One Global, Holy Family

Hebrews 1:1-3; 2:5-12; Mark 10:2-16

We are the world.  Christians celebrate our global kinship today, Communion Sunday, as we gather at the Lord’s Table in every land and in hundreds of languages and dialects, spoken by faithful followers of Jesus worldwide, we give thanks for God’s sacrament of grace in bread and wine.  We are the world; we are a family.

 But our human kinship is not news. We intuit our connections, even as we celebrate the differences of culture and clan, with various hues or height or heritage.  We know that genetically, though we look unique, we are the same.  Science reminds us that we are one, related members of one world, relatives all, in one human family.

 The front pages of our papers this week reminded us of our unity this week.  One reminder was Ardi, short for “Adipithecus ramidus,” the newest fossil discovery in the human family tree.  She’s from Africa, and at 4.4 million years old, she’s 1.2 million years older than Lucy, who prior to this week was our oldest common ancestor yet discovered.  To me, Ardi isn’t a contradiction to Adam and Eve.  Rather, Ardi’s scientific truth echoes Eden’s faithful assertion.  Either way you look at it, we have a common ancestor.  There’s more that unites than divides us:  We are a family.  (“Predating Lucy, Fossil Skeleton Pushes Back Human Ancestry,” The New York Times, Friday, October 2, 2009, page 1.)

 Or fast forward to another reminder of our common human bond:  our hearts are broken with the people of Indonesia who dig through rubble piled by the earthquake in a frantic search for children in a collapsed school building.  As the death toll for the earthquake and the tsunami mounts into the thousands, our common sadness reminds us that we are bound in the kinship of death, at least.  And hope.  And faith.  When tragedy strikes, ours is a small world.  We are one.  Our humanity is our bond.  We are a family.  (“Rescuers Dig by Hand After Indonesia Quake, The New York Times, Friday, October 2, 2009, page 1.)

 Jesus understands the strength of human connection.  Tested by several detractors to prove his commitment to the Jewish tradition, Jesus is asked about divorce. The question itself is a lesson: familial relations have been a challenge for millennia.  Jesus gives a conservative answer, in a way.  And his answer reminds both his questioners and his listeners, including us, that at the most basic level, a family of two built on their common sexual bond remains a strong and lasting commitment. There will always be good reasons for divorce, but the break is never either easy or painless.  Years ago my counseling supervisor repeatedly quoted Virginia Satir, the founder of the “family therapy” model, who said, “There is no such thing as divorce.”  According to Satir family, once formed, is an impossible unit to break.  Sometimes the bond holding it together is broken, but this never happens lightly. And divorce never happens without pain.  Why?  Because we humans depend on our families, because we know we are all one family together.

 Jesus other teaching in today’s lesson, the one about accepting children, is similar, I think.  We value children in our culture, but we’ve done so for only relatively short span.  Two hundred years ago, European children were as little valued in their day as Roman children were devalued in Jesus’ day.  When Jesus encourages his followers to accept children he is, in effect, reminding all who seek his guidance to accept everyone – including the least valued, the most difficult, the most annoying, the ones with the least to offer our frail community that we later came to call church. 

 We are family, all of us.  All of us are welcome in Christ’s inner circle.  Welcome there, even if we are welcomed nowhere else. Children or adults; sane or wounded; beggars or kings; shamed or proud; gay or straight; African or Asian or European or Hispanic or the original and native Americans: each of us alone is precious to God; and all of us together are welcomed by a loving Christ.

 The writer addressing the Hebrews wrote reminding them of this truth.  “For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified,” he says, “all have one Father.  For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them [that is, us], brothers and sisters…. (Hebrews 2:11, New Revised Standard Version.)

 There you have it.  The point of our worship today, the point of our worship, and the core of our faith:  We are brothers and sisters, together.  We are a family. No matter what we look like, how our clothes are similar or different, what our languages have in common or what makes our languages distinct.  We are a human family, but God’s good grace.  Scientifically, you might say that we’re all related to Lucy and Ardi, our African ancestors. Mathematically, we are one, or we are nothing.  Or you might make the affirmation theologically: quite simply, we are all of us, the children of God.  We are family; we are God’s family. 

 So today we celebrate our unity in our diversity.  Today, of all days, we sing songs written at the Taizé community in France by people of many tongues.  We sing and we pray, and if we listen with our hearts, we can almost hear the whispers of those various languages echoing across the world.  Today, we are one family. And here’s the final and best truth:  We who are one family today will be one family forever.  The table we share is a mere reminder of the feast our Lord has prepared for us to share eternally.

 Because we are one family.  That is our heritage and our hope.  Come to the feast, prepared for us by our Lord, for each one of us, a member of his holy family.  Amen.

Mamaroneck United Methodist, October 4, 2009. SEQ CHAPTER \h \r 1

Amen.