Sermon “Let the Adventure Begin” Family 101
Ephesians 4:1-16
Sept 13, 2015
What is important in your life? If you had to lose one thing from your life what would that one
thing be? To a lot of us here this morning, family is a very important and valuable part of our life and
our being. There is the saying, “blood may be thicker than water” and we hear that time and again.
As we begin our adventure this morning into our blood family, I also want to take us further in the
concept of family and help us to grow in our family of faith. To expand on the saying, “blood is thicker
than water, but when the blood belongs to Jesus, all who follow him are kin (or family)”.
As we have learned about ourselves and our DNA through scientific advances we have also
found that we’re more closely related to one another than we once used to believe. That could be a
good thing or a bad thing. Over the past decade or longer our older son, Nick has spent time studying
the genealogy of the Gronseth family. His curiosity has revealed a long line of Gronseths, in fact all
the way back to the 15th century. With the advent of Facebook, I now have contact with relatives in
Norway and also have found out that there are relations all around the world that share in genetic
relation with myself and my father’s family.
Now that we have determined the many different lines of my family there is that desire to
connect with all of these folk. Once upon a time, there was a closeness to family. In today’s mobile
society though, there is less and less a chance of contact on a regular basis. Many of the Gronseth
family tree live in a lot of different places in the world and live lives completely separate from each
other branch of the tree. I suspect that there are many here this morning that are experiencing the
same “spread-outness”?
My father was the oldest in his family and was blessed with two younger sisters. I have three
younger brothers. I grew up in a very close-knit family. As the first born son, I enjoyed many
gatherings with both sets of grandparents. My early year summers were spent with my cousins on my
mother’s side of the family. We had three months each summer to be together. My cousins are now
spread around the country and for the most part a lot of them I seldom see on a regular basis.
Interestingly enough, I do have one first cousin who lives right here in Breckenridge, but that is often
the exception to the rule in familial relationships.
So while genes are important, they are no guarantee that people sharing genes will be sharing
much of anything else. Still, while you might not have much feeling for a cousin who lives on the
other side of the country, if she’s your cousin, she’s your cousin. She’s family, and it’s that perception
more than the blood connection that will provide a sense of kinship.
One more thing about family: when our children marry, then begin a new generation of family.
Suddenly our family has grown and marriage is to blame (or honor) for the new family. Marriage is
making a comeback. Yes, according to the latest study of millennials (people born between 1980 and
2000) are increasingly tying the knot and having children in wedlock. As recently as 2010 over 50
percent of children born to millennials were born to unmarried parents. But this year 59 percent of
children born to millennials will be to married parents.
Today we begin an adventure in family: To speak of the church as the family of God is a
powerful metaphor. The family of God is populated by people who share the same spiritual DNA, but
let’s face it, the church is composed of people who — spiritual DNA aside — do not share the same
genes but share the same grace!
What the authors of Family 101 share in the progression of the Church-Family model appears
on the wall:
 Individual believers
 Marriage – a picture of Christ and the church
 Each family unit is in a sense the church in miniature
 Each local church – the household of God
We are family!
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The strongest ties of kinship are normally between those who have grown up in the same
household and were cared for by the same parents. In that regard, groups and coalitions that wish to
be cohesive don’t have the advantage of having had all their members grow up together. But they can
co-opt family feelings by doing the things that coalitions do to foster feelings of kinship:
• eating together, having communal meals;
• using kinship metaphors, such as referring to members of the coalition as brethren or
brothers and sisters;
• telling people that they’re all descended from the same patriarch or primeval couple, that
they’re connected to a specific land, that they hold in common a specific story or that they all came
into being by the same creative act.
As we read the epistle text for today, we see that the apostle Paul is doing something similar in
describing what the church is intended to be: “I ... beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which
you have been called ... making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one
faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”
On other occasions, when writing to the Galatians, Paul even used the word “family”
(“household” in the Greek) to refer to the church: “So then, whenever we have the opportunity, let us
work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith” (Galatians 6:10).
Elsewhere, Paul refers to the other things that make for kinship through the church: the
church’s common meal — communion (1 Corinthians 11:23-34); Abraham as the spiritual ancestor of
all Christians (Romans 4:11); the fact that all who are “in Christ” are “a new creation” (2 Corinthians
5:17). What’s more, Paul frequently uses family terminology, calling his readers “brethren” or
“brothers and sisters” (e.g.: 2 Corinthians 13:11; Galatians 1:11; Philippians 3:1). And, of course, all
Christians hold the story of Jesus in common.
Paul was singing “We Are Family” long before Sister Sledge (I know, I’m showing my age). In
their 1979 dance hit, composed by Bernard Edwards and Nile Rodgers, the four sisters sing:
We are family.
I got all my sisters with me.
We are family.
Get up, everybody, and sing ….
There’s no question that Paul believed there should be a kinship among Jesus’ followers that
goes beyond blood relationship. We can “get up … and sing” about that. Jesus did, too. He said, “For
whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
But certainly Paul would object to the common practices and teachings of Christianity being described
as ways of tricking the brain into perceiving the coalition — in this case, the church — as kin. Paul
knew that God’s desire all along was that everyone would become part of his family. That’s why, in his
letter to the Ephesians, Paul says, “[God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus
Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will” (Ephesians 1:5).
So we may not have the genes — in any ontological sense; but we have the grace. Paul says
“destined us.” God made each of us to be part of his family — not because we have the same genes, or
bloodline, but because we have the same grace or blessing. Get up, everybody, and sing ….
We have a lot of ideas about our family and our faith family to this point. However, there are
still those in your family that no doubt you don’t always want to claim. In addition, there are those in
your family that you may differ on politics, religion, behavior, values or just about anything else. Like
this kid who goes to his first day of school. The first-grader hands his teacher a note from his mother.
The note reads, “The opinions expressed by this child are not necessarily those of his parents.”
Yet healthy families, even though the opinions expressed by one member may not be those of
another family member, understand that any one member will come to the aid of another when
needed. Families that are functional often will not have uniformity but will have an underlying
unity. Families that are functional will have differences but not division. In families that are
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functional, members can count on each other not for agreement but to be there when someone needs
help or support.
In calling the church the family of faith, Paul set a goal for followers of Jesus, as they function
in congregations, to be the people who are there for one another. And Christ makes that possible. In
the old novel The Big Fisherman, a character named Voldi says of Jesus, “The man has a compelling
personality. I can’t describe it or the effect of it. It’s a unifying voice that converts a great crowd of
mutually distrustful strangers into a tight little group of blood relatives.”
We cannot expect uniformity in the church any more than we can expect uniformity among
family members. But we should aim at being the people who are still there when one of us is in pain
or need.
“Snowflakes are frail, but if enough of them get together they can stop traffic.”1
Kinship is a critical component of this life of ours, but it’s something larger than a genetic
connection. I spent four years in music ministry at St. Dysmas Lutheran in Sioux Falls, SD at the state
penitentiary. While there I got to know a couple of the men quite well. Their family and church
family had disowned them. Instead of being angry or focusing on the family ties that were severed,
they instead focused on the one family they had left--the family that meets on a regular basis on
Thursday evenings. Yes the church is their family, a bond made stronger by the love of Christ. I was
blessed to call them friend, even though most of society wanted nothing to do with them (and didn’t
have to) because they were safely locked up behind bars. We had very little in common, yet as fellow
believers we had the bond of Christ holding us together. , “the fact that we have both embraced Christ
as brother and God as Father makes us, indeed, brothers in Christ.”
So on some levels, genes matter. We embrace Christ as our brother, and God as our
Father/Parent, and the mystery of our faith is that we’re given a divine nature to live and behave as
the children of God that we are (John 1:11-12; Romans 6-8).
We have the genes; we have the grace.
Over the next three months, we will focus on family. To do this we will take a look at the “one
another” injunctions that are found in God’s Word. These eight studies will focus on:
 Serving one another
 Forgiving one another
 Honoring one another
 Praying for one another
 Loving one another
 Encouraging one another
 Building up one another
 Being devoted to one another.
In what I have shared this morning I want to say that it is based on God’s ideal. However, we
know that 100 percent of all family units do not represent the ideal—just as 100 percent of all
churches do not represent the ideal. We will not be totally like Christ until we are all ultimately
transformed into the image of Jesus Christ when He comes again. It is also important to understand
that biblical concepts apply to single parent families (such as Lydia’s in Philippi), mixed marriages
(such as Timothy’s mother who was married to a pagan, Acts 16:1), as well as other dysfunctional
situations.
As we begin the adventure of Family 101, I encourage each of you in whatever your family
situation is today to join me in a weekly study that follows along with each week’s sermon topic by
joining the Sunday evening study which will begin next week, Sunday, September 20th at 6:00 p.m.
here at the church. Study books are available today for your purchase at a cost of $15.00 each. Please
note also that they are published in two formats: one for men and one for women, clearly marked on
the cover of the text.
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—Vance Havner.
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