking their skim off the top. This guy who was considered scum of the earth even by outcasts was considered cream of the crop by Jesus. Then there is Simon the Zealot. Think Taliban. What is it that keeps him from taking off Levi's head?

"God?"

"Yeah, well, maybe something like that.
What is it like to be enemies, to really hate someone because of the group they belong to?"

These are gang members I am talking to. "What does it mean for you as a Sureno to be enemies with a Norteno?"

"It's about pride, dog, like we are better, we are tougher. It is all about building yourself up by taking them down." Even within Sureno there are factions depending on what neighborhood you are from and these will war with each other.

"So you know what it is like being enemies. Can you imagine what it would be like to be in a small group of Jesus followers with a Norteno?"

"Dog! Hell no!"

"But that's what we see here between Matthew/Levi and Simon. What is it that makes that possible? Maybe its that Jesus shows them both something better than what they imagined for themselves and jumps them in to his gang? You've got to leave one gang to join another."

Teddy speaks up and tells us he has been feeling the Holy Spirit a lot, in really powerful ways. He has been adopted into our heavenly Father's family and he is feeling it. He is ready to leave the gang. At 21 he has been in the gang for nine years and is a senior member. At this point he doesn't have to do things to prove himself.

"What does that mean to leave the gang?" I ask.

"When you get jumped into the gang, three or four of the homies beat the shit out of you. When you leave, it is more like a dozen. And then every time they see you after that they are supposed to put you in check for leaving. But I'm not afraid. God is with me. And I want to be there for my son. At the end of the day it doesn't matter what they say to me or about me. What matters is that my son calls me dad."