Tribe, Kingdom, and Self in Matthew 12.46-50

When this passage is treated it is common to emphasize the fact that the Christian's relationship to Christ transcends earthly familial relations. Additionally, the topic of adoption can be touched upon, the idea that a Christian becomes part of the family of God and how this relationship and status is of far greater import than our earthly relations.

These points are correct and worthy of great consideration. However, there are further implications regarding this teaching and a similarly themed passage in Luke can provide some help in how we contemplate these doctrines and interact with the text.

Christ's claim upon His people supersedes human relations, identity, and obligations or to put it another way Christ is over family and familial claims.

The tribe as understood historically is but an extended expression of the family. In the tribe or clan everyone is related and those who marry into it are now reckoned part of its polity. Surely the text places the claims of Christ over the relationship to tribe.

Luke 14.26 picks up this theme and places further emphasis on the fact that those who place family-tribe-life (as it were) over their relationship with Christ are not worthy to be called his disciples.

Additionally along with the call to lose, set aside, or more properly mortify (as expressed by hate) the bond or identity with the family-tribe polity, the follower of Christ is obligated to self-mortification in the form of cross bearing.

We are called to reject not just corporate identity via tribe but even our own individuality. All these relations and obligations must be lost as we are made new creatures belonging to a new tribe-polity – the family of Christ, the Church, or the Kingdom of God.

This is not terribly controversial though it's not a topic addressed much in our day. However the message is both profound and radical in its implications. It's a message contra mundum, an imperative that flies in the face of all human intuition and tradition. It's far more radical than anything posited by Right-wing Christianity. The Christian Right argues for a radical affirmation of tribe and in sacral fashion ties the Kingdom/Family of Christ identity to that of a human tribal obligation – or nation. For it is within the spectrum of the Right that the nation is often conceived of in tribal terms.

Christ breaks with this paradigm entirely and calls us to sever our obligation to earthly polities and to find our sole citizenship in Christ's Kingdom. We pray for Caesar, pay his tax, use his coin, and follow his laws as much as we are able. But we are not invested in his polity. We are not part of his tribe even though our residence may be found within his domains. He has no claim over us in terms of vassalage. We live as subjects (as opposed to citizens) but his obligation is limited to our obedience and taxes. He cannot rule over our wills, or compel us to adopt his vision and goals or kill for his causes.

Why? Because we live as strangers and pilgrims. Our citizenship is elsewhere, in Zion and we are bondservants or slaves of the Great King. We have no rights per se. We have no 'kith and kin' apart from those who are in Christ. The world, nation, family, tribe – they'll all call us disloyal, poor citizens, or even traitors. It matters not as we're called to take up the cross. Our lives are not our own, our desires subject to our Saviour-Lord.

No one said this is easy. Our flesh chafes at this but it's the implication of what Christ is teaching and it's a theme picked up elsewhere in the New Testament. This is not to say that we cannot love family or in a limited capacity have responsibilities with regard to them – but they are certainly subjugated and secondary. We may honour father and mother but not at the expense of fidelity and service to Christ. The claims of family and tribe have limits and the wider the circle, the less the claim.

Satan's ploy has always been to confuse tribe and in more recent times 'self' with the identity and goals of the Kingdom. He doesn't seek to openly negate the claims of the Kingdom but subvert them. It would seem his goal is to confuse them, confound them, leave them in a fog – knowing that human passions and the flesh will win out and men will prefer the ear-tickling message which allows them to retain pride, the sword, their gold, and their worldly dreams – as opposed to the Biblically faithful call to take up the cross and follow in the footsteps of our Risen King.