Continuing our march through the core values at All Saints, this past Sunday (yesterday from the writing of this post) we examined our value of “Family.”
Here are some notes on this value:
We have to think biblically when we think about the term “family.” Often it is far larger a term than our contemporary definitions allow. In the Bible there is a running thread through the related concepts of “house” “household” “family” “kin” “people” “temple.” While distinct concepts, they are not separate —yunno, like the persons of the Blessed Trinity.
God’s Big Story is all about a family/house/household/temple/people. On the first three days of the creation cycle the Lord builds a three storied house: (1) light and dark; (2) waters above and below; and (3) dry land and plants. It’s a Ziggurat, a temple, a home. On the last three days of the creation cycle God fills each of these sections with inhabitants to rule over them: (1) on day four he makes the heavenly bodies; (2) on day five he makes birds and fish; and (3) on the sixth day he creates land animals and mankind. Our story begins with a house and a household which God invites to live with him.
The vision, from the beginning, is for a family, a household, to fill the earth and to dwell with the Lord.
The Fall (Gen 3) doesn’t abort that vision, but it does trouble it. The Fall happens within a family system and has consequences for family systems to follow.
But Redemption is also promised to come through a family system. A Son will be born to the Woman who will crush the head of the serpent. The family may be broken, but it is precisely through and in family that God will restore all things.
This is a theme we can follow through the long course of Scripture: Yahweh works in a family, Abraham’s family, to be his family which will eventually include all the families of the world. When that family gets in trouble down in Egypt Yahweh shows-up. He tells Pharaoh not “let these people go” but rather “let my people go!” He reiterates this plan to David in 2 Samuel 7 where again House and Household share a common life. Jesus arrives on the scene as the new heir to the family —an heir to all its problems and promises— and saves the family.
For many folks “family” is a troubling term. It carries both painful and joyous notes. It’s messy. Be of good cheer! The good news about Jesus’ family is not “hey here’s a family that’s not messy” but rather “God’s family is messy too!”
People wonder at all of the genealogies in the Bible. Why are they there? We may find them boring, but God does not. It’s his family! Like a proud papa or an excited new mother God loves his family with all its problems. Those genealogies are not merely lists of names, they are persons whose stories God knows and who hang on his wall in his House.
The Church is the fulfillment of Abraham’s family. We are his offspring by adoption (just as, if we may be so bold, he was adopted by the Lord). We too are a part of the messy family of Jesus.
Being a part of God’s family carries with it two seemingly opposed commands:
1) We are called to be a holy people, filled with love, burning with righteousness, abounding in faithfulness. The church is supposed to be a foundry for saints.
2) And at the same time we are called to be merciful, even as we have been shown mercy; we are supposed to run after the prodigals, bind-up the broken, heal the wounded; journey with the stranger and reach-out to the immoral. The church is supposed to be a hospital for sinners.
How do we live in these two callings simultaneously? Is there a model for living that is at once holy and merciful? Of course there is: it’s Jesus. The Sunday-school answer works!
The Cross is the shape that life takes when God’s holiness meets God’s mercy. Christ carried The Cross, and now bids his family to pick up our crosses and follow after him who is the head of our household. My brother or sister in Christ is the cross I am called to carry, just as I am the cross that the Lord lays on them.
This means that the church, as the family of God, is called to inhabit a willingness to endure the pain of the cross of the other person in ways that are honoring to God and in conformity with scripture with a full knowledge that I too am a cross that the other person must also bear.
We live in a culture where there is this neurosis about “being a burden.” So enamored are we of the illusion of our own strength we cannot stomach the moments our weakness is exposed before others. So we say “I don’t want to be a burden” which rhetorically pressures the other person to tell me “oh you’re not a burden” —coercing a lie from them to bolster my own sense of power like a torturer in a catacomb. The truth is better than the lie. I am a burden, brother, and you are too. The goal of this family is not not to be a burden, but rather to “carry one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2).
Next time you feel the need to say “I don’t want to be a burden” instead consider saying to your brother or sister in Christ “Would you carry my burden for a moment?”
By this the world will know that we are Christ’s disciples, by our love for one another (Jn. 13:35).