"All in the Family"
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
First Sunday after Christmas – December 28, 2008
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[texts: Isaiah 63:7-9/Galatians 4:4-7/Matthew 2:13-23]

Am I dating myself when I talk about the show, “All in the Family”? Does anyone here remember it? It was, of course, a knock-off of a British show, but served as a trail blazer for American television in so many ways. It showed – for all of the dysfunction – what many experience family to be. Regardless of the yelling and the disagreements and all of the stuff – much of it experienced in the last few days – family is, well, family. It’s ours and I think we have to understand that the Scriptures are telling us something wonderfully important about family and what it means….especially given the world in which we live and some of the events we’ve heard about on the news.

As I studied these Scripture lessons I was struck at just how appropriate they are for the first Sunday after Christmas. These are readings that speak to us long after the radio has abruptly stopped playing Christmas music – and here it’s only the fourth day of Christmas! – and, for some, the tree is down, the extraneous relatives are gone, and the lights are off. These readings speak to us of another of God’s mysterious ways, the family, and how in family life there is the repeated cycle of beginning again. They speak to us of how we should take up our life together in a new and fresh way. Above all, they speak to us of God’s steadfast love and care for us, which is what allows us to fathom this mysterious way of God in being part of a larger family of faith and then walk the way of beginning again.

The way of beginning again is a recurring theme in the Scriptures. In fact, it is the dominant theme. The Exodus motif is woven throughout the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, which is quite consonant with the Biblical understanding of what it means to be human. Walter Brueggemann, contemporary Old Testament scholar, describes this understanding of humanity in his Theology of the Old Testament:

. . .the human person, as presented in Israel’s unsolicited testimony is commensurate with Yahweh:

-Yahweh is sovereign . . . the human person is summoned to obedience and deference.

-Yahweh is faithful . . . the human person is invited to freedom and initiative.

-Yahweh is covenantal in the enactment of sovereignty that claims and fidelity that authorizes . . . human persons are understood as Yahweh’s transactional partners who are endlessly engaged in obedience and freedom, in glad yielding to Yahweh’s sovereignty and in venturesome freedom from Yahweh’s fidelity. [p. 459]

Because the Creator God is so free and so faithful in dealing with us, we are to live in response to God's being and actions. The disciplines of being human, which provide the way for beginning again, are: Listening (obeying), Discernment in wisdom, and trusting completely. Thus, we can begin again and again when we listen for God’s voice, discern God’s presence, and trust completely in God’s love for us as we act.

Matthew picks up on this core theme of Exodus in describing the events following Jesus’ birth. Anyone at all familiar with the stories of the Old Testament will catch the parallels between what Jesus, Mary and Joseph go through in the "flight into Egypt." Each of the events, including the journey into Egypt, the slaughter of the "innocents," and the return to the Land of Promise is designed to show Jesus as a type of Moses and of Israel itself. In other words, Jesus embodies the "gracious deeds" and the "praiseworthy acts" of the Lord in his very person. What we see happening in the life and work of Jesus is the ‘recapitulation’ – to use the language of Irenaeus – or the re-gathering of fragmented humanity back together into life in God.

As Moses was the personal representative of God to the people in bondage and to Pharaoh, Jesus is the personal representative to all humanity. Moses will lead the people out of bondage and captivity through the waters of the Red Sea. Jesus will lead the people out of the bondage of self-centeredness and lack of purpose, from fear of death and fear of one another by way of the cross and resurrection.

The Fathers of the Church, its great teachers of the first eight centuries, saw these types, these parallels, and rhapsodized on the wonder of what God has done for us. I think few said it better than did Irenaeus, who said: "The Word of God, Jesus Christ, on account of His great love for humanity, became what we are in order to make us what He is Himself." The great Exodus that is brought to fulfillment here, as we journey out of ourselves and into God, thereby finding our truest self and restoring the image and likeness of God in which we were created. This is the point of the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, to show that God, in Christ, has fully identified with us where we are, as we are, and loves us. Because God has loved us in this manner, we are brought into the family of God and the mystery of being able to walk the way of beginning again.

I know what you’re thinking. I can hear it, "Bless his heart. He sits in that study reading all that stuff all week and then comes and unloads it for us. Such wonderful mystical stuff. What’s it got to do with anything?" Yes, it appears mystical, but it has to do with the way in which we live. Scholars of psychology and psychiatry tell us that one of our biggest problems, as human beings, is the lack of a proper sense of self. Our faith tells us that God has now given us a sense of self – in fact, he has share his own sense of self with us by becoming one with us – as Paul tells the church in Galatia, “In the fullness of time.” One need never doubt one’s worth or one’s own goodness, because God is the guarantor of it. Now we can live in peace and confidence. Once we have allowed this renewed sense of self to take root in us, we can walk the way of beginning again, reaching out in steadfast love, as God has done for us. In short, because of what God has done in Jesus, we are all of us, all in the family. God has chosen to identify with us and become one with us.

Practically, then, the way of beginning again calls us to an Exodus from narrow self-focus to focusing on others. It calls us to a sense of peace and confidence that allows us to embrace people who are different from us and accept them as they are, without requiring that they become like us. Spanish missionaries to this continent tried to make the native Americans into Spaniards before they taught them the Gospel. The French missioners learned the native languages and taught the Gospel in the images the people knew. History records the failure of the one approach and the success of the other, it’s the method we follow today. The way of being all in the family and that way of beginning again allows people to be what they are and seeks to love them there, that’s how God has loved us.

It seems appropriate that the church year celebrates the holy family on this first Sunday after Christmas. It is a reminder that the point of the incarnation was made clear in a context all of us know – the family. Whether that family is the traditional, or so-called nuclear, family or any permutation thereof doesn’t matter. What matters is knowing that there are those who love and care for us and that there is a place where we are accepted as we are, without condition. That is perhaps why Felix Adler said, “Whatever is great and good in the institutions and usages of mankind is an application of sentiments that have drawn their first nourishment from the soil of the family.” Or, as the old Jewish proverb goes, “Because God not be everywhere, that is why he made mothers.” The point is this; we need that place that grounds us and the ability to feel “at home” regardless. It’s like the story I heard about the USSR’s invasion of Czechoslovakia back in 1968. Someone asked a fellow in Prague, “Are the Russians your friends or your brothers?” He thought and said, “Brothers…you can choose your friends.”

The wonder is that God has chosen to be family with us and extends this to the church. The church is also a family. Just as the people of Israel entered into covenant relationship and became God’s people, related in a new way, so does the church. There is a reason why in some churches people address each other as ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’ It is because we are the children of God, and the Lord Jesus is our brother. The church as a family allows us to move beyond the mere understanding of church as institution; it is what allows us to sing “blessed be the tie the binds.” Because we do share our “mutual woes” and “our mutual burdens bear.” What is more this family is fully inclusive and draws everyone in, because all belong to the relationship that has drawn us into God’s love itself.

Several years ago we discovered that our already shrinking world was getting even smaller and every time we read the paper or turn on the television or radio it becomes still more apparent. If we are going to learn to live in a world of diverse cultures and religions, we have to be able to appreciate others and still hold fast to ourselves. The way being God’s family and through that of beginning again, the way of covenant humanity allows us to do this. I like what William Ellery Channing said, “The ties of family and of country were never intended to circumscribe the soul. If allowed to become exclusive, engrossing, clannish, so as to shut out the general claims of the human race, the highest end of Providence is frustrated, and home, instead of being the nursery, becomes the grave of the heart.” God wants us to be a family – and includes the whole human family.

God sets us on this way of family and of beginning again by demonstrating steadfast love and identifying with us, even in our suffering and death. The way of beginning again, the way of Exodus or pilgrimage is with us in the hope that we have that we can be renewed and different people. That we can change, grow and develop – as does all of nature – tells us that the way of beginning again is God’s own way.

We stand on the brink of another New Year with all of the fears, hopes, and risks that the journey of time holds for us. We can enter the year confident in God’s presence and continuing our journey into renewal, or we can sit by the wayside and watch. The old proverb says, "a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." The way of beginning again begins when we open ourselves to the possibility of change and growth. In short, we have to start somewhere, we have to listen, seek God, and respond, as Joseph did. Indeed, as have all the great figures of the Scriptures who have shown us the way of covenant humanity. We cannot make the journey unless we begin it.

I am reminded of a story I heard about a wise woman who was speaking with a group of children about faith. A soap maker tried to embarrass her by asking, "How can you claim that religion is good and valid when there is so much suffering in the world? What good are all the books and sermons that your religion has produced?" The woman pointed to a small child and said, "This is Eric. He is three. There is no running water in his house. He is dirty. What good is soap when Eric and hundreds of children like him are dirty? How can you pretend that soap is effective?" "What? That is a foolish question," the soap maker protested. "If soap is to be effective it must be used." "Precisely," the wise woman answered, "if the teachings of God are to be effective, they must be used."

Ultimately, it’s not just enough to talk about or to theorize about the journey of being God’s family, we have to make it. Long ago, God took the risk and took the way of entering our human family and offered us the way of beginning again for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Now the way lies open to all of us. My question to you on the cusp of this New Year is, shall we begin it? Because the fullness of time is here and we’re all in the family; the days, weeks and months ahead will chart our progress in becoming the family of God. What is simply most important is to set foot on the way and begin to be what we say we are – being the family of God. Because, dear ones, it’s all in the family, it’s all in the family.