The Family of God
Rev Dr Mark Porizky
7/9/06
Ephesians
2:11-23
So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called “the uncircumcision” by those who are called “the circumcision”—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
The
family is not necessarily an easy subject to talk about these days. As the
comedian, the late George Burns, once noted, "Happiness is having a large,
loving, caring, close-knit family...in another city."
We
know that the family has changed a great deal. The old "Ozzie &
Harriet" model of Dad going off to work, Mom staying home and waiting for
the kids to return from school is now more nostalgia than reality—only a tiny
percentage of
In preparation for this morning's message, I
reread a sermon by that great English preacher of the past generation, Leslie
Weatherhead. In a message called "What is God's Plan for the Family,"
delivered shortly after World War II, Rev. Weatherhead despaired
over a report from the Marriage Guidance Council, which produced their report in
June of 1945. Rev. Weatherhead noted
that the Marriage Guidance Council lamented that TEN PERCENT of marriages were
finishing in the divorce court and that the figure would be TWENTY percent if
separations were included.
Talk
about a different era. We know that
ONE-HALF of the 2.4-million-or-so marriages to be performed in our nation this
year will end in divorce. And some 25 percent of Anglo children, 35 percent of
Latino children, and 60 percent of African-American children are being raised by
single parents.
But
let’s not look back on the past and too hastily call those the “good old
days.” Divorce may be more
prevalent, but I don’t think that means families were better fifty years ago.
I
spoke with someone this past month who told me about her family.
Her mother endured numerous affairs by her husband, always feeling
trapped by a society that blamed the woman for a divorce.
When this woman was fourteen, her mother could stand the pain no more and
killed herself. Her father, one week
later, brought into the house his new bride, and couldn’t understand whey this
woman was so troubling to his kids. At
eighteen this woman left the house for good when the step-mother started
charging her rent to live in the house.
Beware
of romancing the past, whatever else we can say about families, past or present,
we certainly can say that the family DOES need help.
Yet people do not even agree on what constitutes
a family anymore. Sometime back a national insurance company, State Farm,
requested that 1200 randomly selected adults define the word `family.'
Surprisingly,
only a small number, 22%, opted for the traditional definition: `a group of
people related by blood, marriage, or adoption.' A much larger percentage,
nearly 3/4, chose a much broader definition: `a group of people who love and
care for each other.'"
If
people are not even certain what a family IS anymore, what does one say about
the Christian Family?
Perhaps
the best thing to do is to see what the Bible says about the Christian family,
and then discover what that might mean for you and me.
The first point to note is that a really
"Christian Family" has nothing to do with blood or marriage. The
"Christian Family" is one in which the members are related to Jesus
Christ, just as the Porizky family is one in which the members are related to
me. The true Christian Family is the church.
Our
lesson from Ephesians makes that clear. Back in the early days of our faith,
there was a serious problem concerning the understanding of who
"qualified" to be a part of God's family. The issue then was both
blood AND marriage. And the issue
concerned the Jew versus the Gentile.
As
bad as racial division has been and sometimes remains in modern society, it was
even worse back in the time that the apostle Paul wrote this letter to the
Ephesian churches. The apostle Paul realized the disastrous consequences of
racial divisions, so he wrote to clear up any misunderstanding.
He began by noting the estrangement Gentiles had
previously experienced. A Jewish person at the time of Jesus had as much
contempt for the gentile as the rest of the world had for the Jews.
At the time Paul was writing, a good Jew believed that, and I quote,
“the Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of Hell; that God
loved only Israel of all the nations that had been made...It was not even lawful
for a Jew to render help to a Gentile woman in childbirth for that would be to
help bring another Gentile into the world...If a Jew married a Gentile, the funeral
of that Jew was carried out...Even to go into a Gentile house rendered a Jew
unclean." (from William Barclay’s Commentary
on Ephesians)
Yes,
Paul knew all about racism in the family of God.
He also knew the absolute segregation between Jew and Gentile in worship; he
knew "the dividing wall," as he called it, the barrier in the
The
power of that statement is lost today. But
imagine a pastor in the largest white church in
If
you can understand how radical that statement would have been in 1965, maybe you
can begin to understand how much MORE radical were Paul’s words in the first
century of Jewish and Gentile relations. "You
are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and
members of God's household." It
was an amazing statement.
Jesus
had said as much years before. He said that all who believed were his family:
they were his brothers, his sisters. The
only thing that followers of Christ were to see in one another was that here was
a person who was related to Jesus - FAMILY!
Think of it this way. Are you a child of God?
Then every other child of God is your brother or sister, your family. Look
around you. The Bible says that, if you are a Christian, these are your family.
There are some wonderful folks here, people to whom you would be proud to be
related - yes, a few of us are eccentric, but every family has them. That's all
right. As we all know, we can choose our friends but we are stuck with our
relatives.
Just
as in the family into which we were born, we are not free to say who should or
should not belong. We are in this family together as well, for good or ill.
What does that mean for us at Saint Andrew
Presbyterian? Well, being a member of any family brings with it both privileges
and responsibilities. Just as in the home, there are dishes to be washed, grass
to be cut, errands to be run - there is work to do. But it is not ALL work -
there are ears to listen, tears wiped, hugs given, hurts bandaged. I could not
begin to tell you how often I have heard someone say that they would never have
been able to survive a particularly trying period without the love and support
of their Christian family in the church.
Because we are a Christian congregation in 2006,
there is one huge challenge (which requires three responses) to our living as
FAMILY. The challenge centers on the fact that we are a mobile society. Many of
you were raised together; many of you were not. Many,
me included, do not come from here. We did not all go to the same schools, shop
at the same stores, or root for the same teams.
That
means we do not KNOW one another as we would if our modern society were
different. For us, the first response to the challenge is to take extra
initiative in simply becoming acquainted. That is one of the reasons we often
ask people to wear nametags. It
simply makes it easier for someone to approach you.
Many of you would approach others in the church except that you’ve
forgotten their names, and you’d be embarrassed to have to admit that you have
forgotten!
For those of you who know plenty of folks around
here, seek out one more...and then one more, and then one more after that. Many
people have great difficulty in making new friends. Those of you who find it
easy need to go out of your way to help them. For those who do not have enough
"Christian Family" here, give yourself more opportunities to become
acquainted than just at the beginning or end of worship - that will never do the
job. I was thrilled to learn that
the Friday morning mom’s play group had a “Mom’s night out.”
Wonderful! As has been
said, if you want to HAVE a friend, you must first BE a friend.
The
second response to the challenge has to do with our getting to know our young
people. They are a part of the family, and a particularly vulnerable part. Yes,
we live in a mobile society, and our kids travel with us. That means their roots
are not as deep as they might have been in previous generations. For young
people who are at a vulnerable age as they begin to find their way in the world,
the problem is exacerbated.
You have heard that ancient Chinese blessing,
"May you have an interesting life." Well,
our youngsters these days are surely being treated to an "interesting
life" - drugs, alcohol, sex, the Internet. If we can help them make their
lives a little less "interesting" by providing new roots, new
friendships, we should try to do so. Horace Bushnell is reported to have said
that the influence of the family is so strong that we never quite get the smell
of our childhood home out of our clothes.
The
third response to the challenge is to develop a relationship with the children
of the church. When we welcome them in baptism we affirm that they are our
family too. Parents stand before us and the Lord and promise to raise their
child in "showing them the love of God." Then you promise to help.
When I ask if you will help, you vow, "We will."
Finally,
in an act that is fraught with symbolism, the loving mother and father hand that
new life over - they give the baby to the minister as the representative of the
Christian community and, in so doing, say that this child, from the moment those
sacred waters dribble down that tiny forehead, has a new and larger family - the
family of God.
Our days of being responsible for children are
never over. As Robert Fulghum,
author of Everything I Ever Needed to Know
I Learned in Kindergarten, Fulghum once said, “Don’t worry that our
children aren’t listening to us, worry that they are watching us.”
Finally
I would add this. Don’t worry
about definitions. Leave that to
God. Welcome all people of every
stripe who walk through our door. Welcome
the Presbyterian, the Protestant. Welcome
the Catholic or the Eastern Orthodox. But
also make room for the Jew or the Hindu. Leave
a seat for the agnostic, and even the atheist.
Paul was never very big on titles. He
once said, “In Christ there is neither
Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, but all are one in Christ Jesus.”
Paul
was incredibly unworried about titles. Perhaps
we shouldn’t be worried either either. After
all, there is always room for one more. People
don’t necessarily know Jesus when they walk through the doors of the church.
That’s fine. What a
privilege we then have in showing them Jesus’ family.
Our
job is to open up the doors and welcome the children of God when they walk in
the door.
Rita
Snowden tells a poignant story about welcome from World War II.
In
The
next day the soldiers came back to add some flowers -- only to discover that the
grave was nowhere to be found. Bewildered, they were about to leave when the
priest came up to speak to them. It seems that he could not sleep the night
before, so troubled was he by his refusal to bury the soldier in the parish
cemetery. So early in the morning he left his bed, and with his own hands, he
moved the fence.
Amen to that.
The
Christian Family - the Family of God. I wish I could say that, once the family
feeling is established, all will be peaches and cream, but we know that is not
true. There are sometimes family feuds - not nice, but that is real life. There
are numbskulls in the family, but all families have them. Some will occasionally
be angry at this or that decision - it is the same in any household. Some will
end up doing a disproportionate amount of the work because someone else has
dropped the ball.
But
the one difference between the family that lives under THIS roof and the one
that lives under yours and mine is that the Head of the Household is the God of
the entire universe who one day will welcome us all to a brand new heavenly
home.
That
will be a family reunion of epic proportions and a party of great joy for all
time.
Will you pray with me now?
St.
Andrew Presbyterian Church,
Web Site: SAPC-CT.HOME.ATT.NET
Office Email: SAPC-CT@ATT.NET
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