Family Values Part One: Family

The New Revised Standard Version The True Kindred of Jesus

46 While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. 47 Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” 48 But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” 49 And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 50 For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Introduction- Values

Corporate Values

Patagonia

Build the best product

Cause no unnecessary harm

Use business to protect nature

Not bound by convention

Zappos

Deliver WOW through service

Embrace and drive change

Create fun and a little weirdness

Be adventurous, creative, and openminded

Pursue Growth and Learning

Build open and honest relationships with communication

Build a positive team and family spirit

Do more with less

Be passionate and determined

Be humble

Build-A-Bear

Reach

Learn

Di-bear-sity

Colla-bear-ate

Give

Cele-bear-ate

Laboratory Presbyterian Church Values

We belong to the family of Christ

Everyone belongs here

We will invest in the youth of our church

We will live in to our namesake as a Laboratory of Faith

We are a community of faith who lives life together.

We will focus outside the walls of our building as a missional church.

So today, we’re going to start with our first value: We belong to the family of Christ.

Family Structure in the Bible-Expanding Circles

Obviously we’d want to start with a biblical understanding of what a family looks like.

And actually, it’s more complicated than most folks make it out to be.

Nuclear Family

This is the same that it is for us.

Mom, dad, and kids.

Once the kids are old enough to strike out on their own (usually around 12 or 14 back then) and get married and start a family, they leave the house.

In a nomadic and agricultural system like the ancient Israelites had, this was also known as your labor force.

Anyone in here who complains about the chores that you do...

Mom and dad didn’t run a business, they kept their family afloat.

And they did that by asking the kids to pitch in and do the work.

Plow the fields

Repair the tools

Mend the fabrics

Things like that.

And in fact sadly, most of the kids were thought of as a business asset than members of the family.

Ever notice how in the New Testament it’s Jesus who is telling everyone to pay attention to the kids around them?

It’s because they’re not.

To them they had just as much interest in listening to their kids opinions as we might have in listening to our laptops opinions...

Ok…too many people do that already, but you get what I’m saying...

Other than the business nature of this, we get this family circle, right?

Extended Family

This circle could expand out one more click to include extended family.

Aunts, Uncles, Grandparents,

Anyone who shared your name.

This circle made sure to look after each other, no matter what.

When we read earlier that God had called Abram (who will eventually become Abraham) to leave everything he knows and wander out in to some great unknown, look what he does first:

He gets together his wife Sarai (soon to be Sarah) and his brother’s son Lot, and their extended family.

He gets the extended family together to go with him because he has their back, and they have his.

If one nuclear family’s farm had a bad crop year, the extended family would hop in and help out.

If one member of a nuclear family got hurt, the extended family would jump together to pitch in.

If the matriarch and patriarch of the family were too old to take care of themselves, they would move in with the extended family and be looked after.

Again, this probably isn’t too different from how we understand family today.

The next two clicks of the circle though, change a bit for us.

Clan/Tribe

When I was in High School, the first ever musical I played the drums for was Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor DreamCoat.

It was a blast!

And while it might not be the *most* biblically accurate thing out there, it reminds us of how the nation of Israel got its start.

Jacob has 12 sons.

Reuben

Simeon

Levi

Judah

Issachar

Zebulun

Joseph

Benjamin

Dan

Naphtali

Gad

Asher

Each of the sons is the start of a tribe of Israel.

As these families grow and the extended families get bigger and bigger, they can’t keep track of it any more.

And what’s wild is that the personalities of the brothers in the story of Jacob actually become the personalities of the tribes.

The tribes end up becoming something kind of like our concept of states.

In the beginning of the nation of Israel, they didn’t have a centralized government.

Each tribe had its own leadership, called Judges.

And they worked together on things, but ultimate authority rested within each tribe and their judges.

So imagine this weird family dynamic...

Instead of West Virginia, we had “The Freyer Tribe”

Where like, everyone was sort of kind of related...

And we still had to sort out things like taxes and government and roads and bridges and things like that.

We had to figure out how to trade with the other states so that we could survive.

Imagine how messed up the Thanksgiving Dinners are under that program!

Nation

God very clearly calls Abram to start a new nation.

Not just a new family.

But a whole country of people with some rather interesting characteristics.

There’s some kind of land that God is going to give this country, so they’ll be settled in a place.

But even that place doesn’t seem to be the most important part of this first description.

They will be blessed by God.

And they are to use that blessing so that they can bless everyone else.

Rather than ensure that their economy was strong, or they had a great national defense, or that their GDP was up,

This country’s primary goal, at least as expressed in this founding story, is to bless everyone else they come in to contact with.

What a novel concept!

There are other nations...

And other nations who didn’t see eye to eye with these ideals would often start wars.

So while you had an allegiance to your family, your clan, your tribe, you also had an allegiance to your nation.

If the Phylistens attack, each tribe would send soldiers supplies and weapons to the battle field to contribute.

You were a family, you were a tribe, but the nation itself functioned as one big family too.

Especially and particularly when someone was out to attack you.

Jesus blows it up- Brothers and Sisters

As he is want to do, Jesus pushes this concept of family even farther.

Anyone who is on board with the will of the Father.

Anyone who can claim Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior.

Anyone who is doing their best to live these kingdom values,

They are brothers and sisters in Christ.

Vietnam.

I share absolutely nothing in common with the folks that I met over there.

Wildly different world views.

Incredible gaps in our incomes

I think I saw one beard the whole time I was over there.

And they some how came up with a coffee that is too strong for me, which I didn’t think was possible.

And yet...

I was welcomed in to their homes.

I was showered with love and affection.

We keep up on Facebook to celebrate together, to mourn together, to lament together.

Their pain has become my own, and mine has become theirs, in a way that I can only say is family, right?

Forgive me a moment of editorializing…but

One of the greatest tragedies and failures of the last few decades is how the American Church has lost sight of this sense of family that Jesus has given us.

We all too often would rather divide ourselves and highlight the division.

We all too often mark what we’re for by naming what we’re against.

We celebrate the ways we are separated from our brothers and sisters, at the expense of ever getting together.

So this is how it lived itself out in biblical times.

These circles kept expanding and expanding and expanding.

And to be sure, the family in 2021 is vastly different than it was for our biblical ancestors.

In ways both bad and great by the way.

But if we’re going to name family as one of our core values, how are we going to live in to that?

How LPC is going to live in to this value:

We are going to do everything we can to support our families.

How busy can we possibly get?

Some of you who have school aged children...

If I say the word “calendar” right now you will likely break out in to a cold sweat, won’t you?

Soccer practice.

Band practice.

Cheer practice.

Chess club practice.

And those are just the practices, let alone the games and performances that everybody’s practicing for!

I actually know a friend who hired a local college student, paid them an incredibly decent wage, to be an essentially on call Uber driver for their young kids.

Parents are having a hard time keeping drop off and pick up schedules straight.

Every single year I think “Surely, this is peak busy-ness.”

And every single year, save for 2020, I’ve been wrong.

And for what it’s worth, after a year of slowing down, taking some time off, relaxing a bit, and perhaps reprioritizing, we seem to have jumped right back to where we were before the pandemic took hold.

Everyone wants to try to blame some group of people for all this busyness.

Some churches and youth ministries I know have blamed parents for signing their kids up for too much stuff.

Some have blamed kids for signing up for too much stuff.

Some have blamed coaches and teachers and directors and all of that, thinking back to their own childhood and how it used to be.

But here’s what I want to say today to any family in here that is feeling the pressure of the modern American busy addiction: I’m not really interested in placing blame.

In fact, I think having a pair of twins of my own, I think I’m about to hop on this particular roller coaster.

Rather than placing blame, I’d rather just say as a church we see you, and we’ve got your back.

Church should never be just one more thing.

And in fact, a whole bunch of families start to tense up a bit when they hear a preacher talk like this.

I think because this is usually the sales pitch for making Church a number one priority.

If you have time for hockey, you should have time for church.

What do you mean they have a debate competition on Sunday? That’s church day!

Back in my day (don’t you just love anything that starts with “back in my day”) we didn’t miss church unless we had a gushing wound on our leg, and even then...

And again, as someone who is part of a young family with kids, I think the last thing we need is to have one more thing.

The worship of Jesus Christ should never be another thing to add to an already overcrowded calendar.

The fellowship of like minded disciples should never be something you are guilted in to participating in.

A church family relationship should never feel like a chore.

And yet, obviously, we love it when you’re all here.

So I wonder what church looks like for a busy family these days, or at least what it could look like.

The Eddy

This past week I was riding with a friend along the Great Allegheny Passage trail.

280 miles and one near miss with a Rotwhiler later, I’m like legitimately glad to be here today...

But the GAP follows along the Yough river, and I got to watch rafters and kayakers paddle down the rapids.

Some people think what I’m doing is nuts...

I think anyone who rafts or kayaks in those waters is a certifiable maniac…but whatever...

I saw a few of these little formations in the water I learned about in high school called an “eddy.”

It was actually the name of my youth group growing up.

But an eddy happens when there’s a big enough rock that the water flows around the sides, and leaves a pool in the back.

Kayakers and rafters who are a little bit tired from the constant paddle or die nature of their sport (again, lunatics!) will slip in to an eddy any time they need a break, to relax, to catch their breath.

Church should be like an eddy in the middle of the rapids of our busy calendars.

Whether you have kids or not, we’re all busier than any of us know what to do with.

Church should be the place that you come to find rest from this busy world.

Church should be the place where you recharge before you go back out there.

Church should be the place where you are encouraged, equipped, and given refuge.

And we are going to do everything in our power to make sure that LPC can be that place.

On Sundays for sure.

But also with youth groups for our busy teenagers.

And with our mid-week GLOW service.

And with things like the Harvest Hootenanny, when we just gather together around a fire.

And really with every event we do.

Our mission statement says that we exist to be a community of love and refuge, where people can quiet their lives enough to hear the still small whisper of Jesus’ redemptive love and grace.

I hope, I pray, and we are going to actively work, to make sure that is true for every member of every family in our neighborhood here and around the world.

We will navigate the waters of life as a church family (Tribe).

I mentioned earlier that I wasn’t quite sure that we had a modern equivalent for the Tribe.

But you know what, the more time I’ve spent here at Laboratory, I think “church family” is a pretty good fill in for this concept of tribe.

Here at LPC we might be more related than other churches, so that fits...

But we’re a people who has each other’s back, who has a definite personality, who has to make decisions about the common good of our people.

I don’t think it’s too far of a thing to call our church family a tribe.

So what kind of family is our church family here at Laboratory?

We will be a family of prayer

After a few weeks of vacation and trips and such, it’s so nice for me to get back to my normal routine.

One of my favorite parts of my routine is every morning, usually around 9:30 or 10:00, I wander up here to sit in that rocking chair in the back of the room.

I bring with me my prayer list from the previous Sunday, and I pray through all the joys and concerns that we just collected.

Those prayers don’t happen just for a few minutes every Sunday.

They happen day. After day. After day.

I hope I’m not alone in that.

I hope that we are the kind of tribe that holds each other in prayer whether we’re together, or apart.

I hope that we’re the kind of tribe that feels each others pains and celebrates each other’s joys.

I hope we’re the kind of tribe that calls and checks in on each other from time to time, just to see how we’re doing.

We will be a family of support and encouragement

Last Sunday was one of the hardest days I’ve ever had on a bike.

Our day began with 24 miles of climbing over 2000 feet of elevation.

And it started with a dog chasing us…so...

But somewhere around 11:00, I was thinking about what everyone was up to, and I realized that I was in the midst of the prayers of the people.

And thanks to the totally creepy nature of live streams, I went back and checked, and sure enough I know you all were praying for David and I.

Those prayers were felt!

But right along with those were all the words of encouragement and support that I got along the way.

Everyone who gave a thumbs up to a picture during a low moment.

Everyone who wrote “you got this!”

Everyone who stood in my corner, it was felt and deeply appreciated.

I hope and pray that’s not something we do for the pastor alone folks.

I hope that when you are facing down a really big test in school, your tribe comes alongside you to let you know we believe in you.

I hope that when life throws some difficult medical tests your way, your tribe is there to visit and to encourage you through.

I hope that when your schedule is so busy you’re not sure how you’re going to move forward, we can watch the kids or give you a break or whatever you need.

This is the kind of tribe that supports and encourages each other no matter what.

We will seek out and welcome members of the family not yet here.

If you are like me, I’m betting as you’re sitting here listening you’re thinking that the kind of place we’re describing is just what you need.

In fact, I’m betting that there are other people you can imagine from your own life who need this kind of place too.

People who need a family that loves and encourages them.

People who need a family that will support them.

People who need a family that will douse them in prayers no matter what they’re going through.

People who need an eddy from the constant busyness of life.

And I know, I know. Evangelism scares the heck out of Presbyterians.

(We’ll talk about that more in a value to come)

Nothing is more frightening for some folks than to invite their friends to church.

That’s fine.

Invite them instead to be part of the family.

I promise, they already belong here.

But we’ll talk about that more next week.