In the ancient world, nothing mattered more than your family. Your identity was grounded in the identity of your family of origin. This is why is it so shocking for Jesus ask the crowd, “who are my brothers and sisters”? Jesus was scandalizing his listeners by declaring that his mother and brother and sisters were not merely his biological kin, but included all those who did the will of God. He revolutionized our concept of the “neighbour” whom we are to love as we love ourselves to include not just those who are ethnically, religiously, or geographically close to us but even those who are our enemies. Many people were offended by these teachings because they believed that Jesus was devaluing the relationships between parents and children, or between people of the same nation or religion. Those people didn’t understand him. He was actually telling us that we owe that same level of committed care and compassion to whoever is in need of it, whether they’re biological family or not.

As we consider what it means for the church to respond to loneliness, we need to understand that Jesus created the church to be a different kind of community. To be apart of the church is to think differently about family and belonging. It’s a community that tears down divisions to make space for the other. We have put on the ‘new self’ where there is no Gentile or Jew, slave nor free (Col 3:11 ) and where we live out compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness patience and forgiveness. (Col 3:12-14)  The church is to be a chosen family for those longing for belonging.