Creating Family
Sermon
Hope For The Weary Heart
Second Lesson Sermons For Lent/Easter Cycle C
The issue was one of survival. Under the Belknap Bridge Viaduct of "Cowtown" in the early 1930s small clapboard houses found their niche sandwiched among the railroad tracks. It was low income, rental housing that served both the workers on the Cotton Belt and Rock Island Lines (for Ft. Worth in those days was not only a cattle trading center; it was also a major railroad town) as well as providing homes for what we now call "the underclass."
One of those was a woman older than her 27 years, mother to four children, wife to a besotten woman chaser. In the late afternoon sun, walking home from work at the nearby factory, she did not see the switching mesh clearly, stumbled, and lodged her foot in the vortex of the tracks. It was the wrong time and place. She was no match for the oncoming locomotive, and she died at the scene. She didn't survive, but her children did, only because her younger sister, not yet married but on the threshold of engagement, took custody of the children, delayed her own marriage for almost ten years, rearing the children until the oldest could assume that responsibility. It was an act of self-giving, self-sacrificing love that created family where none really was.
Now, in your mind's eye, fast-forward the scene. It's still in Cowtown, but now the holding pens on the Northside are almost all gone, and Swift and Co. has already pulled out, with the Armour Packing operation soon to shut its doors. What remains, however, is the issue of survival. The woman who was "mom" to the four children in 1932 is now twenty years older, with two children of her own. It's 5 a.m., and she is struggling to get up, still weary from her moonlighting job selling beer and hot dogs at the Northside Arena, where bull riding was the main event. Knowing that five hours of sleep isn't enough for anyone, she also knows that the bus to her day job comes at 6 a.m., and she needs to be ready. There is a reason: the children need to eat; the rent needs to be paid. So she goes and comes, and this goes on for almost as long as anyone can remember until her two sons can start working themselves and their mother can give up the evening job, knowing that she did it; they survived as a family. How? Because of self-giving, self-sacrificing love; it created family and enabled it to survive.
It is a matter of survival. On this day, in this place we call home, and in homes throughout our nation, it is a matter of survival for families. In far too many homes the threat to authentic family is poverty and all the deprivation that goes with it -- the lack of adequate nutrition, the environment of defeat and despair, sub-standard educational opportunities, the threat of violence, and the ever-present temptation of drugs as the means of escaping it all; these all create an issue of survival for families mired in poverty. But poverty and the war-zone neighborhoods it creates are not the only threat; survival of authentic family life transcends the poverty line; it is more complex than just poverty and environment. It has to do with work and wealth taking the place of time with each other, with schedules that never allow any time for sharing intimacy. It has to do with parents not parenting, with television being the babysitter, with books and music, museums and theater being unknown relics of the past. It has to do with the disappearance of faith being practiced in the home and reinforced in the community of faith. It has to do with all of this and more, and these are powerful forces ripping at the fabric of family life, forces which are calling into serious question the survival of family. And I do not mean family as some would focus on it; I mean family in all of its diversity: single parent families, mom and dad and two-children families, families where grandparents are the parents, once-married and never-married families, and all the rest. You know the threat to the survival of authentic family. You live with it constantly in your own family. You and I also know why meeting and overcoming the threats to family is so important. Survival of family life is not just so card companies and floral shops and restaurants can have a big day on Mother's Day. No, authentic family life is so important because it is where life is both created and nurtured. It's where self-esteem and personal worth are discovered. It is the place of support and love and growth. It is the arena where learning and faith happens and real values are inculcated. It is the place where we learn how to love with compassion and caring, and to survive in every sense of the word. We do not have to be sociologists or psychologists -- even Christian psychologists! -- to know this. We know it because we are living it; we are trying to survive it.
Today, Scripture is inviting us to know something else, something essential in our struggle to create family and ensure its survival. There is a way to do this, and Scripture can show us how. The way is immersed and wrapped up in this scene of cosmic survival, pictured for us by John the Elder. John says that he sees: he sees a time when all that is destructive to life will vanish, and in its place will be perfect wholeness and peace, a new heaven, a new earth. But John sees more than this. He sees the reason for a new heaven, a new earth, a time of healing and wholeness for the entire created order. The reason is the absolute victory of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. And seeing all of this, John knows that his vision is not just a vision of a "might be future," it is also a vision of a "can be present." As is the case in the entire structure of Revelation, so it is in today's text: John sees not only what shall be, growing out of what has been, but he especially sees what is. This is because John's understanding of time in the arena of God's action does not flow in a linear fashion of past, present, and future, but it is spiral, moving back and forth, up and down, all held together in one pregnant moment. And the moment comes when God comes in the presence of Christ's all victorious self-giving, self-sacrificing love.
Now we see it, don't we? The dwelling of God is with persons when love happens; when love happens, new heavens and a new earth are created; when love happens, healing and wholeness do come -- and it is all an ever present possibility, because the end is not an event; it is a person! Do you remember the words of the One on the throne? -- "I am making all things new, for I am the beginning and the end." That is to say, "I" (not an event). "I am the source of all life, all meaning in its never-ending possibility."
Hear with hope and joy the words from the One who sits on the throne! God's Good News for us today is that in our time and place, in our very real "now," God can be the source of new possibilities, the ending of fractured family, and the beginning of new, authentic family. As John says so powerfully, it happens as all new life and possibility happen: in self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Such love creates, re-creates, and marks us as a family, both in and out of the church. We know this in the truth of Jesus' own words which are repeated again and again in the Fourth Gospel, even as we read them in John 15:12, "Love one another, even as I have loved you," for it is by this love that a witness to the truth of God and the real possibilities of living in all relationships are made. So if you and I really want to make it happen here and now, and not in some distant, far-off future, this is how we do it: we, in our families, let loose the power that not only creates and recreates new heavens and a new earth, bringing healing and wholeness in the cosmic sense; we let loose the power of self-giving, self-sacrificing love that creates and re-creates the most important relationships God has given us, our relationships with those who are our family.
The answer we make to three questions holds the answer for us: The first one is, "Whose needs are being served by my choices and behavior?"; the second one is, "What expression of self-giving, self-sacrificing love really meets those needs?"; and the third one is, "How can I be an instrument of grace and reconciliation when the bond of love is fractured?" When we get the answers to these three questions right, family will be created!
It really begins with how we sort out and live out, "Whose needs are being served?" If you and I took that seriously in our families, think of the transformation we would see. The growth, nurture, and well-being of those with whom we share our lives would be the center of our action, not ourselves! It would re-create our life together! Of course, it is not always easy to know how to serve someone else's needs, and this is why we need the answer to the second question, "What expression of self-giving, self-sacrificing love really meets those needs?" You see, sometimes authentic love means making tough choices and setting limits; sometimes we really have to operate on the basis of needs, not "wants" -- and they aren't always the same. So we really need to think about expressing authentic love and living that out, not just doing what is easy or expedient.
So it is that the truth of living is not only that self-giving, self-sacrificing love creates family; it is also the truth that sometimes, in spite of our love, families fracture, the bond of love fractures. What do we do then? Then, we try to answer the third question, "How can I be an instrument of grace and reconciliation in this relationship?" And you see where this is headed, don't you? It takes you back to the first question ("Whose needs are being served?), which then moves you to the second ("What expression of love will meet those needs?"), which -- when it doesn't happen -- moves you to the third one about being an instrument of grace when the bond is broken. It is all wrapped up together in one pregnant moment of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. This is how it happens; this is how family is created and constantly re-created: It happens when authentic, self-giving, self-sacrificing love happens.
Will it always happen? Will love always come alive and fracture become healed and family created and re-created? Sadly, the answer to that question is, "No, not always; at least not this side of our ultimate end in God." As the Seer says, only God's love and the victory in God's love are sure things; even the heavens and the earth shall pass away; only God's love remains. So the survival of any family is always up for grabs. But this is no reason to give up! If we give up, we know for certain what happens: nothing! Grab this, then, on a scale far smaller than John's cosmic vision, but intensely personal and absolutely critical: when the issue is survival -- and it is, it really is -- the world may be in God's hands, but our family is in ours. Given the truth of it, which will you choose: to try and fail -- or, to fail at trying?
One of those was a woman older than her 27 years, mother to four children, wife to a besotten woman chaser. In the late afternoon sun, walking home from work at the nearby factory, she did not see the switching mesh clearly, stumbled, and lodged her foot in the vortex of the tracks. It was the wrong time and place. She was no match for the oncoming locomotive, and she died at the scene. She didn't survive, but her children did, only because her younger sister, not yet married but on the threshold of engagement, took custody of the children, delayed her own marriage for almost ten years, rearing the children until the oldest could assume that responsibility. It was an act of self-giving, self-sacrificing love that created family where none really was.
Now, in your mind's eye, fast-forward the scene. It's still in Cowtown, but now the holding pens on the Northside are almost all gone, and Swift and Co. has already pulled out, with the Armour Packing operation soon to shut its doors. What remains, however, is the issue of survival. The woman who was "mom" to the four children in 1932 is now twenty years older, with two children of her own. It's 5 a.m., and she is struggling to get up, still weary from her moonlighting job selling beer and hot dogs at the Northside Arena, where bull riding was the main event. Knowing that five hours of sleep isn't enough for anyone, she also knows that the bus to her day job comes at 6 a.m., and she needs to be ready. There is a reason: the children need to eat; the rent needs to be paid. So she goes and comes, and this goes on for almost as long as anyone can remember until her two sons can start working themselves and their mother can give up the evening job, knowing that she did it; they survived as a family. How? Because of self-giving, self-sacrificing love; it created family and enabled it to survive.
It is a matter of survival. On this day, in this place we call home, and in homes throughout our nation, it is a matter of survival for families. In far too many homes the threat to authentic family is poverty and all the deprivation that goes with it -- the lack of adequate nutrition, the environment of defeat and despair, sub-standard educational opportunities, the threat of violence, and the ever-present temptation of drugs as the means of escaping it all; these all create an issue of survival for families mired in poverty. But poverty and the war-zone neighborhoods it creates are not the only threat; survival of authentic family life transcends the poverty line; it is more complex than just poverty and environment. It has to do with work and wealth taking the place of time with each other, with schedules that never allow any time for sharing intimacy. It has to do with parents not parenting, with television being the babysitter, with books and music, museums and theater being unknown relics of the past. It has to do with the disappearance of faith being practiced in the home and reinforced in the community of faith. It has to do with all of this and more, and these are powerful forces ripping at the fabric of family life, forces which are calling into serious question the survival of family. And I do not mean family as some would focus on it; I mean family in all of its diversity: single parent families, mom and dad and two-children families, families where grandparents are the parents, once-married and never-married families, and all the rest. You know the threat to the survival of authentic family. You live with it constantly in your own family. You and I also know why meeting and overcoming the threats to family is so important. Survival of family life is not just so card companies and floral shops and restaurants can have a big day on Mother's Day. No, authentic family life is so important because it is where life is both created and nurtured. It's where self-esteem and personal worth are discovered. It is the place of support and love and growth. It is the arena where learning and faith happens and real values are inculcated. It is the place where we learn how to love with compassion and caring, and to survive in every sense of the word. We do not have to be sociologists or psychologists -- even Christian psychologists! -- to know this. We know it because we are living it; we are trying to survive it.
Today, Scripture is inviting us to know something else, something essential in our struggle to create family and ensure its survival. There is a way to do this, and Scripture can show us how. The way is immersed and wrapped up in this scene of cosmic survival, pictured for us by John the Elder. John says that he sees: he sees a time when all that is destructive to life will vanish, and in its place will be perfect wholeness and peace, a new heaven, a new earth. But John sees more than this. He sees the reason for a new heaven, a new earth, a time of healing and wholeness for the entire created order. The reason is the absolute victory of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. And seeing all of this, John knows that his vision is not just a vision of a "might be future," it is also a vision of a "can be present." As is the case in the entire structure of Revelation, so it is in today's text: John sees not only what shall be, growing out of what has been, but he especially sees what is. This is because John's understanding of time in the arena of God's action does not flow in a linear fashion of past, present, and future, but it is spiral, moving back and forth, up and down, all held together in one pregnant moment. And the moment comes when God comes in the presence of Christ's all victorious self-giving, self-sacrificing love.
Now we see it, don't we? The dwelling of God is with persons when love happens; when love happens, new heavens and a new earth are created; when love happens, healing and wholeness do come -- and it is all an ever present possibility, because the end is not an event; it is a person! Do you remember the words of the One on the throne? -- "I am making all things new, for I am the beginning and the end." That is to say, "I" (not an event). "I am the source of all life, all meaning in its never-ending possibility."
Hear with hope and joy the words from the One who sits on the throne! God's Good News for us today is that in our time and place, in our very real "now," God can be the source of new possibilities, the ending of fractured family, and the beginning of new, authentic family. As John says so powerfully, it happens as all new life and possibility happen: in self-giving, self-sacrificing love. Such love creates, re-creates, and marks us as a family, both in and out of the church. We know this in the truth of Jesus' own words which are repeated again and again in the Fourth Gospel, even as we read them in John 15:12, "Love one another, even as I have loved you," for it is by this love that a witness to the truth of God and the real possibilities of living in all relationships are made. So if you and I really want to make it happen here and now, and not in some distant, far-off future, this is how we do it: we, in our families, let loose the power that not only creates and recreates new heavens and a new earth, bringing healing and wholeness in the cosmic sense; we let loose the power of self-giving, self-sacrificing love that creates and re-creates the most important relationships God has given us, our relationships with those who are our family.
The answer we make to three questions holds the answer for us: The first one is, "Whose needs are being served by my choices and behavior?"; the second one is, "What expression of self-giving, self-sacrificing love really meets those needs?"; and the third one is, "How can I be an instrument of grace and reconciliation when the bond of love is fractured?" When we get the answers to these three questions right, family will be created!
It really begins with how we sort out and live out, "Whose needs are being served?" If you and I took that seriously in our families, think of the transformation we would see. The growth, nurture, and well-being of those with whom we share our lives would be the center of our action, not ourselves! It would re-create our life together! Of course, it is not always easy to know how to serve someone else's needs, and this is why we need the answer to the second question, "What expression of self-giving, self-sacrificing love really meets those needs?" You see, sometimes authentic love means making tough choices and setting limits; sometimes we really have to operate on the basis of needs, not "wants" -- and they aren't always the same. So we really need to think about expressing authentic love and living that out, not just doing what is easy or expedient.
So it is that the truth of living is not only that self-giving, self-sacrificing love creates family; it is also the truth that sometimes, in spite of our love, families fracture, the bond of love fractures. What do we do then? Then, we try to answer the third question, "How can I be an instrument of grace and reconciliation in this relationship?" And you see where this is headed, don't you? It takes you back to the first question ("Whose needs are being served?), which then moves you to the second ("What expression of love will meet those needs?"), which -- when it doesn't happen -- moves you to the third one about being an instrument of grace when the bond is broken. It is all wrapped up together in one pregnant moment of self-giving, self-sacrificing love. This is how it happens; this is how family is created and constantly re-created: It happens when authentic, self-giving, self-sacrificing love happens.
Will it always happen? Will love always come alive and fracture become healed and family created and re-created? Sadly, the answer to that question is, "No, not always; at least not this side of our ultimate end in God." As the Seer says, only God's love and the victory in God's love are sure things; even the heavens and the earth shall pass away; only God's love remains. So the survival of any family is always up for grabs. But this is no reason to give up! If we give up, we know for certain what happens: nothing! Grab this, then, on a scale far smaller than John's cosmic vision, but intensely personal and absolutely critical: when the issue is survival -- and it is, it really is -- the world may be in God's hands, but our family is in ours. Given the truth of it, which will you choose: to try and fail -- or, to fail at trying?
