Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome

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Message

Today is the fourth Sunday of Lent.

Lent is probably my favorite season in the Church year because it’s a season of transformation.

In Epiphany, we asked who God is and saw that God is the one who lives in solidarity with us, calling and equipping us to be God’s images in the world.

Lent is the chance for us to prepare for that calling.

It’s a way for us to take time together to look inside ourselves and do some careful introspection, to ask as a community where we are not prepared to embark on God’s call together.

This year, our series is called “God is Not...” This is a technique to know God that originated with with the theologian Thomas Aquinas.

In his masterwork Summa Theologiae, Aquinas wrote,

“We cannot know what God is, only what [God] is not.

We must therefore consider the ways in which God does not exist rather than the ways in which [God] does.”

— Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae

That sounds strange, I know, but it’s Aquinas’ attempt to take seriously the command not to create idols of God.

God is infinite and beyond our comprehension - what theologians like Aquinas call a mystery.

But we constantly create pictures of God - pictures that are false.

Pictures that do more harm than good.

Like Michelangelo carving the David, we’re carving away the things God is not as a way to see more clearly the divine mystery that is God.

As we see what God is not, we are more clearly able to confess our participation in those things and turn from them.

We began by confessing that God is beyond us - unknowable except where God chooses to be known.

We faced our own propensity to play God.

Tim challenged us to refuse the god of money.

And last week, Sonya invited us into a deep understanding of how God engages our past.

Today, we’re going to face perhaps our most challenging idol yet: that of the family.

‘Family’ is one of our core American values - since it’s an election year, think about how many mailers you’re getting about candidates.

Nearly every mailer has at least one picture of the candidate, their partner and their kids.

Why?

Because they want you to know they’re a ‘family’ candidate.

What do we mean by ‘family’?

In America, it’s the ‘nuclear’ family, what we’ll often call the ‘immediate’ family.

A mom, dad and two (point five!) kids.

Maybe a dog.

Why is this what we mean by family (especially when so few of our families actually look like this?

There’s a lot of sociological history we don’t have time to get into, but it’s in the name nuclear family.

Around the 1950s, as the world was entering the atomic age, American culture shifted - with interstate highways and the rise of single-family housing in the suburbs.

The mom/dad/kids came to be seen as the nucleus of the atom (which at the time was thought to be comprised of the smallest, indivisible particles).

The thinking was that, in the same way protons, neutrons and electrons are the building blocks of matter, the nuclear family was the most basic, essential building block of society.

Thanks to the rise of television, the vision of the nuclear family - like Ward and Betty Cleaver, Wally and the Beaver - soon became the gold standard.

The Cleavers were aspirational, the All-American family everyone should want to be.

It’s no accident they were white and middle class, with a father who worked outside the home and a mother who kept the house.

Churches were quick to embrace this vision of family, soon calling the nuclear family ‘God’s ideal’ and ‘biblical’.

I sat in a meeting in a church where I worked and heard the lead pastor say that family was more important than church because God had created the family before God created the church.

Friends, that’s practically the definition of idolatry!

Now, I don’t have to tell you that family is complicated.

Sometimes, families are a source of love, support and joy.

Those of you who have such families probably know what a blessing you have.

A lot of us have families that are more complicated.

I come from a blended family - my parents divorced when I was a teen, and I have parents, step-parents, step-step grandparents siblings and step-siblings and more.

Many of us live in homes with grandparents, aunties, tias y tios, cousins and more.

The vast majority of us don’t have families that look like the Cleavers, and that’s good news because that was never the biblical ideal in any case.

Turn with us to Genesis 31.

This is during the story of Jacob, specifically when he flees from his father-in-law.

Jacob’s family is super dysfunctional - he’s a twin, and his parents played favorites (Jacob was the mamma’s boy).

Because he stole from his brother, his mom sent him away, to live with her brother Laban.

Laban had two daughters, and Jacob loved the younger.

Since he couldn’t afford a dowry, he agreed to work for his uncle for seven years, and at the end of that time, his uncle tricked him into marrying his elder daughter.

So Jacob worked seven more years and then married the younger sister too.

During that time, among his wives and their slaves, he fathered eleven children.

(I said ‘dysfunctional’, right?)

Having Jacob as his employee worked out well for Laban because Jacob is actually a really good herdsman and under his management, Laban’s flocks multiplied.

Laban became fabulously wealthy.

After his eleventh son is born (Joseph - remember him from a couple of months ago?), Jacob decides it’s time to strike out on his own, so he packs up his family, his slaves, his flocks and everything else he owns into a massive caravan and hit the road.

When Laban found out, he was furious - that represented a massive loss of income for him.

Let’s read what happened next:

If you know the earlier parts of the story, then you know that Laban isn’t being honest here.

In fact, the whole story of Laban and Jacob’s relationship is one of two con-men trying to out-fox each other.

This is yet another example of Laban putting on a show, trying to look like a good guy and the bigger man.

(Jacob had already, for instance, asked to leave and Laban refused).

Jacob goes on to respond by telling the truth, in front of everyone.

Laban was humiliated - not because Jacob lied about him or was cruel, but because he exposed who he really is to everyone.

Despite the fact that these men are ‘family’, they cannot get along.

They are toxic for each other.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve been in family situations like this - everyone walking on eggshells, choosing words carefully, posturing.

We’ve talked before about the burnout cycle - how unhealthy groups (including families) go through this surface level false community until they explode like this.

In the past, after Jacob and Laban blew up, they’d return to their previous (toxic) pattern - both lying to and trying to cheat each other.

Fortunately, this time both Jacob and Laban realize God is trying to break into this toxic cycle and do something different.

So they decide to make a formal agreement - in front of everyone - to part ways.

Let’s read:

They made a pile of rocks and shared a meal.

Sounds weird to us, but this was the equivalent in the ancient world of going before a judge with lawyers and mediating.

This is sort of a formal divorce between Jacob and Laban.

They part ways.

They draw a boundary and literally mark it - with a pile of stones.

I don’t want us to miss the significance of this moment: this is a legal move to dissolve a family connection.

And it’s done because Laban and Jacob’s relationship is toxic for both of them.

The relationship runs counter to God’s work in their lives.

(And by the way, hopefully you’re saying, “Wow, I don’t like how the women and children are being treated like property.

Plus, didn’t you say something about slaves?!” Good catch.

Yes, all of that is terrible.

And we’re going to spend more time there next week.

Don’t worry.

Jacob isn’t getting off the hook!)

The stories of the patriarchs should caution us against making an idol of family.

In these stories, the families are working against God’s will in the world as often as they’re working with God.

Part of the thrill of the stories of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and his brothers is seeing how God is persistent, unrelenting and faithful specifically in the face of the families’ failings.

BREAK

Turn with us to Matthew 12. Probably the most radical challenge to our idolatry of family comes from Jesus himself.

This is during Jesus’ public ministry - he’s traveling around teaching, healing, performing exorcisms and clashing with the authorities.

Rumors have spread about him so his family - including his mother!