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"We Are Family" At Annual Conference a few weeks ago, I was asked many times how I was liking Dodge City. I assured them I feel very much at home. I took the opportunity to give some “public” thanksgivings for this church and the people here, and the great work of God in our midst. It’s good to be a part of this family. Summer is a time for many of us to spend time with our families, even travel to see extended family, perhaps attend a family reunion. Have you ever thought how worship is something like going to a family reunion? When we go to a family reunion, there is a time where everyone begins gathering at the appointed time. Depending on the size of the family and the frequency of the gathering, there might even be a place where you sign in and pick up a nametag. Sure, there’s something familiar about that woman and her son standing over in the corner, but you can’t quite remember her name. Name tags can be helpful for larger families, extended families. People usually don’t all come at once, either. They straggle in, this branch of the family here, and another branch there. It’s noisy, usually as a family gathers. The delightful, high pitched welcomes when those who haven’t seen each other for a while first catch sight of one another. The calling out across the room. The “checking in” that occurs. “Uncle Bob, good to see you. Where’s Aunt Helen?” “Hey Joe, what did you do to your leg? It is getting better?” Well, just watch this family here gather. As we check in, visit with those we haven’t seen for a week, maybe more, and find our way into the group to take our place. Sort of like a family reunion. After we’ve gathered, we have a ritual, a way of sort of beginning things. Here, I make some announcements, do some housekeeping, make sure everyone understands what is happening. I don’t know about you, but the same thing happens at the family reunions I’ve been to. Many family reunions have a roll call, a way of identifying the clan or family branch to which you belong. Then, there will be a host or hostess, someone in charge who tells about the facilities, meal times, activities or side trips that people can make. I’ve noticed that most family reunions have a table or place where archives are displayed. Photos and letters from long lost ancestors. Family histories. Items that help those who have gathered connect with those who have gone before them, long, long ago. In worship, we also turn to our sacred family history. We read from the ancient letters of our forbears. We read and connect with those who have lived as people of faith and who have prepared the way for us here today. I’ve been to several family reunions where someone will even have a member of the family read a bit of the family history aloud to the group, or better yet, stand up and tell a story or two that helps bring the family history to life again. The best reunions are the ones when an ancient member of the family re-tells the stories so that the older ones gathered can reminisce and the younger ones can learn. And what do they learn. They learn something about who they are, and where they came from. They learn what the family name means. The younger ones, and the in-laws and the significant partners new to the family might not always appreciate the history—might not even pay much attention to it at times, but its important, its good for them to hear it, or at least know that others are hearing it, and that it has great meaning and importance for members of this family. Then comes the best part of any family reunion. You know what I’m talking about? The table is spread and the food is laid out. I love family reunion potlucks the best. There is a movement in this good land to cater family get-to-gethers, or to buy a mass quantity of potato salad and slivered ham and let everyone make a sandwich. No...we must resist every attempt to make this the norm. Return us to the gatherings where people bring their delicious offerings, and place them to be served to the rest of the clan. Make sure that Aunt Betty goes to all the trouble of making the dish she’s famous for...the dish everyone expects her to make because, after all, she’s been making it for years—this dish, the dish they’ll talk about at her funeral. Bring it, and put it on the table, so that people will dip from it, and exclaim with wide eyes, “Aunt Betty brought the rhubarb crunch again!” And some will have to take up the reins, they will be expected to prepare the family dish, the dish Grandma Jane was once made each reunion, but is no longer able to, or the dessert Great Aunt Curly, and what was Aunt Curly’s real name anyway, the dessert Great Aunt Curly always made, though she’s long gone now.... Someone new will have to pick up the torch. Must prepare the dish with exacting recipe…it must be done! It must be done so that this meal becomes the meal of remembrance. The family eats and remembers, and understands.... their place in the family is sealed in the eating and the drinking and the remembering. Especially remembering the saints who are with us no more. Eating Grandma Jane’s noodles, even though they are not Grandma Jane’s noodles this year but Cousin Jeanie’s, yet somehow, they are. Is it not like our own gathering at the table, here in this family? In God’s family? We who eat and drink and…remember. We who are constituted into the body of Jesus as we eat and drink. The bread, the cup, the table, these all take on significance far, far greater than the elements themselves. A bit of bread, a sip of juice, but that is not what is on our minds and in our hearts. We are the family who eats in remembrance. And after the meal, after the reunion has gone on long enough, there is a sending out. “Take care,” “keep in touch.” “Send us those pictures you promised.” “If you’re ever down our way, stop in.” And the family begins to depart. Knowing they will gather again, of course. But also knowing, that the next time, there could very well be some who will not be there, and there will no doubt be new additions to the family, babies, brides, tall boys who look all too uncomfortable and talk to no one except the young women who bring them. And so too, we are sent forth. With well wishes. A blessing. And the knowledge that we will gather again, but that when we do, it will be different, somehow. There will be new members at the table. And some of our dear, favorite ones will be gone, carried forever in our hearts. Worship is the reunion of God’s family. It’s our way of finding our self, of seeing our self in the context of the whole. We are family. We are God’s family. We are, here, the children of God. John got it right, I think, in referring to those in the early Christian church as little children, with God as the parent of the family. We who love our parents, as well as we who have great difficulty loving our parents, can come together to give thanks for the parental nature of our God, and our place in the family that God has been fashioning and gathering for thousands and thousands of years. It’s good to have family. It’s good to find a home in which you “belong.” Antoine Fisher grew up in foster home after foster home, suffering abuse, neglect and what he calls “mind-numbing despair.” His father had died before he was born, and his mother was unable to care for him. He grew up not knowing them or anything about them other than their names. At 16, his foster mother kicked him out of the house, and Antoine raised himself, committing himself to becoming a good man, husband, father. But an emptiness continued to haunt him as he wondered about his family. A hole in Antoine’s heart that he thought would never heal. Living in Los Angeles, California, Antoine worked as a security guard at Sony Pictures Entertainment. He spent his free time trying to make contact with someone who might have once known or been related to his father or mother. One evening, making random phone calls to names with the same last name as his father’s from the Cleveland telephone book, Antoine dialed the home of Annette Elkins. “I’m looking for he family of an Edward Elkins,” he told her. “I was wondering if might have a relative by that name.” “I have a brother by that name,” the woman said. “But he’s been dead a long time.” She paused. “Who is this?” Softly, Antoine told her his name, and then said, “I....I think I’m his son.” Another stretch of silence followed. Finally she said, “Well if you are Edward’s son, then you’d better come home, ‘cause you have a whole lot of family here.” It turned out Antoine did have a whole lot of family in Cleveland. Aunts, Uncles, stepsisters, cousins. While he and his wife and daughter lived in L.A., they found their home in Cleveland, with those that welcomed him and recognized him as one of their own. A film a couple of years ago came out about Antoine’s life, directed by and starring Denzel Washington. It’s a movie about the story of a young man who had no family, who finds that he has a home with a “whole lot of family.” Church, the family of God is an inclusive one. There are folks who do not know the love and welcome of being adopted into a family. I would like to be able to tell anyone who might be lonely, anyone who might feel neglected, anyone who might not believe they have a soul in the world who loves them, I’d like to be able to tell them all, “you’ve got a whole lot of family here.” A family who will love you. A family who will welcome you. A family who will adopt you and recognize you as one of our own. The family of God. Brothers and Sisters united in Jesus Christ. You who have found a home here, who have found family here....it’s time to reach out our arms and embrace the many in our community, those where we work, those in our own biological families, those we know in club, those we see every day...it’s time to reach out to let them know, “they have a whole lot of family here.” For God’s family always has more room at the table. And from where I stand, we have quite a bit of room right here in the pews. Invite ‘em in. Bring ‘em home to meet the family. Who knows, they might just feel at home and stay!
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