“Family Like
Jesus: No One Way To Do It!”
My humble thanks to master-preacher
Bob Olmstead for his guest leadership of Consecration Sunday last week.
Now Bob and Carol are leading reflections on our hymnal as “The Second Book
of Methodism” at the annual all-church retreat up at Zephyr Point. Julie
and I were there Friday evening. With no talk between us about it, Bob
began the retreat with the very same hymn we had chosen to begin this morning’s
worship! Bob introduced it with the story of a 7 year-old girl whose mother
often sang her to sleep from the hymnal.
The night of September
11, 2001, the girl asked for a special hymn to take away her fears of the day.
Her mother leafed through and offered “Were You There When They Crucified My
Lord?” The little girl said not that one. Her mother looked further,
then offered “The Lord of the Dance.” Yes, that one, her daughter said.
By the end of the second verse, without opening her eyes, the 7 year-old added,
“Now I won’t have any bad dreams.” And she slept that night with her small
hand clutched tightly around the hymnal.
May is “Family Month.”
We hear about family Bibles, not so much about family hymnals. Families
now come in all sorts, all shapes, all sizes, all styles. Jesus forms
a faith-family and rather sharply distinguishes between his family of origin
and those with whom he shares obedience to God’s Spirit of infinite love.
In the “Words for Meditation” inside our bulletin cover Carol Progue comments
on Jesus’ promise in this gospel not to leave us “orphaned” when he dies – not
to leave us abandoned, alone. From the beginning of scripture in the garden
of Genesis, to the end of scripture in the new city of Revelation, it is promised
we need not be alone. No sooner does God create one person than that person
needs another. In the end God will make God’s own dwelling place among
us, wiping away every tear and power of death. In fact, God will be all
in all!
In this gospel it is as
if Jesus, who presumes to speak to God as “Abba,” Daddy, has been similarly
seen by his friends and followers, his faith-family, as loving parent, as source
of assurance of comfort and security -- perhaps the one who finds the right
hymn to get us safely through every dark worried night of our souls. Progue
says Jesus here “demonstrates that family is more than a mother, father, and
kids. He encourages us to open our eyes to families that are created not
by biology but by love.” We are, in the images we have been living with
this Lent and Eastertide, parts of one body, congregations of one spirit, rooms
of one household, members of one faith-family – not by biology but by love!
Families may certainly
be for better and for worse in terms of how we behave and function. Children
do not get much choice in the matter of who families are, who makes them up,
how extended they are. What children live for, just as Jesus’ faith-family
lived for then and lives for now, is the practice of love, of acceptance, assurance,
care and comfort, families are meant to provide. Decisions we make about
how we see and do “family,” everyday and on Sundays, make a difference as to
whether or not any church families feel “orphaned” in faith. Progue goes
on to mention – same gender-parent families, single-parent families, transracial
adoptive families, blended families, group and foster home families, families
on streets and in shelters. All of those families are represented in this
congregation – along with what we might call “grandparent-parent” families and
families subject to constant change by service in the military. Structures like
“gangs,” even “armies” in some parts of the world, serve as “family” to children.
There really is no end to the ways that families can be.
Progue celebrates that
“we are blessed indeed when children find their way to churches that teach us
more about what family is” -- though we are reminded of what we have learned
about churches and church leaders who violate sacred trusts of children and
families. This congregation and all others of our tradition are required
to come up with policies for protecting children and young persons, sexually
and otherwise, in all of our places and programs. Progue suggests our
scriptures and church traditions may be more surprising resources than we think
– “Hannah presents her son to Eli in a stunning story of foster care; Moses
is adopted; Ruth leaves her birth mother to become daughter to Naomi.”
Many are called to leave friends and families, homelands and households, behind.
We dare not presume that the living Spirit of the God of Love is done
fashioning new forms and functions of faith-families yet. A new-dancing
dawn comes every day.
We learned Friday that
the jurisdictional Committee on Appeals had restored, for now, the orders of
United Methodist pastor Elizabeth Stroud, a lesbian living as family with her
partner. A few days before Julie and I took the organization Soulforce
up on an invitation to address a few personal words to Rev. Dr. James Dobson,
founder of Focus on the Family, whose focus seems to us painfully limited and
limiting. These words will be presented among many others to Dr. Dobson
tomorrow. The first and last sentences are Soulforce’s, the rest of the
words are ours –
I want briefly to explain how untrue words,
like yours, about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families
have caused suffering to me or someone I love: Pope Benedict in his
first papal sermon called Christianity “not a collection of dogmas, or moralism,”
but “an encounter, a love story.” The church of the Christ who embodies
the God of love with commands to love one another can only be a church of love,
about love, for love, and with love in its every human expression of conscious,
accountable mutuality and care. Not only have we in 33 years of ordained
United Methodist ministry pastored to families torn by inherently divisive
and destructive rhetoric about how mistaken God’s gift of homosexual love must
be. Not only have we pastored to persons dying with AIDS whose lives might
have been enriched, enhanced and extended by the opportunity to commit their
lasting relationships to covenants of love in and with the church. But
also we have lost the incalculable good for the church offered by gay and lesbian
colleagues as worthy to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments and
keep the order of the church as they are to confess Christ as Lord and Savior
and enter into the ever-demanding, self-losing, other-loving life of baptized
discipleship. Live and let live, love and let love, let go and let God.
I hope you will accept my sincere effort to help you change your destructive
behavior.
Brothers and sisters, the
recurrent plea of Jesus and of Paul is that we as the body of Christ in all
the world not sell ourselves short of the fullest and freest extent to which
the Holy Spirit, once-come yet always-coming as Christ returned in us -- even
here, even now, even in us – is reshaping and restoring the whole lives and
the life together of all persons, all peoples everywhere! In words of
John 14 just before our gospel this morning, Jesus promises his faith-family
– “Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works
that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going
to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name [whatever you ask
in my name!] that the Father may be glorified in the Son [the parents in the
children!]. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it!”
The Lord of the Dance takes and teaches new steps everyday.
And Paul here addresses
Athenians who contend and pretend not to know God directly and for themselves
(as Jeremiah 33 foresees a time when God will no longer write law on tablets
of stone but directly on our hearts – directly in love with each one of us!).
Paul says, in effect, we are in God as fish are in water! We cannot help
but know God is good, God is love, with every last breath we take. God
is the Giver of every living Gift -- of life, of breath, of all things!
God -- who is still making every last one of us, however we may be described
or even defined, from one single ancestor – makes of one origin every people
and nation whenever, wherever on earth! One body, many parts! One
spirit, many congregations! One household, many rooms! One faith-family,
many members!
Yet the very same God never
is far from each one of us! God, says Jesus, becomes as nearly and actively
part of us as this very bread we break, this very wine we share, in God’s name!
In the Spirit of God’s love. “In God we live and move and have our being!”
“For we too are God’s offspring!” says Paul. Everyone here is invited
to say that, please – We too are God’s offspring. We too are God’s offspring!
WE TOO ARE GOD’S OFFSPRING! Amen.
Rev. John J. Auer
