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Chapter 5
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5 JESUS LEAVES HOME AND IS MADE AT HOME WITH OTHERS Without a House of His Own— in the Houses of Others Jesus has left his house and work, but he regularly frequents the domestic settings and the houses of other persons. What is the logic behind this dialectic between detachment from a house and the request to enter a house?1 We shall see below that Jesus demanded that the itinerant disciples completely abandon their own world. Despite this, however, he does not in any way belittle the importance of the household.2 Indeed, we see on various occasions that he attributes a positive function to it. He often displays his intention of strengthening the ties that unite the members of a family unit. In one instance, his compassion for a widowed mother led him to restore to life a boy who had just died (Luke 7:11-17);3 since she had no husband, she would be left destitute. On another occasion (Mark 5:1-20/Luke 8:26-39/Matt 8:28-34), he healed a man who was “possessed by an unclean spirit,” and when the man asked to be allowed to follow Jesus and “to be with him,” he ordered him to return to his home. Jesus shared the life of the houses in which he stayed for a time. He was welcomed into the house of Simon and Andrew (Mark 1:29),4 the house of Martha (Luke 10:38), and the house of Zacchaeus (Luke 19:59 ). He charged the disciples to look for lodging for him in the villages that he was about to visit (Luke 9:52). In short, he showed an attitude toward kinship contexts that oscillated between detachment and sharing their life. These two ways of relating to houses are not contradictory, since each has a precise object. 102 Jesus Leaves Home 103 At this point, let us paint a concrete backdrop for the figure of Jesus by reflecting on the consequences of relationships of this kind. To be without a dwelling and goods means being weak, since one is a stranger to, or remote from, the cohesive network of kinship and the protection offered by a domestic environment—things that are basic to the security of every individual. At the same time, however, it also means freedom from the bonds and the requirements of kinship and the domestic environment . It means having in one’s own self a strength that one can rely on in a variety of situations. In any culture, but particularly in the culture of Jesus, the kinship organization is a system of life in which individuals bound by ties of blood and of matrimony participate in the common management of goods and resources.5 Every kinship grouping constitutes a primary structural form with regard both to the individual and to the collective, both to the living and to the dead. It forms the basis of identity,6 but it can also be the context in which individual members undertake autonomous or divergent initiatives. This means that the kinship grouping is no stranger to internal division, conflict, and abandonment. What we find in first-century Israel is not the family as this is commonly understood,7 but a more articulated nucleus that includes persons who live together and share a lifestyle and material goods. They earn their living together and occupy a position in the world.8 The Greek noun appropriate to this reality is oikos,9 which indicates a system of coherent relationships and bonds in terms of kinship, work, and territory. The anthropological term “household”10 corresponds very well to this. The space of domesticity11 may include persons who are not linked by kinship. It can involve a large group covering more than two generations . The survival and the continuity of this group depend on the maintenance of links that have different goals (biological ties, voluntary ties, economic links, or emotional bonds). Above all, the existence of a household is based on shared work and consumption, and on powers and roles that also unite non-relatives and clients in one and the same localized productive system. The head of the household12 is the authority, and not only in kinship relationships. He is the administrator of the properties and the manager of the various activities on which the household is based, as well as its judge. It is he who regulates the relationships and the collective perspectives of the household. In the milieu of...