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“They’re creepy and they’re kooky, mysterious and spooky, they’re all together ooky, the Addams Family.”
From their first appearance in The New Yorker to all their subsequent film appearances, the Addams Family has spanned generations now. In all versions, the Addams subvert societal norms with their uniquely macabre lifestyle.
And yet, they are actually quite wholesome. Though they show it in odd ways, the Addams are a family that does care for people, and for each other. We see this in their actions, such as the entire family helping their butler, Lurch, prepare for a date in the original television series. Morticia and Gomez have one of the healthiest relationships in an form of media, even if their public displays of affection often come at the embarrassment of their children as well as everyone else around them. Sometimes the family has a weird way of showing love, but show it they do. We might not expect to see examples of kind and loving care from a macabre family like the Addams, but we do.
Really we often find the examples of how we are supposed to be in this world from the most unlikely sources. Take our reading from 1 Samuel. Saul, the first king of Israel, has fallen in the eyes of the Lord, and a new king is needed. Saul in many ways fits our image of what a king should be. We are told earlier in 1 Samuel that he was tall and, in the image of the Hollywood leading man, very handsome.
As Samuel gets ready to anoint the next king, God points him to the sons of Jesse. Samuel looks on each thinking “this must be the one”, but God reminds him, “the Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.” Indeed, the one God chooses is the youngest of Jesse’s sons. He’s the one who keeps the sheep. He’s a poet. He may have similar Hollywood style looks, yet later on when he faces Goliath he is shown to be so tiny that he cannot even fit into the armor they give him.
David is not the image of a warrior, let alone a king. Yet he fills both roles. He does his duty for the Lord. He is so revered that when God comes into this world, he does so through the line of David.
The one God chooses is often the one we least expect. That is the case in our Gospel reading as well. We might expect God to favor the rule-following Pharisees. After all, Jesus followed in the traditions of the Pharisees Himself, though admittedly He often clashed with their leadership in His day. Both our Faith and the current forms of the Jewish Faith trace their roots from the Pharisees. Yet these are not the ones God shows favor on in today’s reading. Instead, God favors the man who was blind from birth, a man whose name we are uncertain of and who all around him thought had been blinded for either his own sin or the sin or his parents.
As Jesus says, “I came into this world for judgment so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.” God reverses our expectations once again.
God calls on us to be different from those around us. Ephesians is written to the Gentiles in that area of Greece, and as Greek Gentiles they would have been seeped in the customs of their day. Yet this letter calls the Ephesians to give that life up. “Once”, as the letter reminds them, “you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light” This is not just a call to the Ephesians, but to us as well.
God’s ways are not our ways, and that is a very good thing. Salvation would not come to us otherwise. To truly follow God, we cannot live into the ways of the world around us. We cannot fit into the expectations of others for us. Instead, we must live in the ways God has set out for us. Instead of continuing in the darkness, we must now walk in the light. Instead of following the world, we are now called to follow God, no matter how strange, kooky, or unconventional to others that way may appear.