Mark 10:28-30

Peter began to say to him, "Look, we have left everything and followed you." Jesus said, "Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age--houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions--and in the age to come eternal life." (Mark 10:28-30)

I was today stirred by this passage as I read it because it speaks firmly to the community and unity of the body of Christ, the way in which the Christian is linked to his fellows. For Christian is joined to Christian in a way that merely naming cannot capture. We are one with one another because we are one in the same Lord; “You are all one in Christ Jesus” says St. Paul (Galatians 3:28). For when we leave the family that is ours by the laws of flesh for the sake of Christ we come into a greater family by the Spirit wherein God adopts us as his own (Romans 8:15). However many siblings we had in the flesh, there are more and truer in Christ; however loving a mother, there is no care as that of many Christians; however good a father, there is none good but God (Mark 10:18).

If the Christian has indeed laid aside all that ties him to the systems of the world for the sake of the one who was sent from heaven and the word he was sent to preach, he has but chosen to dedicate himself to that only which is worthy of dedication. Yet because God is a gift-giver beyond all accounting, he requites even this good loss with a greater gain in the same kind. The Christian has left behind him a house, but every house that will receive his peace is open to him (Luke 10:5-7). The Christian has lost a brother, a sister, a mother, perhaps children. He has gained for his brother and sister every Christian around the world, and by a better bond than ever human blood or human custom could provide; for it is the love of God and not the tradition of man that effects it. His mother is every Christian which nurtures him and cherishes him and consoles him, and his children are all the Christians that he nurtures, cherishes, and consoles in turn. Perhaps he has left behind land, but the whole world belongs to his Master.

As to persecutions, by which all these things shall come, or which shall come along with them (the Greek accepts either reading), we have the assurance that we are blessed in them (Matthew 5:10), and we perceive that they are a natural result of such loss for the gospel’s sake. For whoever would cast off all that the world values to serve a man executed under due process of the law cannot long continue without the scorn of that world; and what part shall not scorn him shall stand perplexed, so that they will either harden in their hearts and become persecutors in their turn, or search out the Power that has so confounded them; and they shall find him if they seek him. So is this dedication to Christ the source of many blessings and various, both for the one who comes to follow and the followers he joins, to the ones that receive him, and the ones that see him go.