Blood, but for the blood of life poured out in love, is no longer the marker of who is our kin. We shed our old families for new ones. Talk about the unconventional family. That is why politicians love religion but hate authentic Christianity. We proclaim a new family not based on the differences between people but instead based on the notion that all are equal, that my family is no better than yours, in fact, we proclaim that we are all in it together.
Politicians worry more about who is in the club and how to keep others out.
The next time you see a baptism take note that you are participating in a retelling of the gospel story as up to date as was that early computer-age encounter between Steve Jobs and John Scully. When we baptize someone we set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother. We tell those newly named Christians that they can no longer love their own family more than they love the rest of the body of Christ. Such a lack of convention will shock the world. People who come to us for a bath and a meal of bread and wine lose their old familiar, sweet existence, and go back into a world with some bite to it.