THINGS ARE NOT ALWAYS AS THEY SEEM

Hey family!

Today we’re going to have the kid’s moment be a part of the teaching rather than separate. This is not going to become a regular thing, but I had an idea I wanted to share.

First, do any of you remember what I talked about last week?

I talked a lot about being a real person. What that looks like. What that means. A real person lives visibly for the world to see, not hiding in the shadows. A real person lives a life inspired by the Holy Spirit, believing in the work of Christ and His daily provision. A real person lives relationally with God and one another. That’s what we’re going to dive a bit deeper into today. A real person lives a life that is actively involved in pursuing peace, welfare, and blessing for their community, nourishing the lives around them as they are nourished by Jesus. And a real person lives a true life, guided by the truths of God’s word. We don’t demand truth on our own terms but we trust in God’s own way of life.

I have something to show you. What do you see in the middle of this card? “A small hole in the shape of a circle”. What do you think will happen when I put this card in front of the projector? We can see a small circle on the screen. Look, can you see it?

I have another card. What do you see in the middle of this card? “A bigger hole. A bigger circle”. I’m going to do the same thing. What do you think will happen? It’s another circle on the screen. Does it look bigger or smaller than the last one? It’s about the same size. Huh!?

Ok, one last card. What’s in the middle of this card? “A triangle”. What do you think will happen this time? A circle! How can that be? It’s a circle the same size as the other two?

Sometimes, things are not always what they appear to be. The Bible says in 1 Timothy chapter 5 verses 1 and 2, “1 Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.”

The Bible says, you see Mr. Josh over there? Treat him as you should your own father, with respect and encouragement. You see Ms. Rebekah, that’s your mother. Love and honor her. Look at River, you know what he is? He’s your brother! You know who Lilly is? She’s your sister!

Things are not always what they seem. Sometimes, when we look at people we just see family, friends, classmates/coworkers (put the cards in front of the light again one by one). But God sees family. Family. Family. It all looks like a family from God’s perspective.

Jesus tells us that “whoever does the will of [our] Father in heaven is [our] brother and sister and mother.” (Matthew 12:50).

Alright, your listening words are real and family.

PHAEDRUS - REVEALING TRUTH

Does anyone know why all of the cards displayed the same image? What is it that they are revealing to us?

Each card acts almost like a pinhole camera or a camera obscura which reveals the image of what’s on the other side, in this case the bulb of the projector. Where we see an individuals' character and detail, the Bible sees images of God, reflections of the divine.

Believe it or not, I unintentionally stumbled across another writing of Plato that has some relevance to what we’re talking about today. I’m a sucker for consistency. Trust me, I don’t go around reading Greek philosophers–although I have always wanted to read Aristotle’s Rhetoric.

But in Phaedrus Plato writes, “Things are not always what they seem; the first appearance deceives many; the intelligence of a few perceives what has been carefully hidden.”

Phaedrus is the name of the character Socrates is speaking with in this dialogue, perhaps a cousin-in-law to Plato. Not surprising, the name means "bright" or "radiant" in particular how one might show light on something, "to reveal".

PRAYER

Lord, would you shine a light today on what it means for us to be a real family. Would you reveal to us all the places where our culture, our worldview, the way that we’ve been programmed from birth to see the world around us doesn’t measure up to the depth of your call for us to bea real family. Expose and renew us today Father.

We want to be a community of people committed to sharing life together. Help us Jesus! Amen.

ISOLATED INDIVIDUALS

I do have a quick activity for the adults as well. I don’t want you to feel left out.

Take a quick 2 minutes, turn to one of your neighbors who you don’t know as well as the others and find 3 things you share in common. Go ahead.

What are some of the lines of connection that you all discovered?

Did any of you discover that you had the same number of siblings? That’s pretty low hanging fruit. How about any of your parent’s names being the same? What about grandparents or great grandparents? Did any of you ask about family? I’m sure some of you must have, statistically speaking. But you know what, I bet a lot of your questions centered around three things: what you’ve done in your life, where you’ve done it, and perhaps who you’ve done it with. We’re a very predictable culture.

“Americans relish the freedom we have to make decisions in all key areas of our lives. We are generally free to decide what we are going to do with our lives (vocation), who we are going to do life with (marriage/relationship), and where we are going to do it (location/residence).”

And so when we get to know another person, the things we most readily ask are: what do you do for a living, where are you from, are you married, do you have kids? Now, all of us know each other fairly well at this point, so we’re a bit past these pleasantries, but I bring this up to demonstrate how difficult a battle we have before us today. We have to dismantle our entire way of thinking because the picture of family we have in the Bible is so radically different than what we know. And for some of you, the picture we have of the Church in the New Testament as a family is going to make you uncomfortable. But a family is what we are, that is how we live, and that is how we make decisions–as a family.

WHEN THE CHURCH WAS A FAMILY

A while back, I read an excerpt from a book by Joseph Hellerman called When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community. I am happy to announce that I have since read the whole thing. Well, most of it. Okay, some of it….

Anyway, Hellerman writes that in our culture, “Radical individualism has affected our whole way of viewing the Christian faith, and it has profoundly compromised the solidarity of our relational commitments to one another…

The world in which Jesus and His followers lived was a distinctly strong-group culture in which the health of the group–not the needs of the individual–received first priority. And the most important group for persons in the ancient world was the family. It is hardly accidental that the New Testament writers chose the concept of family as the central social metaphor to describe the kind of interpersonal relationships that were to characterize those early Christian communities…

One’s family demands the highest commitment of undivided loyalty, relational solidarity, and personal sacrifice of any social entity…”

So when we read verses like 1 Timothy 5:1-2, “Encourage an older man as a father, younger men as brothers, 2 older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters…” We have to understand that there is a depth of meaning behind that! A depth of meaning that is completely foreign to us.

When we make decisions in our culture; such as those big three; what we’re going to do for a living, who we’re going to marry, and where we’re going to live; our personal goals, happiness, and satisfaction take first priority. We don’t consider the group. We may at some point, but not first. In Jesus’ time and in the New Testament author’s view of the Church, the group is primary.

So to understand what it means for us to be a real family, we have to first begin to understand what Jesus meant when He talked about family. What did a real family look like to Jesus? Spoiler alert, it’s not all that different from what family has looked like for the majority of the world for most of History.

THE GROUP COMES FIRST

There is a lot here to unpack. So let’s just begin with the broadest understanding and work our way in. The place we have to start to dismantle our family misconceptions is that in the New Testament the group took priority over the individual.

The atmosphere of the ancient Mediterranean world as well as the majority world operates within the context of collectivist cultures, not individualistic like ours. Jesus’ followers had no problem believing that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. When JFK said, “ask not what your country can do for you–ask what you can do for your country”. We may agree in support, but the strong-group minded person acts.

You see, we are wired from birth to believe in self; that my happiness, my well-being, my pleasure, my satisfaction is of utmost importance and the sacrifice of the many is a small price to pay to fulfill the dreams of the individual. That’s a bit of a harsh way to put it but it is true, even if we don’t notice it as a driving force in our lives. It is so pervasive that we can barely recognize it in our own hearts. We look at the majority world around us and think them strange because they would sacrifice their “freedom” of choice for the sake of their family unit. That’s how we see it, as a freedom issue.

Here’s how pervasive this is. In antidiscrimination law, the Supreme Court requires that all persons be treated as individuals and that the laws operate primarily to protect “persons, not groups.” This is rooted in what they call moral principles of respect for individual autonomy. Individual autonomy, in essence, requires that the individual be afforded as much freedom as possible. So we first have to come to terms with the fact that we have a freedom idol in this country.

This is not Jesus’ view of life!

When I think of the world Jesus grew up in and the stories that influenced his life and those around him, I think of Esther who risked it all–her very life even by approaching the king when she did not have an audience with him to expose the plot of the evil Haman and save the people of Israel. Esther epitomizes Jesus’ teaching in John 15; “13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

I think of the mighty men of David who fought through an army of Philistines to get David a drink of water. And when they returned David refused to drink it but poured it out as an offering to the Lord saying, “Is it not the blood of men who went at the risk of their lives?” (2 Samuel 23:17). These mighty men sacrificed for the group and David humbled himself and stood in solidarity not as outstanding, but as just one of the guys. A piece of a greater whole.

In the early Church, Acts 4 paints us a better picture of how we should see family. It says “32 Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common… 34 There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold 35 and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need. 36 Thus Joseph, who was also called by the apostles Barnabas (which means son of encouragement), a Levite, a native of Cyprus, 37 sold a field that belonged to him and brought the money and laid it at the apostles' feet.”

Family is a practical group ethic. What’s mine is yours. I freely give of myself and give up my individuality for the sake of the group. And the story which directly follows this statement lets us know how serious this family bond is to God.

In Acts 5 we meet Ananias and Sapphira, who had a field of their own which they sold. But instead of giving all the money to be distributed among the family, they held some back and lied about it instead. They didn’t have to sell the land. They didn’t have to give the money. The Bible says that it was always theirs to do what they wanted with it. No one would have judged them poorly had they kept some money to themselves. The problem is that they pretended to prioritize the group. They played at family while elevating themselves. And God has no room for imitation.

He made us to be a real family. And in Jesus’ understanding of family, the group comes first—before love, before business, before “following your dreams.”

The voice of our culture says, “Be yourself! Listen to your heart! Follow your dreams!”

Jesus says, “The group comes first!”

FAMILY - THE MOST IMPORTANT GROUP

And in the ancient Mediterranean world, there was no group more important than family.

Somehow our children seem to understand this better than we do before they get brainwashed by the American Dream. I was having a conversation in the car with Canaan the other day and somehow it turned to the successive nature of generations. He had the revelation that for our family to continue, it was up to him. When Ada gets married she’ll no longer be a Hoffman. Her kids won’t be Hoffman kids. They’ll carry on some other bloodline. If the Hoffman name is going to continue he has to be the one who does it. Isn’t that amazing!

Family is the most important group! No wonder Jesus and the New Testament authors chose this metaphor more than any other to describe the relationship of those within the Church.

THE BOND OF BROTHERS (AND SISTERS)

Let’s take it a step further. Paul and the writers in the New Testament most often refer to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ. Because, not only is the family the most important group, but the closest family bond is the bond between siblings.

We understand Biblical marriage in the context of these words, “a man leaves father and mother and is firmly bonded to his wife, becoming one flesh—no longer two bodies but one” (Matthew 19:4-6). And while this is true for the man, it didn’t always feel as true for the woman. Let me explain.

The husband, once married, stayed in the household compound of his father, surrounded by blood relatives. His children were his blood relatives. It was family. The woman left her family to live in a house where she didn’t share the same blood. While we understand genetics a little differently, her children didn’t share her same blood. Her closest relatives would always be her brothers and sisters, who she would often travel to see as frequently as she was able and stay with as long as she was able. She felt most at home with her brothers and sisters.

That’s what makes stories such as Ruth’s so much more intriguing. Instead of returning to her blood she attached herself to Naomi saying, “where you go I will go, and where you lodge I will lodge. Your people shall be my people, and your God my God. 17 Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried” (Ruth 1:16-17). That’s an incredible picture of the Church! It’s not the family she was born into, but the one God blessed her with that took priority.

That’s what makes the bond between David and Jonathan so special. Though they did not share the same blood, they were as brothers. David couldn’t return home to his own relatives, so “Jonathan made a covenant with David because he loved him as himself” (1 Samuel 18:3).

And we see the same truth in Jesus. Jesus saw the relationships between His followers as more than family, as closer than siblings.

HATE YOUR FAMILY

So with that, there is some very hard teachings of Jesus that we can’t escape.

First, in Matthew 8, “a teacher of the law came to [Jesus] and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” 20 Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” 21 Another disciple said to him, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” 22 But Jesus told him, “Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead.”

Now, either this man’s father was already dead and waiting at home, stinking in the sun for this poor fellow to return home and pay him respects–seems unlikely. Or, his dad wasn’t dead yet and the man was asking to return home to attend to the duties of his sonship before gallivanting around the Galilean countryside with Jesus. Either way, Jesus’ words are clear, it’s not your biological father that takes priority–it’s your Heavenly Father.

In fact, Jesus doesn’t ease up on this language, but rather intensifies it when He says in Luke 14, “16 If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

This is more than just a summary statement of “seek first the kingdom of God”. This is an entirely different way of life and it was just as radical then as it is now, but for very different reasons as you may well infer from the wealth of discussion we’ve had thus far. In order to be a disciple, we must be willing to give up everything for Jesus.

Now, what I’m not saying is to completely forget your earthly family. Your bio-family as it were. That sort of ignores all of Jesus’ other teachings about love, and justice, and respect, and provision and care for your parents and siblings.

What I am saying is that from Jesus’ point of view if it comes down to your earthly relatives and your real family, the Church always wins.

The group always takes priority. The most important group is your family. And the closest family bond is the bond between you and your brothers and sisters in Christ!

THE CHURCH - A REAL FAMILY

So the question is, are you moving closer to this reality or stepping further away?

What I don’t expect to happen is for all of this to click for you overnight and for you to wake up rid of all your American presuppositions. I do not doubt the power of God, but that has not been my story. It’s a journey. Individualism is our default. And you know what, not all aspects of our individualistic culture are truly unredeemable. You don’t have to give up your freedom, go live on a commune, and become a collectivist. You’re not going to be a very effective minister for the Gospel if you do that.

You do need to see the problems with the way we do things, and set yourself on a course to embrace more fully the Biblical picture of the Church as a family.

So, are you moving closer into this reality or stepping further away?

If you’re making any of those big life decisions that we talked about (what you do, who you do it with, and where you do it) without considering the implications to the group, the family and without relying on the Biblical counsel of your brothers and sisters then you are moving away from God’s design for the Church. And that may be difficult to hear.

And I know it’s easy to rationalize these challenging teachings away. When I feel God tugging at my heart to do something uncomfortable sometimes I think next time–I’ll be more prepared to follow and obey next time. Don’t ignore this call. And don’t put it off.

Because we are a family, whether you are choosing to recognize that or not, you’re not just harming yourself, you’re harming the group and the group is more important than the individual.

Family is about more than me, the wife, and the kids.

Your decisions affect us.

We are your family! So act like it!

“We share our hearts with one another, we stay, we embrace the pain and grow together… Important life decisions are made together as a community.”

Hold your plans loosely, give up control and authority over the outcome, allow the group–your real family, to prayerfully offer wise counsel.

“Quit trying to find [your own] way through life as an isolated individual and, instead, take advantage of the guidance, community, and accountability offered by [your] brothers and sisters in the family of God.”

Resources (*the views expressed within the following content are solely the author's and may not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Mountainside Church):

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1636/1636-h/1636-h.htm

When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community by Joseph H. Hellerman

https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/djclpp/vol12/iss1/3/

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/october-web-only/misreading-scripture-individualist-eyes-randolph-richards.html

Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World; Richard James; E. Randolph Richards

https://www.gotquestions.org/hate-father-mother.html