Many years ago, I heard a  sermon in which the priest made this peculiar, yet intriguing statement: ‘Water is thicker than blood’.

He was referring to the    question poses in today’s second reading from his   letter to the Romans: Are you unaware that we who were baptised into Christ  Jesus were baptised into his death? We were buried with him through baptism….… so that… we might live in newness of life.’ Similarly, the  Gospel of Matthew poses the puzzling and often upsetting assertion: ‘Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.’ To understand these claims, we must consider the time and place in which Jesus was making this claim. Jewish families in Jesus time were controlled by the unquestionable authority of the father. Everyone in his household lived in total submission to him. Today’s sacred writings reminds us that Jesus and Paul recognised that his notion of family was too small, too  narrow, too restrictive. The larger and far more important reality was the conviction that the waters of baptism can create a new kind of family — a family that is composed of people who have discovered that an entirely different style of   living is attainable. This new style they are recommending demonstrates how the waters of    baptism can truly be thicker than blood. The message is clear: Our baptism matters. It changes us. It calls us to re-think our value system, to review what truly counts, to re-commit ourselves to what will surely last against all odds.

Jesus wants us to leave behind the kind of family that was so prominent in his time, and begin forming a family  united by the common desire to do God’s will. In doing so, Jesus is asking us to re-imagine the meaning of family, namely a community of people dedicated to witnessing to the world what life could be like if we were willing to be transformed and changed.  It will involve stretching us, pulling us out of our small selves, introducing us to  something bigger and richer and fuller. It will involve   taking us to a whole new level of living. Even to one where  water is thicker than blood.