Growing up, when you would hear about someone you vaguely knew a question would be asked: Is he one of our own? Does he belong to our group, our neighborhood, our church. The implication was that if you didn’t look like us, talk like us, pray like us than somehow you were other than we are. In the gospel Jesus blows out those boundaries dividing us from them. Instead of the bonds of family and familiarity Jesus says that “whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.” Everyone is a child of God, made in the image of God, having a common humanity with Jesus, the Son of God. There isn’t anyone out there who isn’t “one of our own.”
