Being in God’s Family
May 10, 2009
May 10, 2009
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Genesis 22:1-19. Mark 3:31-35
Happy Mother’s Day!
Last summer, I was at a preaching conference where I heard Methodist Bishop William Willamon, formerly the Chaplain of Duke University. He was talking about a church sign he had seen advertising a sermon series on “the Biblical model of marriage”. “Who are they kidding?” he commented. “Every family I can think of in the Bible was dysfunctional.” While that might be a slight exaggeration, it is not far off. Let’s look at some of them:
Abraham and Sarah, featured in our Old Testament story – not only did Abraham almost offer up his only son as a sacrifice, but earlier, when childless and traveling in Egypt, Abraham said that Sarah was his sister so that if the Pharaoh wanted to rape her, he wouldn’t kill Abraham.
Lot’s daughters got him drunk and then slept with him to get pregnant.
King David, already with multiple wives, saw a beautiful woman bathing, and instead of turning away, had an affair with her and then had her husband killed when she ended up pregnant.
King Solomon, had 700 wives and 300 concubines – and obviously way too much time on his hands.
The prophet Hosea, was left by his wife so that she could be a prostitute. And in the way of other family values:
Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel – cheated his brother out of his inheritance, and then cheated his father-in-law out of many sheep and goats.
Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son, so his brothers conspired to kill him, but decided to sell him into slavery instead.
Of course, the first two brothers, Cain and Abel took sibling rivalry to extremes early on when Cain killed Abel.
Even among the disciples, James and John, known as the Sons of Thunder, were brothers who argued about who would be the more honored among the disciples – hmmm, looks like they missed a couple of lectures in Discipleship 101 – it’s not about honor.
The real family value in the Bible is that families need a community – that left on their own, individual families often find themselves near or past the breaking point. We’ve all heard the saying – it takes a village to raise a child. Tribal societies recognize this – the twelve tribes of Israel, American Indians, African tribes and the communities derived from them, recognize that children are best raised in a larger community, in a web of relationships that includes mother and father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors…and the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents of neighbors. So, parents who involve daycare as part of the way they raise their children shouldn’t be feeling guilty – through most of human history, children have been raised by a team: with relatives and neighbors among the poor, with a staff among the wealthy.
When I was young, we lived in a group of 8 semi-detached homes with a common central yard. It was faculty housing, and most of the residents had young children – so the parents watched after each other’s kids and most of us feel some connection to one another even now 50 years later when we may not have seen one another for decades. In high school, one of the boys who had lived there when I did ended up in my social studies class, and one day when I had been a little sassy and the teacher said, “Were you raised in a barnyard?” David piped up before I could respond, “Oh yes, we were raised in the SAME barnyard.” I hope to see David’s brother Mark when I travel to Israel next month – we’re kind of part of the same extended family.
In ancient Israel, God entered into a covenant relationship with the nation – the covenant with Abraham was with him as the head of a family that was becoming a nation. His great-grandsons headed the 12 tribes of Israel. We are part of a religious tradition that says community is essential to the practice of faith. In the Presbyterian Church, although families may choose to have godparents, the congregation all serve as godparents to the baptized – in a few moments, we will all make promises to help nurture Evelyn, Lenna and Kaleb in faith. And nurturing people in faith is no small task – especially in churches that do not fall on the more conservative end of the theological array.
Sometimes people think that being part of a religious tradition that values diversity, and does not make strict doctrinal demands, makes Sunday School is less important. After all, we don’t insist that each person believes the same thing, so teaching the kids our faith isn’t so important, is it? Actually, it’s more important. If you are part of a strict tradition, you only need to teach those ideas. We are part of a religiously tolerant tradition, so we need to teach our children how to think theologically, how to thoughtfully discern how our faith impacts our ethics and our behavior, how to avoid simplistic formulations, how to engage in complexity within theology. When we believe that there are grey areas, we don’t just memorize the rules, we learn how to discern – that’s more complicated. We’re not just raising believers – we’re raising theologians.
So the commitment we each make to raising people of the church in faith, to nurturing them and teaching them is a big deal. When we offer our children to be baptized, we are acknowledging that they are God’s and that we are God’s, that we belong to more than ourselves.
Abraham understood that about Isaac – he understood that Isaac was not just his little boy, but was God’s child. And in the story we read this morning about when the Lord tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac – a story that is painful to most of us, and not a classic Mother’s Day text – in this story we see that Abraham trusted God, and relied on God as he would parent Isaac. Now most of you have heard me say that one of the first questions we need to ask when reading the Bible is: what did this story say to the original hearers of it? Many scholars believe that this story was a progressive story – one that was teaching people that child sacrifice was wrong, and revealing that the God of Israel would not ask for children to be sacrificed. What might God be pushing us to understand about our children in our era?
It’s always a struggle for parents to understand that our children are not really our own. They truly are God’s and we have the immense joy, and privilege, and awesome responsibility of raising God’s children. Anyone who knows me knows how much pleasure I have in being a mother to our three sons, and that I do not come to this position out of any lack of attachment to my own family or to my role as a mother. Indeed, it has been largely through my experiences as a mother that I have come to understand that my sons are God’s before they are mine. When we bring our children for baptism, we are recognizing that they, and we, are part of a larger reality with God at the center.
Perhaps that the challenge for us in our era. We have been living in a culture and at a time when individualism and independence have been prized above commonality and interdependence. Even during the wars that our country has been fighting for seven years, there has been no call for shared sacrifice. But we as a country, and as a people of faith, have our roots in a different tradition – a tradition that speaks of the common good, public responsibilities, sharing the work…and the challenges, and the joy. A tradition of community.
But there is more to this than our connections to one another. It is also about how we relate to God. Another dimension of our era is a sense of consumerism – in that for our time, the true meaning of most things and relationships seems to be what we get out of them for ourselves. And so we tend to think about our relationship with God as being about what it does for us: inner peace, or eternal life – this reduces God to a product we consume…for our own benefit, for what we get out of the relationship. It doesn’t really take seriously the idea of God as, well…God.
Some of this has to do with our view of reality – do we really believe that the universe has at its center a loving force that is the source and organizing principle of life? Do we really believe in God as that reality – the source and substance of all life?
Even if we’re uncomfortable with the classic language of Lord, or Ruler of the Universe – if we believe that there is at the heart of the universe a guiding force and that this force is love and that all life has love as its origin and meaning – then won’t we want to organize our lives around that force? Don’t we want to align our lives with what that which is truest, that which tends for the good of all life? And so, we acknowledge that this life force, this power of love is what is truest in ourselves, and our children as well. And so we choose to serve God.
Jesus said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? Those who do the will of my Father are my mother and brothers.” As we seek to serve God, to align ourselves with what is truest in life, we find ourselves connected to Love and to one another. And when we give ourselves to the reality of that Love and those connections, our lives become larger, our families become stronger, our church becomes more vibrant, our children find themselves loved by a community – they and we learn who we are and whose we are, and the love that is at the heart of life becomes more visible in all our lives. This is the Kingdom of God, we are the family of God. So Happy Mother's Day to everyone here -- being part of God's family, we are all part of mothering...and fathering every child, and each person, who is here. Amen.
Rev. Susan Gilbert Zencka
Frame Memorial Presbyterian Church
Texts: Genesis 22:1-19. Mark 3:31-35
Happy Mother’s Day!
Last summer, I was at a preaching conference where I heard Methodist Bishop William Willamon, formerly the Chaplain of Duke University. He was talking about a church sign he had seen advertising a sermon series on “the Biblical model of marriage”. “Who are they kidding?” he commented. “Every family I can think of in the Bible was dysfunctional.” While that might be a slight exaggeration, it is not far off. Let’s look at some of them:
Abraham and Sarah, featured in our Old Testament story – not only did Abraham almost offer up his only son as a sacrifice, but earlier, when childless and traveling in Egypt, Abraham said that Sarah was his sister so that if the Pharaoh wanted to rape her, he wouldn’t kill Abraham.
Lot’s daughters got him drunk and then slept with him to get pregnant.
King David, already with multiple wives, saw a beautiful woman bathing, and instead of turning away, had an affair with her and then had her husband killed when she ended up pregnant.
King Solomon, had 700 wives and 300 concubines – and obviously way too much time on his hands.
The prophet Hosea, was left by his wife so that she could be a prostitute. And in the way of other family values:
Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel – cheated his brother out of his inheritance, and then cheated his father-in-law out of many sheep and goats.
Joseph was Jacob’s favorite son, so his brothers conspired to kill him, but decided to sell him into slavery instead.
Of course, the first two brothers, Cain and Abel took sibling rivalry to extremes early on when Cain killed Abel.
Even among the disciples, James and John, known as the Sons of Thunder, were brothers who argued about who would be the more honored among the disciples – hmmm, looks like they missed a couple of lectures in Discipleship 101 – it’s not about honor.
The real family value in the Bible is that families need a community – that left on their own, individual families often find themselves near or past the breaking point. We’ve all heard the saying – it takes a village to raise a child. Tribal societies recognize this – the twelve tribes of Israel, American Indians, African tribes and the communities derived from them, recognize that children are best raised in a larger community, in a web of relationships that includes mother and father, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, neighbors…and the aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents of neighbors. So, parents who involve daycare as part of the way they raise their children shouldn’t be feeling guilty – through most of human history, children have been raised by a team: with relatives and neighbors among the poor, with a staff among the wealthy.
When I was young, we lived in a group of 8 semi-detached homes with a common central yard. It was faculty housing, and most of the residents had young children – so the parents watched after each other’s kids and most of us feel some connection to one another even now 50 years later when we may not have seen one another for decades. In high school, one of the boys who had lived there when I did ended up in my social studies class, and one day when I had been a little sassy and the teacher said, “Were you raised in a barnyard?” David piped up before I could respond, “Oh yes, we were raised in the SAME barnyard.” I hope to see David’s brother Mark when I travel to Israel next month – we’re kind of part of the same extended family.
In ancient Israel, God entered into a covenant relationship with the nation – the covenant with Abraham was with him as the head of a family that was becoming a nation. His great-grandsons headed the 12 tribes of Israel. We are part of a religious tradition that says community is essential to the practice of faith. In the Presbyterian Church, although families may choose to have godparents, the congregation all serve as godparents to the baptized – in a few moments, we will all make promises to help nurture Evelyn, Lenna and Kaleb in faith. And nurturing people in faith is no small task – especially in churches that do not fall on the more conservative end of the theological array.
Sometimes people think that being part of a religious tradition that values diversity, and does not make strict doctrinal demands, makes Sunday School is less important. After all, we don’t insist that each person believes the same thing, so teaching the kids our faith isn’t so important, is it? Actually, it’s more important. If you are part of a strict tradition, you only need to teach those ideas. We are part of a religiously tolerant tradition, so we need to teach our children how to think theologically, how to thoughtfully discern how our faith impacts our ethics and our behavior, how to avoid simplistic formulations, how to engage in complexity within theology. When we believe that there are grey areas, we don’t just memorize the rules, we learn how to discern – that’s more complicated. We’re not just raising believers – we’re raising theologians.
So the commitment we each make to raising people of the church in faith, to nurturing them and teaching them is a big deal. When we offer our children to be baptized, we are acknowledging that they are God’s and that we are God’s, that we belong to more than ourselves.
Abraham understood that about Isaac – he understood that Isaac was not just his little boy, but was God’s child. And in the story we read this morning about when the Lord tested Abraham by asking him to sacrifice Isaac – a story that is painful to most of us, and not a classic Mother’s Day text – in this story we see that Abraham trusted God, and relied on God as he would parent Isaac. Now most of you have heard me say that one of the first questions we need to ask when reading the Bible is: what did this story say to the original hearers of it? Many scholars believe that this story was a progressive story – one that was teaching people that child sacrifice was wrong, and revealing that the God of Israel would not ask for children to be sacrificed. What might God be pushing us to understand about our children in our era?
It’s always a struggle for parents to understand that our children are not really our own. They truly are God’s and we have the immense joy, and privilege, and awesome responsibility of raising God’s children. Anyone who knows me knows how much pleasure I have in being a mother to our three sons, and that I do not come to this position out of any lack of attachment to my own family or to my role as a mother. Indeed, it has been largely through my experiences as a mother that I have come to understand that my sons are God’s before they are mine. When we bring our children for baptism, we are recognizing that they, and we, are part of a larger reality with God at the center.
Perhaps that the challenge for us in our era. We have been living in a culture and at a time when individualism and independence have been prized above commonality and interdependence. Even during the wars that our country has been fighting for seven years, there has been no call for shared sacrifice. But we as a country, and as a people of faith, have our roots in a different tradition – a tradition that speaks of the common good, public responsibilities, sharing the work…and the challenges, and the joy. A tradition of community.
But there is more to this than our connections to one another. It is also about how we relate to God. Another dimension of our era is a sense of consumerism – in that for our time, the true meaning of most things and relationships seems to be what we get out of them for ourselves. And so we tend to think about our relationship with God as being about what it does for us: inner peace, or eternal life – this reduces God to a product we consume…for our own benefit, for what we get out of the relationship. It doesn’t really take seriously the idea of God as, well…God.
Some of this has to do with our view of reality – do we really believe that the universe has at its center a loving force that is the source and organizing principle of life? Do we really believe in God as that reality – the source and substance of all life?
Even if we’re uncomfortable with the classic language of Lord, or Ruler of the Universe – if we believe that there is at the heart of the universe a guiding force and that this force is love and that all life has love as its origin and meaning – then won’t we want to organize our lives around that force? Don’t we want to align our lives with what that which is truest, that which tends for the good of all life? And so, we acknowledge that this life force, this power of love is what is truest in ourselves, and our children as well. And so we choose to serve God.
Jesus said, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers? Those who do the will of my Father are my mother and brothers.” As we seek to serve God, to align ourselves with what is truest in life, we find ourselves connected to Love and to one another. And when we give ourselves to the reality of that Love and those connections, our lives become larger, our families become stronger, our church becomes more vibrant, our children find themselves loved by a community – they and we learn who we are and whose we are, and the love that is at the heart of life becomes more visible in all our lives. This is the Kingdom of God, we are the family of God. So Happy Mother's Day to everyone here -- being part of God's family, we are all part of mothering...and fathering every child, and each person, who is here. Amen.