We Are Family

Intro

Third message inspired by a talk at the regional conference...

The message is called We Are Family. And to date myself, yes, I had the Sister Sledge song going through my head all week! We are fam-i-ly...

Few would contest that our families are important. If we are blessed to be born into a healthy and loving family the safety and intimacy we experience there gives us a good foundation for life. If our biological family carries a lot of dysfunction, it can impact just as much but in a negative way.

Regardless of your family history, the good news is that your biological family is not your only family. I was born into a safe and loving family. But I was also essentially an only child, with only one sister who was 15 years older than me. So I was often lonely. I had to find family in other places - some good and some not so good.

One of the greatest blessings to me personally has coming to understand that my church is my family. I think this is why it grieves me so much when people leave. For me, this isn’t just a place to receive a spiritual service. It is a gathering of my mothers & fathers, brothers & sisters - and a few crazy uncles. When people leave, it feels like a divorce. Now, it could be argued that I need to develop a more healthy way to deal with people leaving. Yet, at the same time, I think there is something true in how it makes me feel. Our relationship to one another should overcome the vast majority of any differences we may have. We may not vote the same. We may have different understandings of the end times. We may place a different priority on the kind of music we sing. But in the grand scheme of things, these are all secondary issues. Certainly not valid reasons to tear the fabric of family relationship.

Our biological family is important and precious. But Jesus restructures how we are to think about family. As we will see, his real family is defined along spiritual rather than biological lines. The hopeful news of the gospel is that in Christ we are now enfolded into the new family of God.

A new family

Read Mark 3:31-35

Vs. 31-32

“mother and brothers…standing outside”

Twice Marks points out that Jesus’ biological family is outside, and that the crowd is on the inside. Usually this is reversed; it is the crowd that is on the outside while our biological family is inside and closest to us.

Mark is a master storyteller, so this detail should not be overlooked. Jesus is upending the norm. This is scandalous. In this time period, it was your biological family that you owed greatest allegiance to. It was your family of origin that you looked to as a safety net if you become sick or lost your job. But this is now being upended.

“asking for you”

The Greek here is more forceful that it appears in English. It means they are seeking to exert some control over Jesus. They believe that they have rights to him that are of higher priority that Jesus is obliged to honor.

Does this mean Jesus didn’t care about his biological family? Of course not! By this point in time his father, Joseph, had likely died. As the eldest, Jesus would have been ultimately responsible for the care of his mother and any unwed sisters. We must assume that he had their care worked out. Also, one of his final statements on the cross had to do with the care of his mother. He made sure that his disciple John would bring her into his home and care for her.

Paul actually tells Timothy that whoever does not take care of those in his household have actually denied the faith (1 Tim. 5:8). So, Jesus’ statement should not be taken as some sort of call to abandon and/or neglect our biological family. Throughout the scripture one’s family is seen as a gift from God and a treasured possession. We should of course love, serve, and honor our birth family.

Mark’s point, and really Jesus’ point, is that our birth family is no longer our only family. In Christ we have a new and more lasting family in the church.

Vs. 33-35

“Who are my mother and my brothers?”

Jesus does not share his family’s assumptions about their priority. He looks at the inner circle and declares “Here are my mother and my brothers!” In saying this Jesus redefines the family. Jesus asserts that natural family and blood relationship no longer carries the only privilege. The new family he is creating is formed from “whoever does the will of God”. Those who by faith have placed their trust in Jesus as Lord are now the members of his family, and therefore members with one another. And while is may feel like loss, this is in reality good news.

Some of us have been born into wonderful human families. We had loving parents. We have loving sibling relationships. It is with these people that we share the greatest sense of intimacy and closeness, and these kind of statements by Jesus - of which there are many - can make us feel threatened. Tell about Jan being sad that she won’t be married to Marsh in the next life…

But many more have had lousy families or origin. Their relationship with their family has been marked by neglect, abuse, abandonment, indifference, and a host of other things. If anything, this had made them wary of ever trusting themselves to any kind of family – no matter how good it looks on the outside.

But Jesus’ words are good news regardless of your family of origin. For those with great families, you family can be enfolded into an even greater one. The intimacy you enjoy now with your family is just a poor reflection of the kind of intimacy you enjoy with your new one. Your birth family is temporary and flawed; your spiritual family is eternal and perfected.

For those who came from a not-so-great family, this is also good news. There has been a proliferation of online social media sites over the last few years. People are more digitally connected than ever before. But while they may have many online friends, many people confess to experiencing great loneliness.

The good news in this passage is that the days of loneliness and isolation are over. As the psalmist says, “He places the lonely in families” (Psalm 68:8). This has always been God’s intent – to create a new family that is draw together from all the families on earth. This is what the church is to represent.

Who is my family?

In light of this, there are a few implications for us.

Jesus assumes our highest commitment will be to him.

Access and proximity to Jesus is by faith and not by merit.

We don’t know who all was there in the crowd but some were certainly those that others found undesirable. The awesome thing about the church is that you don’t have to be a superstar to be accepted! Jesus’ new family creates welcome for those that others reject.

Contains a warning, because there were also some in the crowd who were not part of the family. Being on the inside does not mean your “in”. “Many will say to me, Lord, Lord...”

Jesus invites all to join the new family he is building. It is open to anyone who turns to him in faith.

Jesus didn’t come to divide biological families (though for some this does happen). His desire is to see all families reconciled to him and to one another. This is the great hope of the new creation. Biological family doesn’t get displaced by our new spiritual family; the spiritual family is the means by which the biological family can be fully healed. But, in light of how others may accept or reject us, even when it involves our most loved family members, we must give our ultimate allegiance to Jesus.

Church relationships aren’t throw-away.

The very fact that the church is repeatedly called the family of God tells us something about how we ought to think about the church. We live in an age of throw-away everything. We don’t fix anything, do we? You buy an expensive TV and it goes out after a few years, what do you do? Throw it out and buy another. Your pair of socks get a hole in the toe, what do you do? Throw them away and buy a new pair. You marry someone and after a few years they no longer make you happy, what do you do?? (Shameless plug for AoM because marriages aren’t throw-away).

This throw-away attitude very much pervades the church. If the pastor says something I don’t agree with – not something that is a doctrinal heresy, just something I don’t agree with – and I move churches. Or someone hurts my feelings, and I leave for the church down the street. Or someone tries to hold me accountable to my Christian calling, calling me out for something I did, I just call them judgmental and go somewhere else. The last few years have revealed the deep division in the church in America as we’ve divided over presidential choices, vaccine choices, and mask choices. We often treat church like we treat a supermarket. As long as it has what I’m looking for I’ll keep coming.

Being drawn to Christ means being drawn to each other in covenantal love.

In his comparison of the church to the human body, the apostle Paul writes 1 Cor 12:26 “If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.”

The covenant we now have with Christ means we are also in covenant with one another. This means there can be no cold indifference toward those in your new household. We are now conjoined in Christ. We triumph together. We lament together. We can no longer walk into a church service and be completely ignorant of the people sitting beside us and what they may be going through, as if we are here to just get what we want to get as a consumer and then go on our way. I don’t need to feel this toward people I’m at Walmart with; the church is a different story.

We seek unity, not uniformity.

It means we strive for unity on the essentials, but don’t demand uniformity around non-essentials. We do not have to have the same political beliefs to be in a committed family relationship. We do not have to agree on how long it took God to make the earth, or on what it will look like when he returns. Yes, there are things that are non-negotiable, but the list is probably smaller than we tend to make it. We can have different opinions on birth control, how to discipline children, what happens or how Jesus is present at Communion, and a host of other things, and still be in unity around our commitment to Jesus Christ.

Conclusion

We’re doing marriage counseling with a young couple. We talked about the need to have a network of friends that they both enjoy together. The woman brought up one couple, but the husband immediately shot it down because he “doesn’t agree with their politics”.

We might chuckle at that, but how often does this happen in a church? How often do we view people in the church with a take-them-or-leave-them attitude. What if the people in your church are exactly the people Jesus has placed you with on purpose?! We have to be careful not to have an attitude toward others that works against the new family Jesus is building. Friends, we’re going to be together a long time, so we might as well work things out now.

This means being involved with your family. Serve with them. Pray with them. Most importantly, be with them. I encourage you to find a Table Fellowship you can be a part of. If there isn’t one that fits your schedule, talk to me and we will figure out how to start a new one.

Being in a family is hard work, but it is so worth it. Here is where we find acceptance, nurture, and committed love. Being part of a family means making a commitment to them, knowing they are making the same commitment to you. Who is my brother and sister and mother? Just look around you.

Maybe there is someone where today who would like to make themselves a part of this new family that Jesus is building...