| Scriptures: | Hebrews 2:5-12 Mark 10:13-16 |
The title for this sermon comes from the new ABC sit-com by the same name that premiered a week-and-a-half ago on Wednesday evenings. For those of you who didn’t see the premiere or follow-up episode this week, the premise is a focus on three families: a late-30’s couple with an early teen-age daughter and two younger children – the mom is very controlling, especially of her teen-agers life while the father is trying to be an “ultra-cool” (and thus very permissive) dad; an older man (Ed O’Neill – you remember him from Married…With Children, which pretty well defined the term “dysfunctional family”, at least as far as television is concerned) who has married a “trophy wife” much younger Hispanic woman – Jay is mistaken as her father when he attends her son’s soccer game; and a gay couple who are in the process of adopting a daughter from Vietnam. The gimmick, as revealed toward the end of the first episode, is that the Ed O’Neill character, Jay, is actually the father of one of the men in the gay relationship, Mitchell, and the women who’s the wife in the first family; they gather at Mitchell and Cameron’s house for dinner where Mitchell is really nervous about telling his dad that they are adopting this daughter – his dad has not really fully accepted the fact that he is gay as yet.
As you can tell from these brief descriptions there is something dysfunctional about each of these three situations – and yet what may make this one of the hit sit-coms of the year is that there is something warm and endearing about them as well. We, as viewers, can relate to them (as we could to the Huxtables, say, on The Cosby Show, even though that family’s makeup was different from most of us here; or to Roseanne, even though that loud-mouthed brashness didn’t represent what most of us experienced in our own family lives). Part of the reason we can relate to them is that there is probably something we can identify as dysfunctional in nearly all of our family lives – either the family you now are (even if you are living as a single person) or the families in which you grew up.
I saw the premiere of Modern Family soon after reading the lectionary texts for today and starting to put together the liturgy for this World Communion Sunday. The lectionary compilers want us to focus on Jesus’ and the author of Hebrews’ understanding of family as a metaphor for the world church. Actually, the lectionary passage from the 10th chapter of Mark is longer than what we read; beginning with the 2nd verse, it first has to do with the Pharisees’ question, “’Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?’”. But I didn’t want to get us sidetracked with questions about divorce which, for 21st century Christians has quite a different meaning than it did in Jesus’ time, or to focus solely on the family relationship of a man and a woman, which is what the issue of divorce implies. (That’s why the TV program of Modern Family sparked a chord in me because it looks at the interplay of several different kinds of family constellations.) We get at the sense of what it means to be a church family much better, I think, by looking at this subsequent passage of Jesus blessing the little children and at the author of Hebrews assertion that Jesus calls the members of the congregation brothers and sisters.
Now, it is a truism that a person chooses their friends but does not get to choose their family members. Many of us, if we were able to choose, might well opt for another family – or, at least, not quite so quirky an uncle, maybe? Family spats often get ugly, and sometimes there are long periods when alienation and separation stretch on and on with no sense of reconciliation in sight. One of the most difficult roles a minister has to play is to try to get family members to see how long-held grudges lead only to bitterness and hardness of heart instead of the peace and joy that can come when reconciliation occurs.
The church as a community is something in between friends and family. In one way you do choose a church and the people in it with whom you will relate. I have heard many a visitor here on Sunday morning talk about how they are going around to several churches to get a feel for what the community is like. In the 21st century there is very little denominational loyalty – I would guess that many if not most of you were something else before you were United Church of Christ or any of its antecedent denominations. But once a choice has been made you become part of a family, and you function within a family context with all the grief and pain and joy and support that being part of a family implies.
Some of you may recall two Easters ago when the daughter of close friends of ours, Adrianna Muir, was here with her fiancé (I married them in New York later that spring) along with members of our family. I used that occasion to do an Easter sermon on the value of long-term friendships. But there’s another part of John and Barbara Muir’s story that bears on our texts. I first got to know them when I was rooming with John during my intern year at seminary; they were dating and thinking about getting married. Now, John is white and Barbara is African-American. When it became clear that they were serious about getting married (this was 1963, remember), John’s father was adamant that he would not come to the wedding (I was to be John’s best man, so this was all being played out right in front of me). John’s mother came but with a great deal of stress and conflict over who she should be supporting – her son or her husband. This animosity and separation between father and son continued – until Johnny, the first grandson, was born. Holding your first grandchild in your arms is an experience that can melt the hardest of hearts – so much so that four years later when John’s sister, Rosemary, was married – to a black man – she walked down the aisle on her father’s arm. Knowing all of the history behind what led him to this point, that was about the hardest I’ve ever cried at a wedding – and I still tear up when I think about that memory.
(Actually, in an e-mail when I told him I was going to be using his story in this sermon John reflected: “My father's evolution between his older children’s weddings makes a good story, and is food for sermons, I guess. He was a better father and grandfather after, in the second half of his life, and my kid brother had an easier time of it. No atonement was ever apparent….. Does everybody deserve a second start? Jesus seemed to think so, but perhaps he was being generous with my father, or father got lucky. In any case, this Sunday of Yom Kippur is for the Old Testament God… and I'll wait 'til Easter for JC's joyfest for new life and second chances.” Not bad theology, that.)
Our church family also seeks to work through such times of estrangement with a longing for oneness and wholeness. Especially on World Communion Sunday we profess how we should all be one and that every Sunday we ought to be singing “Blest Be the Tie That Binds”. But too often we fight and are mean to each other. Sometimes church life is more like an episode of the Jerry Springer Show than one from the Cosby Show or even Leave It To Beaver, if you want to go back that far. And when that happens far too often people want to divorce themselves from the church – to leave the family.
Youth minister Christine R. Bartholomew reflects on her experience of being in a church:
“…people leave churches for a host of reasons. They leave because of fights with congregation members or the pastor, or because they prefer the worship style of the church down the street. They leave because of hurts that they cannot overcome….. People break up with churches every day. But when they leave, they don’t leave the problem behind. They find another church, but another imperfection manifests itself and they feel the urge to leave again.
“All churches are like families: they’re imperfect. There is no church where everyone agrees on the style of worship and the structure of power. There is no church where everyone agrees with the pastor 100% of the time. Fortunately, the church was not made to be perfect. It was called to be a family.”
When we think of a family among our first thoughts are of children. So, it’s no surprise that Mark follows this section on Jesus’ attitudes toward divorce – which are really attitudes about faithfulness and relationship and commitment to one another – with this passage about letting the children come to him and not forbidding them. It’s possible that what he was lifting up in both of these passages are people who have little power in relationships – women whose men divorce them were powerless in 1st century times; children were powerless in relation to their parents…and to a certain extent that is still true today. Faithfulness and commitment call for an equality among those who are in relationship one with another. Thus, the church as a company of equals – true equals – can model what it means to be a truly modern family. For, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.”
John Ballenger puts it this way: “God created people to be in relationship. God created people to live in trust and commitment. The reality of life together is that we so often fall short of how God created us to be. The word Jesus offers in such circumstances is not issue oriented, but person oriented….. (M)ake sure no one is operating from a position of privilege and power and someone else in any kind of imposed submission. And love the children. Don’t forget to love the children.”
The author of Hebrews in quoting Psalm 8 (which, by the way, is my favorite of all the Psalms) wants to demonstrate that Jesus, who is greater than all the angels, for a time became human like us, and as such God has crowned him (and by extension, us) “with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet.” This is why Jesus can call them (us) brothers and sisters – that close, sibling relationship that makes us feel our oneness with him. Hebrews is talking about us – you and me – when it says of Jesus “in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.” Jesus will praise us. Do you feel Jesus’ praise? You should. That’s what it means to be part of a family.
Reconciliation – change – a movement towards one another – these things can happen in a family. And they do happen in the family that is the church. One of the slogans of one of the predecessor bodies of the United Church of Christ was “That they may all be one”. Christ preached unity and not division. He believed that people could come together and stay together – that everyone – truly everyone, including little children – were his brothers and sisters – that even the world could be as one.
Christine R. Bartholomew concludes with the words that carry us into our World Communion service: “Let us be faithful to our church family, faithful to each other in times of adversity and change. Let us love those in the church family even when we can’t stand them. There is a reason that these people are part of your life. Under all the struggles, there is a love that will stretch from this world to the next.”
Amen.
Dave Pomeroy
First Congregational Church/United Church of Christ
Las Vegas, NV
October 4, 2009