'All in the Family'

“Angus Mòr MacAskill, frequently referred to as Giant MacAskill or Black Angus … (1825 – August 8, 1863) was a Scottish–born Canadian Giant … The 1981 Guinness Book of World Records posts Angus as the tallest ‘natural’ giant in recorded history… “

“Laura Secord (September 13, 1775 - October 17, 1868) was a Canadian heroine of the War of 1812…The story of Laura Secord has taken on mythical overtones in Canada where there as many embellished versions of the tale.”

Both of these write-ups appear in the online encyclopedia ‘Wikipedia’. What they have in common is that each of them is seen by someone I know as being a possible ancestor several generations back. And so the story is brought out explain that person’s physical appearance or to validate their Canadian heritage. Almost every family I know has someone in their past that they point to with pride. Very seldom do people claim horse-thieves or ne’er-do-wells, although we al have those in our family’s story too!

We know that both these people actually existed, that they lived in Canada, and we actually have pictures and recorded history about each of them. Even with all of this, it says in the write-up on Laura Secord that her story have taken on ‘mythical overtones’ with ‘many embellished version of the tale’ – and yet the war of 1812 was just over 200 hundred years ago, right here in southern Ontario.

If the story of Laura Secord who lived in Southern Ontario just 200 years, spoke English, and whose actions are recorded in official sources, has gained mythic overtones, then why would we expect the same thing not to have happened to the stories of Jesus which were written in Greek, by people who had never met him, decades after his death. (Yet the same people who have no trouble with the mythic parts of the Laura Secord story have difficulty accepting the stories told about Jesus in the New Testament as anything other than an accurate telling of events.)

As someone who has spent a number of years working on the genealogy of her family, I know that there are many ‘stories’ in the background I uncovered, some true, some partly based on fact, and some that are ‘just’ good stories. But they all influence how I perceive ‘my’ story.

But I am also part of another ‘family’ … the Christian family, who claim to follow the life and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. So why do I not hear more of them telling stories about him, as I do about their ‘real’ family? Why do I not see more of them trying to live up to his example of inclusive love? Why are more of them not showing his passion for bringing about the ‘Kingdom of God’ here, today? Why do I not hear more voices speaking out against the violence, want and greed in our society, as he did 2000 years ago? Why are people not claiming all these things as part of who they are?

We need to reclaim our Christian heritage. To go back to that person Jesus, to the stories told about him decades after his death, and look at those stories, not a factual history but rather as how generations after him perceived his impact on their lives and from that try to discover for ourselves just who this man was and what was he willing to die for. Then we need to make these values ours, incorporate them into our story and share them with others by what we say and do every day.

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