josephholubsermons


 

May 24, 2009
Easter 7
1 John 4:16b-21

How Big Is Your Family?

This question was posed in our Wednesday morning bible study this week.  What comes to mind for you when I ask, "How big is your family?"   I suppose the first inclination is to answer that question using relatively narrow parameters.   For example, I grew up in a small family: Mom, Dad, brother and grandma constituted our immediate family.  I had a few uncles and a few cousins who were very peripheral and that was it.

How big is your family?  How do we even define family? The definitions of family are various and have changed down through the years.     

One definition of family is to define family strictly in terms of bloodline. This definition puts a great deal of emphasis into being connected with preceding ancestors.  This can develop into an attitude of "family superiority" and even used to discredit those who have married into the bloodline, but don't necessarily share the bloodline's values and world-view.  It is a priority of this bloodline mentality to perpetuate itself and produce "like-minded" people.  A psychologist once told me he counseled with the patriarch and matriarch of a large family who were in a state of distress and crises because there had not been any male grandchildren born into the family to carry on the bloodline name.  Their grandchildren had decided there would be no more grandchildren beyond the 8 girls that had been born into that bloodline family.

Another accepted definition of family became deeply embedded in the American psyche in the '50's when America was suburbanizing, infant mortality rates were dropping, and people were moving from rural to suburban.  This is the is the so-called "model family";  the notion that a family consists of a mom, dad, two children, and a dog, (or some close facsimile) who -- of course -- live in a house with a picket fence.  This myth of the model family has caused a great deal of grief for many.  If you were not a part of a model family for host of reasons, then you missed the ideal, and you were placed in a special category of second best or second class.  Those who tried to live up to the standards of the mythical model family suffered if they fell short.  Issues such as divorce, infertility, illness, the choice to be single, or to not have children, were threatening and intimidating.

Then, of course, there is the television idea of family?  This model of family, which once reflected only white middle class suburban values, has dramatically changed over the years to become much more diverse ethnically, racially and structurally, reflecting culture, but yet in other ways has not changed all that much.   The diversified television family of today is still able to solve any problem in a thirty to sixty minute time frame.  The television family is always up to the task – in the end living like a greeting card.  The lives of many regular people have been stressed by trying to copy a model of family contrived by television writers.

I think the truest way to define family is not in terms of a specific structure or a certain model but in terms of relationship; people in relationship mutually committed to the well-being of one another.  When relationship becomes the defining factor and not bloodline, structure, or like-mindedness, then the skills of fostering healthy relationships are required and needed; skills such as listening, loving touch, honest words, informed decision making, good communication, forgiveness requested and forgiveness given, and a commitment to the well-being and development of the other. The "relationship family" understands that the hard work of love is a bonding tool and is willing to use it liberally in all situations.

Those of you who have hosted exchange students of different cultures, races and ethnicity, or been foster parents, or have adoptive children, or are part of blended families, or multi-racial or multi-ethnic families, or a not a part of a traditionally defined family know that family is defined by relationship.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote my son a letter sharing with him what it was like for me when Marcia was pregnant with him 34 years ago.  I wrote the letter since our daughter-in-law is now pregnant.  I shared many things with him that are, of course, between him and me, but I can say two things.  I told him that when I first picked him up and held him in my arms, I had an experience of deep bonding - and it was a bonding not merely based on bloodline, but it was bonding of relationship.  My life was now defined by a new relationship.  His life was defined by relationship; a relationship that would change and shape us both.   A second thing I shared with him was that when I held him those first times, it was my thought that it was not my job to make him like me, a clone of Joe, but it was my job to empower him to become the unique person he was called to be, even if it was someone very different from me - and I will tell you this, David is very different from me! (to his credit and our mutual benefit)

What I find intriguing is that there is no record that Jesus ever used the word "family" in any of the gospels, but he did talk much about relationship.   But before we get to Jesus, notice the verses in our epistle from 1 John 4:20-21.  "Those who say, ‘I love God’, and hate their brothers or sisters,^* are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister^* whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. ²¹The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters^* also."

John, in his gospel and letters, is incarnational.  What that means is that John inseparably links loving God and loving others, and he uses family language to describe it.  In John's immediate context he was talking about love among those who were a part of his community of faith - a community that I am sure was diverse in many ways.  He emphasized that loving God and loving others were not mutually exclusive but were heads and tails of the same coin.  Loving God was to love others; loving others was to love God.  They couldn't be separated - incarnational. 

John expanded the parameters of what it meant to be family by defining "family" in terms of relationships.   He expanded the parameters to the diversity among those in his community.  His point was that relationship was the highest priority in the community and doing the hard work of building relationship above everything else, even above advancing one's personal agenda.  The thing that usually fractures a community is the advancement of personal agenda at the expense of relationship.

Now let's look at how Jesus expanded the parameters of relationship (family) as presented in the gospels.  As I said Jesus never used the world "family", but he did talk about, teach about, proclaim and embody the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of God is ultimately about relationship-right relationship between all things. 

For example, Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell of a man who came to Jesus and asked what he must do to inherit eternal life.[i]  Jesus said, "Keep the commandments specifically mentioning "not murdering, not bearing false witness, honoring parents, and loving neighbor as self", which by the way are all relationship oriented commandments.  It is intriguing to me that Jesus didn't mention commandments like "You shall have no other gods," or "do not take God's name in vain" or "remember the Sabbath day" in his list.  Jesus specifically identifies the "relationship with others" commandments. 

Anyway the man said, "I have kept all of these, what do I still lack?"  That is a fascinating response because Jesus had not yet said he lacked anything.  It is as if the man intuitively sensed he lacked something.  Jesus said, (Now that you mention it) "Go and sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor..."    And then we are told, "When the man heard that he left grieving for he had many possessions." 

That little story has been wrongly used to indict wealth. I don’t think that is the point.  The point is that the man had used his wealth to separate himself from the poor and from the oppressed - his wealth had stifled relationship with the poor - his wealth functioned as a barrier between him and the poor, and when Jesus attempted to remove the barrier and invited the man to cross the boundary and become one of the poor, he couldn't do it.  What the man "lacked" was relationship with those who lived on the other side of the boundary his wealth had established. 

Then there was the time the scholars of the Torah came to Jesus and asked him which commandment in the Torah was the greatest.[ii]  Jesus answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind. This is the greatest and the first.  And a second is like it (and the word "like" in Greek means "equivalent to"), "Love your neighbor as yourself."   

Like John did later, Jesus linked loving God with loving neighbor, and loving neighbor with loving God. 

But then there was the fellow who wondered about the concept of "neighbor" so he asked Jesus, "Who is my neighbor?"[iii]   Jesus then launched into telling one of the great parables of the Kingdom of God, the Parable of the Good Samaritan.  His point was that "neighbor" is anyone who has been mugged by any power in this world that has stripped away one's dignity and humanity and been left for dead! (that includes a whole lot of people) You know the story. The priest and Levite, representing the religious community, felt no claim on their lives whatsoever to stop and attend to (that is, establish relationship with) the profoundly wounded man left for dead in the ditch. It took a Samaritan, a despised outsider, to stop and do, not the religious thing (the priest and Levite had done the religious thing), but do the godly thing.

I could go on with this exercise and remind us of the time Jesus said, "Just as you do it to the least of these... you do it to me."[iv] (relationship)  Or the time he told his disciples that in the Kingdom of God "the last shall be first and the first shall be last."[v]   

How big is your family?  If you identify yourself in some way as a follower of Jesus, then how big is your family?  If we follow Jesus long enough and far enough we will experience someone who just keeps pushing the parameters of relationship (family) wider and wider and wider and wider until we finally reach the very least and the very last on this planet and look them in the face, and see their humanity and no longer label them as a part of an economic, racial, ethnic, religious, political, or national category that pigeonholes and dehumanizes and usually abandons them and leaves them by the side of the road for dead.

I am convinced that many of the complex problems that exist on this planet are ultimately linked with the great disparity that exists between the haves and have-nots of this planet and the systems of domination and exploitation that are deeply embedded in the political, economic, social and religious institutions of society, culture and nation to make sure it remains just that way!  

I remember reading something that Mother Teresa once said, and I have to paraphrase because I could not find the exact quote: "The greatest hope for the world is if every one of the wealthy and powerful could have the experience of holding the poorest of the poor in their arms, and look into their eyes as they die from hunger and disease that need not have been."

How big is your family?  Is it big enough to name the least and the last, those who perhaps have only pigeon-holed in a category, as brothers and sisters?