John Brierly McCall, D. Min.
Luke 8:19-21
1 John 4:13-21
We have lots of cultural shorthand these days – words or phrases that are like icebergs with just a small tip appearing, and the great mass bellow the surface. Think of how we use the phrase “traditional family values.” It generally reminds us of the way America used to look, and asserts that most of our nation’s troubles could be fixed by a return to those golden days of yesteryear.
True, most of us grew up in a world of a stay-at-home mom and a wage-earning dad, their biological children, a cat or a dog, a white picket fence and a mortgage. Any deviation from that was unusual and frequently labeled as destructive of the American way.
This model now represents just about a third of the households with children in the US. Two-thirds of families raising children look different – maybe quite different.
<http://www.stepfamily.org/statistics.html>
There’s more: for couples stepping to the altar this year, the average length of marriage will be seven years, and about 50% of these new unions will end in divorce. Of those who marry and divorce, 75% will try again… confirming Elizabeth Taylor’s remark on the occasion of her eighth marriage: “the triumph of hope over experience.”
<http://www.stepfamily.org/statistics.html>
On this day when we mark the Festival of the Christian Home, and our culture tells us that we can make mom happy by buying her stuff, we must admit the American family most of us have known is continuing to undergo fundamental change.
Whether this is dis-integration or transformation is still a matter of opinion.
Let me say clearly, we all need to do more to make all families healthier. But those who appeal to the example and authority of scripture to dictate proper “family values” have to be pretty selective in what they recommend. The biblical models for families include Abraham and his wife Sarah, mother of Isaac… and Sarah’s servant Hagar, by whom Abraham fathered Ishmael. The deep fracture that continues between Jews and Muslims comes from this patriarch who fathered sons by two women.
And let’s not appeal to the family values of King Solomon who, according to tradition, had 1,000 wives plus concubines. Let’s also stay away from the biblical model for a religious family in Exodus (21:17) that says anyone who curses his or her parents will be put to death, and that when a father sells his daughter into slavery he should sell her to neighbors, not to strangers or foreigners. (Exodus 21:7, 8) Both Old and New Testaments sanction the Levirate marriage, meaning if a woman was widowed her husband’s brother must marry her. And he was encouraged to father sons by her.
I doubt that enforcing any of these ancient biblical models would truly strengthen “traditional family values.”
Let’s also remember that in most cultures for most of human history, families have been a lot more than husband, wife and kids. They’ve been extended, interlocking circles of multiple generations, with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and non-related adults and children who cared for each other, worked for the common good, and actually made it possible to survive. So our “traditional family” is a relatively recent invention.
For a whole variety of reasons we’ll always have traditional families – a heterosexual couple in their first marriage with their biological children, who endeavor to raise the next generation with stability, permanence, and core values that strengthen our society as a whole.
Good for them and good for us all. But it’s just wrong to say only this kind of family is sacred and godly, and any other is deficient.
What do we do when we realities don’t neatly fit into a Walt Disney fairy tale? We go to plan B or C or Z and keep on living the best we can. There are many, many ways to be family and many, many ways to love – some of which are a totally mystery to me, but I trust they aren’t to God.
In my mind, the greatest threat to “family values” is not from the outside or from the reality that there are many ways to be family. The greater threat is the unfocused frenzy that can corrode families from the inside, sometimes expressed as an obsession with possessions, or the habit of “family activities” that put adults and children in parallel ruts without deepening the communication; or television and electronics, the flight from commitment, substance abuse, and a host of others. These threats are multiplied when parents really aren’t paying attention to what their kids need in order to grow well.
Yes, the so-called “traditional family” is slipping is declining as the primary model held sacred by many. I don’t have the answer for those who are afraid or angry at the changes in the traditional family.
But I do have a scripturally-based reminder for us as the church. Rather than judging and marginalizing families that are configured in many different ways, let’s ask the question of how we can better support and encourage each other in facing the challenges and expressing the love that link us together.
Let’s be sure our goal is to help families be healthy rather than demanding that families look the same.
Scripture brings us back to the reality that godly families are not shaped by biology or social pressure but by loving bonds, mutual respect and common purpose. The poignant story of Ruth and Naomi is one example. So, too, the first letter of John, which reminds us that where Jesus Christ is present there is love. And where there is true, solid, transforming love there can be no fear. Perfect love casts out fear.
In today’s Gospel lessons we overhear Jesus asking a rhetorical question: “who are my mother and my brothers?” He knew who gave him birth. He knew who his playmates were when he was a child. He also knew that Spirit had enlarged his family into a community of faith. He was very clear that none of us can be a disciple in isolation. We’re made for community and that’s where we really discover what it means to follow.
Anne Lamott, a popular author who makes her compelling stories of faith simple and beautiful, writes in her book Traveling Mercies about how she and her son Sam are so deeply engaged in the life of a Presbyterian Church in San Francisco. When she started to attend a predominately African-American Church she was poor and alone. She wasn’t married but she was pregnant and decided to share this with the congregation. So, one Sunday she stood up at the end of service. There were cheers. She said even the most traditional folks, raised in bible-thumping homes in the Deep South, just clapped and clapped. Even the mothers whose own sons were in prison rejoiced with her.
They weren’t just happy at the thought of this new life. It was much more than that. They were family to her. “When I was at the end of my rope” she wrote. “The people at St. Andrew tied a knot in it for me and helped me hold on. And then,” she continued, “almost immediately they set about providing for us. They brought clothes, they brought me casseroles to keep in the freezer, and they brought me the assurance that this baby was going to be a part of the family.” (pg. 100-101)
“I first brought Sam to church when he was five days old. The women very politely pretended to care how I was doing but were mostly killing time until it as their turn to hold Sam again.”
This wonderful story rings true and reminds us why Mother’s Day strikes a deep chord.
Whether within the so-called “traditional family” or the family of the church, or any one of the countless ways we learn to make families of love and respect and mutuality, each of us came into the world by the grace of God and a mother’s life. It’s a fundamental part of who we are and whom we’ve become.
Washington Irving, the 19th century author, wrote:
A father may turn his back on his child; brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives and wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.
“Who is my family?” asked Jesus. Then he pointed to his disciples and he said: “whoever really acts according to the will of God who is in heaven is my brother and my sister and my mother.”
As we move forward, let’s keep our eye on the scriptural truth that we, as the family of Jesus Christ, find here together a love and a bond that can truly give glory to God – father, mother, creator and redeemer. Amen.