Good News: We Are Family!

Ephesians 2: 19 - 23

Colossians 3: 12 – 14

September 8, 2024

My father came from a very poor family. His parents, my grandparents, came over from a part of northern Europe that was, until WWI, governed by the Germans. They came over in the late 1890s. He was a tailor, and as a tailor it was his ability to make and mend clothes that provided for his wife, my father, and his 5 siblings. They were also musicians – every child played an instrument – and they actually had a family band that played in their small community.

I never knew my grandparents, they both died when I was still an infant, but I learned a lot about them as I grew to appreciate my aunts and uncles. From a very poor beginning, each of my aunts and uncles – through education and hard work – became very successful. They did very different things, but they all shared the same work ethic. They had different lifestyles, but they shared a commitment to family that was experienced throughout their 6 very different individual families.

As my aunts and uncles grew older, particularly after my father was killed at a relatively young age in Viet Nam, I grew to appreciate their shared commitment to something larger than themselves as individuals. I grew to understand and marvel at their willingness to drop everything and come to the side of their sibling if that brother or sister was struggling. At my ordination, the last time I saw all five of them together, as I watched them love and kibbitz with one another, I watched and listened as they utilized individual gifts to answer family-wide problems.

Growing up in California and all of them living on the East Coast, I never really knew all of them as well as I wished I had. Our particular family was always close – very close. But I never really experienced a sense of family beyond my immediate family until I became much older. That was my loss, and I was determined that our girls would always know, love, and experience the entire Szeyller and Wheeler families that Becky and I grew up in.

Why do I share this story with you? Why – particularly on a Rally Day Kickoff Sunday – am I talking about my personal experience of family? I am hoping that this description can serve as a starting place for a much larger conversation about church as family.

We have been talking about church over the past several weeks and it will continue. We have talked about church as a place where we are loved; where we are called to service and fellowship. We have talked about church as a place where we can grow into the likeness of Christ and let that growth impact every area of our lives. We have talked about a church and a faith that is intentional and purposeful.

And all of this may be true. It is true. It is the experience of the church as a dynamic movement of faith that will position us as we seek to be faithful and grow into a new season of being the church. It is also in the church that our individual faith lives are nurtured and grow.

But much of that will depend upon our ability to move beyond the idea – deeply engrained in many of us – of church as an institution, beyond the experience of church as a gentle chaplain of culture, beyond the idealized memory of church as an expression of some long-ago past experience that we want somehow want to recapture and revive, beyond the failed notion of a church that has depended on slick marketing and past publicity campaigns that, if we are honest, never really worked.

I believe our biblical texts provide some possibilities as we think about being a church moving faithfully and vibrantly into the future.

Who are we – as the church? We are citizens with the saints, in less churchy language, we are members of a faith family that extends beyond our particular time and place to include past, present, and future believers. We are a people caught up in a story so much larger than ourselves – God’s story. The church is not a place of shared likes and dislikes – like any number of different groups that exist: Lions, Rotary, PEO. We are not all Dodger, Angels, or Padres fans. We do not all live in the same communities, vote along the same party lines, nor do we reflect the same social, political, or economic realities.

No, with all of those differences, we are all caught up in the same story – God’s story. Each of us has received the same grace, the same mercy, the same reconciliation. It is THAT story that unites us. It is THAT Jesus that binds us together. It is THAT Holy Spirit which gifts us with a power beyond our individual capabilities, as great as they might be.

We are the church family ALL caught up in great story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. It is a concentration on that great shared story that allows us to move beyond the created walls that divide so much of our culture.

Second, as members of that great community - of that universal church family – we are members of the household of God. As members of that household, as members of the same family, we accept a shared sense of accountability. When one hurts, we all hurt. When one is in need, we all pitch in.

I have grandchildren whose greatest joy is when their entire extended family is together. For any reason, for any purpose they feel a delight and a responsibility to be present when the family gathers. They don’t understand when other members are not present. They don’t understand a priority more important than the family gathering together. Closely connected to that conviction is the responsibility they feel for their extended family. Personal preferences and priorities get rearranged – or at least are offered to be rearranged – if they perceive an aunt, an uncle, a grandparent or cousin in need. This sense of connection, this sense of accountability is simply their natural sense of family default.

What would our church family be like if we shared this sense of accountability for one another? In a time and place when biological families are spread all over the country, in a time and place when fences are often amongst the first things built in new communities, in a time of great social alienation and loneliness what would the church look like if we shared a responsibility to connect, to know, to love and nurture – not just those who think as we do – but everyone in the church family?

Third, what would our church family look like if we dared too actually believe and empower the notion that every member of the church family – EVERY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH FAMILY – was gifted by God for the purpose of building up the kingdom and nurturing the church family.

Paid staff are not the only ones with spiritual gifts, Committed and active church volunteers are not the only ones gifted and willing to put those gifts to work in service to God. No, scripture is very clear. Each and every one of us have been gifted – sometimes with a variety of gifts – to be used, not just for our own benefit, but for service to God and God’s people.

One of the most damaging things that has happened to the church over the last 50 to 65 years is this consumer notion that the church exists to serve our particular needs, our particular wants, our particular social and religious agenda. The church exists as a springboard for service. The church exists as a catalyst for love and nurture. The church exists not to serve our agenda, but God’s agenda.

We need to cast this self-serving notion aside. Part of that is accomplished when we recognize, empower, and celebrate the gifts of the entire church family!

Finally, let’s be honest, when we talk about the church as family, that is for some, a painful description. Not all families are healthy. Not all families are nurturing and functional. For some, families are the source of great pain and heartache.

That’s why our second text from Colossians is so important. Paul seeks to encourage the church at Colossae. Paul writes to a church that is split by theological dissension. The details of that split are not important for our purposes today – Paul deals with those errors in the letter. But it is Paul’s strong words – offered the midst of division and strife – that are important for us today.

In the midst of all of their differences; in the midst of those things that have broken up the body of Christ, the church family; in the midst of the division that so pains Paul as he learns about this church that he started; Paul writes critically important words for the Colossians, and for us.

Love one another, even when people act in unlovable fashion. Bear with one another, even when the other seems to be committed to behavior that is unbearable. In the face of cold heartedness, self-centeredness, and ego offer compassion, kindness, and humility. Forgive, as you have been forgiven, offer grace as you have received that same grace. And above all….. love. It is that shared love for God that will transcend our petty differences. Love one another, for it is that love that seeks the best for all of God’s people. It is our primary commitment to being a loving people that will ensure a harmony when the world wants to sing such a discordant tune.

Brothers and sisters, dear ones in Christ, let us be the family of God. Loving, transforming, connecting, and serving. Let us be a bright light in our community – not because of what we think that will get us – but simply because that is who we are. A church family. A fire in the wilderness cannot help but draw the lost. Let us be that fire. Amen.