The Family? of God

When God talks about his people, he often uses the image of the family

Take for example the passage from Romans that I often use as a benediction (Rom 15:5-8).

May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you a spirit of unity among yourselves as you follow Christ Jesus, so that with one heart and mouth you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.

JB Phillips translates it a bit more powerfully, to my way of thinking.

And now may the God who suffers us to endure, and gives us a father’s care, give us a mind united toward one another because of our common loyalty to Jesus Christ.  And then as one person we will sing from the heart the praises of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.  So open your hearts to one another, as Christ has opened his hear to you, and God will be glorified.

As Christians we are family – for better or worse

How are we family?  Because we are bound together by a common parent.  God, Phillips uses the word Father, but you could use mother just as well… God, this Holy Parent, gives us a mind united toward one another.  God gives us a Spirit of unity.

So we are family, brothers and sisters together, because God, in the power of the Spirit, brings us together.  OK, no big news there….

But I want us to notice something.  Paul talks about a God who gives us endurance and encouragement.  He talks about a God who suffers us to endure….

This is a powerful reality that Paul is talking about.  What we must notice, what gives this little verse depth, is the fact that this unity is forged in the  real world.

This is not some sort of shallow, “happy family” thing Paul is talking about.

This is not the ideal family of Ward and June Cleaver, and the Beaver. 

I remember a while back learning some hard things about what I had thought was the perfect family

This was a family of relatively healthy parents who had been married for decades, were successful, each in their own careers, and seemed in love.  This family had children who seemed healthy and were doing well in school.  But what I learned about were affairs, and abuse.  I heard a wife talk about being called put down horribly by her husband in front of his friends for uttering a remark he disagreed with. She talked about being involved in multiple, demeaning affairs.

Family can cause pain.  Families often live in pain.  Fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, yes, children die.  Failing economies can tear at the fabric of a family’s dream.  Relationships can struggle.  Intimacy can become isolation.  There are joys, but also sadness.  There are successes, but also moments of failure…But still, in the best of cases, there is the family. And this family is bound together, often no as much by the victories and joys, as by the moments of hurt, despair, even failure….

We often find God in our pain……and find that God is real, and there, and compassionate….When we experience the compassion and love of God in our private pain, it is a powerful thing.  When we experience that love in our common pain, as a family of God, is it an amazing thing.  What happens when in moments of struggle we experience the endurance and encouragement of God?  Brennan Manning once wrote, “pain is the crucible in which one is made tender.”  Paul put it this way… when we are touched by the love of God, when we have that common experience, the we find we develop a “spirit of unity”  We get a “mind united toward one another”.  Think about 911… and how for a moment we as a nation were united in our common pain, our common hurt, and how we were equally united by the many acts of love and compassion that emerged from that tragedy….

What happens is that as we are touched by God – commonly – we begin to look at each other in a different way, a new way.  We have this shared experience of pain.  We have this shared experience of grace.  And something happens!  Christ becomes real in us.  Christ is in you, and you, and you, and Christ is in me, and in the end, as St. Augustine put it, “there will be the one Christ loving himself.”  :Loving the body of Christ, the gathered people of God.

And so the unity goes from being an idea, a theological construct, to being something that is lived out  “Open your hearts to one another as Christ has opened his heart to you”

Christ has opened his heart to us!  Think about that… think about a time, if you can

When you felt totally and completely loved by another…When you felt safe, connected, cared for, free, open.  That is what is available with God -  total connection - total love

Every aspect of who we are, loved

Everything about us, loved,

No matter what we have done, loved

No matter the circumstances, loved

It is a safe love, because we know, it will never be withdrawn….

God’s whole being is open to us… in Christ

As we accept that love … do you think that doesn’t make a difference?

What happens is that we gain a capacity to open our hearts to one another

We can move from isolation to intimacy

Open your hearts   What does that look like?  It means that the wall, the membrane, however you want to think of it, that divides “me” from “you” gets thinner, more permeable….In short our sense of isolation begins to dissipate and we begin to feel connected.

In other words we begin to understand that our feelings of separateness are merely the products of a fearful mind, and that it is more accurate to recognize that, as the Mayan saying goes, “I am your other self.”  When the Quakers gather they speak of honoring “that of God which is in every person.”  In the Hindu tradition, the greeting Namaste may be translated as “I see and honor the divined within you, and you see and honor the divine within me.” 

Or if we are to move that into Paul’s framework… I see and honor the Christ in you, and you see and honor the Christ in me.  As we rest in the open heart of God, we are changed.  We learn to feel confident enough to see and name what is most deeply true about ourselves, and we become more skillful in naming what is true and beautiful in others.  We feel our own hurt, and fear, tenderness and love, and we begin to recognize those same feelings in others.

And so we become softer.  More open.  Warmer.  More real.  And slowly we may begin to feel less alone, and more a part of a family of children, all of whom hurt, all of whom ache for love.  And all of whom search for wholeness in the open heart of God, and in a fellowship of open hearts.

I n Vietnam there is a traditional folk tale that describes the difference between heaven and hell.  In hell everyone is given an abundance of food, and then given chopsticks that are a yard long.  Each person has all the food they need, but because the chopsticks are too long, the food never touches their mouths.

In heaven the image is exactly the same; everyone is given an abundance of food, and their chopsticks are also a yard long.  But in heaven the people use their chopsticks to fee one another.

That could also be the tale of the church.  The place of abundance.  The place where God’s heart is open.  And the place where in the safety of that open heart, people are opening their hearts to one another.  Feeding each other, if you will, with love and compassion

As we open our hearts to one another, as we open our hands in service to those in need.  As we forgive and care.  As we share and listen.  As we forgive and are forgiven.  As we heal and are healed… we are working together, united in the Spirit, to find wholeness in the open heart of God.  We are creating a space in which God and God’s love is present.

And the final result?

Paul puts it briefly and strongly

God will be glorified!