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Address:First Baptist Church, Ashland
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Sermon for Sunday, May 4, 2008
“Family Matters: A Hopeful Mess?”
Genesis 25:19-34
For the next couple of weeks I want to spend some time talking about family matters. The word “matters” can be used in at least two different ways, i.e., issues, matters, points of discussion. The other way is that family does matter. Family life makes a difference so we will spend this sermon time and the next few weeks talking about family matters.
Whenever I am tempted to talk about family, I sometimes think that the Thompson family has had opportunities periodically to win the “Dysfunctional Family Award” and then I read the heartwarming letter from a mother to her son:
Dear Son: I’m writing this slow cause I know you can’t read fast. We don’t live where we did when you left. Your Dad read in the paper where most accidents happen twenty miles of home so we moved. Our new house has a washing machine, but it isn’t working too good. Last week I put 14 shirts in it, pulled the chain, and I haven’t seen the shirts since. Your sister, Mary, had a baby this morning. I haven’t found out if it’s a boy or a girl, so I don’t know if you are an aunt or an uncle. Your uncle Dick drowned last week in a vat of whiskey. Some men tried to pull him out, but he fought them off bravely. We cremated his body and it took three days to put out the fire. I went to the doctor on Thursday and your father came with me. The doctor put a tube in my mouth and told me not to open it for ten minutes. Your father offered to buy it from him. We had a letter yesterday from the undertaker. He said if the last installment wasn’t pain on grandma’s funeral bill in seven day, up she comes. Your loving mother. P.S. I was going to sent you $10 but I had already sealed the letter.
Makes me feel better.
But if the researchers are right, it’s not just my family that struggles. Apparently families all over America are struggling with all manner of messes and challenges. In the 2000 census some of the following stats were reported:
*For women between ages 15 and 44, domestic violence is the leading cause of injury. The church is not immune – one in six women in church are being verbally abused at home and 30% of those are being physically abused.
*More than a quarter of American children do not live with their fathers.
* Almost one in three children born in the US is the child of an unwed mother.
Those are just a few of the statistics in that report. American families are complex and that complexity affects the church, our church. We have in our congregation every kind of family you can imagine. It is a challenge to do family ministry well when we may think mom, dad, brother, sister, dog and cat and that isn’t the way it is. Ministry has to be broader than that scenario.
Why is it important that we talk about family matters? Because family is where life starts for us.
Jarrett Stevens writes: “Whatever your definition of family…it is the central building block of our relational world. What we learned in our families we carry with us throughout life…how your family handled love, responsibility, independence, guilt, physical affection, finances, punishment, trust…” (Jarrett Stevens, “Relationships: Family, Part 1” Willow Creek Product) All that affects how we choose our friends, how we do friendship, who we are attracted to, and who we date and marry. I tell couples that are planning to be married that they are bringing everything for generations into their relationship. Family life is where our greatest joys and our greatest sorrows are experienced. In James McDonald’s book “Seven Words to Change Your Family,” he says, “Family pain is the injury that hits hardest, hurts the most and lingers longest.” There is no pain like family pain.
The stakes are high when it comes to making our families stronger. For us as Christians we need to turn to the scriptures and find that biblical word that can help us not lose hope about our families and even the families in our country. What does the scripture say? (BTW this sermon won’t say it all nor will it have all the answers you may be looking for today.)
For starters, the Bible reveals to us that dysfunctional families are nothing new. The scripture from Genesis is just one portion of a dysfunctional family. It is just the beginning story of a family life that dealt with lying, deception, greed, conflict and that is just a partial list of what we find in the family of Isaac. They were not a “Leave It to Beaver” kind of family. I often wonder if any of us really are? This biblical family is just one example. Read the story of Noah and his family. Then there was Eli, a priest in the temple of God and his two sons were thieves stealing money from the offering plate. And we certainly don’t want to forget King David. His family life was a mess…adultery, out of control children, murder. The Bible is filled with dysfunctional families.
Family messes are nothing new because sin is nothing new. We can read all about it from sociologists and psychologists who write about all the complicated dynamics that contribute to the breakdown and that is right. We live in a complicated world. But I believe that when you begin to really break it down, it goes back to that biblical word --- sin. Biblically it started with Adam and Eve and we see it in Isaac’s family. And sin is still breaking down our families.
And even with families in a mess…there is hope for our family messes --- if we want it to be. Sin is a constant in our lives, but so is God and He will have the last word.
The good news for us who live messy and complex lives is that we have a God who is willing to get mixed up in our painful everyday affairs of human life. If you continued to read the story of Isaac’s family, you will learn that God was right there in the midst of their family life and working in those relationships.
This is the good news of the Bible. It is the story of a God who wants to come down right in the midst of our dysfunctional families full of wounds and bickering and heartbreak and silence and wants to work to bring about healing. If we allow Him God can do something marvelous and life changing with the messes we have made in our lives as individuals and as families.
I believe in family therapy and marriage counseling, but I believe that ultimate hope comes from the God who made heaven and earth and who comes to us with words of hope for our families. God wants to be in the midst of our messes helping us to bring hope and love out of those messes. We’ll talk about that in the weeks to come.
When Jesus came to have his last meal, he sat around a Table with another dysfunctional family, his disciples, those who had their own messes and he offered them hope. This same Lord offers us the same gift and invites us to bring all of our messes, our brokenness, our wounds to Table and lets us know there is a place for us as well. Won’t you come?
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