All in the family
To most people, family matters. It’s where we learn – among other things – how to connect with the world, why some things are more important than others, and how to respond to the expectations of other people.
In the church, many times our families have been our strength. They have stuck together through adversity. They have held to their bearings in a sea of doubt. They have kept the faith.
Maybe that’s why, after a church service, it seems natural to many Lutherans to ask visitors, ‘Who are you? Which family is yours?’
Those with strong, healthy families and satisfying relationships may well be okay with this. Those with less happy families may find such inquiries less welcome, but at least it’s a way of fitting in. Those who have no family, or who feel hurt by family, can for years be uncomfortable with these well-meant questions.
There is another way to think of the church, and that’s as the family of God. God includes us in his family through the new birth of baptism in an example of pure grace. We belong because of the faith he gives us. We all receive the same Spirit, we all share Jesus as our brother. We voluntarily come together for family celebrations such as worship, holy communion, and Bible study.
Life in this kind of church family requires quite a shift in our attitude and behaviour. God is much more of a risk-taker than we are and freely lets sinners – even us – join the family! When we wander off into sin once again, God is patiently waiting to welcome us back.
God is much more of a risk-taker than we are and freely lets sinners – even us – join the family!
That’s the heart of the parable of the younger son and the waiting father in Luke 15 and the cause of the argument between the older son and his father. That argument is unresolved, because the son is less willing to love his erring brother than the father is.
This family of faith may also turn out to be so much more than we thought. Confessional Lutherans, used to a relatively small, well-defined church community, may feel challenged, just as Luther did during the Reformation when he found himself in a church different from the one he had known as a monk. Like Luther, we have to learn the language of the people, how to speak the gospel in a changing world and to sort the truth from the half-truths. It’s not that God has left us, nor that we have left him. We are simply challenged to relearn how to share God’s gift of Jesus Christ with the world in which he has placed us.
A former governor of New South Wales once told me that the people she met at church events always amazed her. In her civic, business and government engagements she met people who came to support a cause they held in common. The church draws in people from all over, regardless of their interests, origin, wealth or social standing. She described the church as a unique and precious family. There is nothing else in society quite like it.
That’s how we need to start thinking about the church. It is not ours, but God’s. It is he who unites our human families into one family in Christ, regardless of where we have come from, or who we were before he brought us into his family.
