Families and Friends

June 7th, 2026   “Families and Friends – Navigating Relationships”  Rev. Heather Jepsen

Summer Sermon Series: You Pick – I Preach!

Jeremiah 32:17-19 and Luke 10:38-42

          This week we continue our summer sermon series “You Pick – I Preach!” where I craft sermons based on topics of your choosing.  Today we are talking about relationships.  How do we get along with our families and friends?  And what do we do when the people we love disappoint us?

          The Bible offers us a lot of conflicting messages regarding families.  Frequently in the Old Testament we are told to obey our parents.  In fact, it’s one of the 10 commandments.  “Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.”  Our Book of Confessions doubles down on this in the Heidelberg Catechism where we read “What is God’s will for you in the fifth commandment?  That I honor, love, and be loyal to my father and mother and all those in authority over me, that I submit myself with proper obedience to all their good teaching and discipline; and also, that I be patient with their failings – for through them God chooses to rule us.”

          Jesus seems to offer a different interpretation of this.  He himself is often rude to his mother, like during the wedding at Cana or when he stays behind in the temple as a child.  When told his mother is outside waiting for him, he rejects her saying, “Who is my mother?”.  When someone asks if they can go bury their father before following him Jesus suggests that we should let the dead bury themselves, that’s not very respectful.  And in one of his apocalyptic speeches Jesus says, “For I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother.”

          While on the surface the Bible offers conflicting messages about our family relationships, I think if we combine it with modern understandings of relationships and a dash of Buddhist thought, we can find some useful things here for us today.

          The first reading that I chose is from Jeremiah, and it is pretty typical Old Testament language regarding parents and children.  When discussing covenants and promises between God and the people of Israel, God often states that rewards for good behavior will be passed down to future generations.  Likewise, punishment will be passed on to children.  I picked this reading because it is particularly descriptive as it says that God will “repay the guilt of parents into the laps of their children after them.”

          Now, in its own context, this is about the afterlife.  At the time these texts were written, the Israelites did not believe in a literal heaven or hell.  Instead, the only way you lived on following your physical death was through your children.  That’s why having children, especially sons who command power and authority, is so important.  Without a son to inherit your name when you die you are just gone.  So, in these old covenants God is promising that if you are good, your children will be blessed and through them you will too after you die.  If you are bad, your children are punished, and that becomes your punishment too.

          While we don’t believe these things today, we can still find some wisdom in this scripture.  We know that our parents’ lives reflect the lives of their parents and influence our own lives.  Challenging issues like alcoholism, abuse, mental illness, and narcissistic passive aggressive behaviors all travel through the lines of our families.  Issues my mother and father had growing up become issues in my own life depending on how they raise me.  It’s a horrible cycle as negative behaviors and traits are much more easily passed down than positive ones.  I am sure you can see these trends in your own family, places where your mother is like her mother, or your father is like his father, and then you are tempted to fall into those behaviors too.  In this way, the sin of the parents is passed down to the children.

          The wonder of our lives is that we always have the opportunity to make a change.  Sure, the guilt of the parents is poured out into the laps of the children, but if we continue reading, we find that “God will reward all according to their ways and according to the fruit of their doings.” 

We have the power to break the cycle of negative behaviors.  Through counseling and self-study, we can begin to notice our family patterns and push against them.  I can make a conscious choice not to be like my mother or father, and to form new relationship trends with my own children.  This transformation is within your power.  Of course, forgiveness is a really big part of this, and that will be a topic for its own separate sermon later this summer.

          A helpful thing in transforming our relationship patterns is the Buddhist idea of equanimity.  Let’s look at Mary and Martha as an example.

          This is a classic story about family relationships.  Jesus is visiting the home of two sisters and while Martha is busy hosting, Mary is sitting at the Lord’s feet and learning.  The problem is when Martha has expectations of Mary.  “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?  Tell her then to help me.”  Jesus refuses, suggesting that Mary has made the better choice.

          Rather than saying Martha is wrong and Mary is right, I want to look at this scripture through a Buddhist lens.  Martha is stressed not because Mary is doing something wrong, but because Martha hasn’t accepted Mary’s choice.  Martha has a lot of emotions wrapped up in Mary’s behavior.  She has ideas about who Mary should be and what Mary should do.  And those ideas, her attachment to the Mary of her mind, causes Martha suffering.  Mary doesn’t suffer, because Mary doesn’t have expectations of Martha.  She is just taking care of herself and letting her sister be.

          All of the tensions we experience in our relationships have to do with expectations and acceptance.  I see this in relationships between friends, siblings, partners, kids and their parents, and parents and their kids.  Any time we are in a relationship with someone, we develop a version of that person in our minds.  Who they should be, what behaviors they should have, what things they should do.  And when people don’t meet our expectations, we get mad.  “My brother ignores me”, “My spouse never cleans the house”, “My kid won’t go to college”, “My parents are a different political party”, all these things hurt our feelings, and we blame the other person.

          The problem is that it’s not the other person that is hurting us.  It’s ourselves.  Let’s imagine for a minute that my mom has never told me that she loves me.  Every encounter I have with my mom as a child, as a teen, and as an adult, I am waiting to hear these words.  But she never says them, and I grow to hate her for it.  She is never meeting my expectations of what a mother should be.  The reality is, I can’t change my mom.  And chances are she will never say she loves me.  But I can change myself, and I can let go of that expectation.  I can accept my mother for who she is, and stop wishing she was someone else.

          Now, that doesn’t mean it’s ok for her not to say that.  It’s not ok for a mom not to love her kid.  It just means that I accept the reality of our relationship.  I recognize who she really is, as opposed to who I want her to be, and I let it go.  It just is.  Not good, not bad, not anything.  I let go of my expectations of my mother.

          And the magic is, if I can do that, then I’m no longer angry or sad or upset.  I stop letting her behavior determine how I feel.  Instead, I accept her for who she is and I accept myself and I let go of my attachment to who I wish she was.

          This is equanimity.  Letting go of our attachments and accepting things as they are.  Equanimity recognizes: “Right now, this is the world I live in” and you engage with an open heart.  You’re not indifferent or apathetic, you are just accepting what is.  And in our relationships, this means accepting people as they are. 

          In the gospel reading, Martha has all these expectations of Mary.  If she would let these go, then she would find balance.  The problem isn’t that Mary isn’t helping.  The problem is that Martha won’t let go of her expectations of Mary.  Mary has no expectations of Martha, she doesn’t care if she serves or not, she’s not attached to Martha’s behavior, and so she has chosen the better part.

          Relationships are hard.  They are the work of a lifetime.  But the more we can work toward equanimity.  The more we can accept, “right now – this is the way things are” then the better off we will be.  We can continue to pour our love and good energy out into the world, but we remain unattached to the outcomes in our relationships. 

Think about it.  Your parents aren’t going to be who you wish they would be.  Your kids aren’t going to have the same dreams for their lives that you have for their lives.  Your friends are going to make choices that you feel are stupid.  And your spouse or partner is going to let you down.  You can’t control any of that.  But you can control your own mind and heart. 

Let go of those expectations.  Let go of those imaginary people in your head that your parents and kids and spouse and friends can never live up to.  Stop wishing things were different, for that is simply negative energy that only eats away at your own heart.  Instead say, “this is what it is”, take a deep breath, and let it go.  Amen.