ALL IN THE FAMILY
1 John 4:7-12
Cindy and my concept of “family” is undergoing constant alterations these days—as we’ve added two sons-in-law, a daughter-in-law, a pretty little 4-year-old granddaughter and soon a brand new grandbaby into our family—all in about 3 ½ years span of time! And, you know, this concept of adding in-laws to your family is so interesting—because someone can go from being a stranger to a family member in seemingly no time at all!
For both of our sons-in-law, I was “pastor” before I became “father-in-law.” In the case of our first son-in-law Josh, I was his pastor all through his elementary and high school years—pretty much the only pastor he had through that time! He knew me as “Pastor Tim.” He saw me the way I dress on Sunday mornings! And then—3 ½ years ago—he married my daughter! Now I’m guessing he sees me through a whole different set of lenses! He sees me when I’m simply chillin’ out on vacations. He hardly ever sees me with a coat and tie on now! I’m far more likely to be wearing shorts and sandals or blue jeans when we’re together. When we’re together, I’m in “dad” mode—and it’s a whole different image than what he had seen of me as he was growing up! And just as our kids see a side of us that few other people see, Josh is privy to such a knowledge of us now—and we know him in a way that we never had before. It’s really an interesting phenomenon!
It’s amazing to me the difference that a wedding can make. When Josh Gress and Josh Patten and Chelsea Davis said “I do” to marrying one of our children, in a very real way they were also saying “I do” to our family. Oh, I’m sure they’re all glad they don’t have to live with us, but because they’re married to our kids, they’re forever connected with us! Their children are and will be our grandchildren! We’ll share some of the great moments of life with them—school programs, maybe Little League games, graduations, and weddings. And when one of us is going through challenging or heartbreaking times, we’ll share the pain too. Why? Because we’re family! We care about one another. And I can tell you that Cindy and I have really grown to love the three people who have married into our family as well as little Annabelle who was the bonus package in our recent wedding!
I was with the family of Lester Peck Tuesday morning after he had slipped from this life into the hands of Jesus, and I realized later that two of the five family members in the room were in-laws. And as I was reflecting on our sons-in-law and daughter-in-law, it hit me that they may even be by my bedside when I die—though I hope it’s no time soon because I want to stick around to torment my sons-in-law as long as I can! But do you get the idea? Being family changes everything!
When I think of imagery to describe the Church at its best, the word “family” always comes to mind. By God’s Masterful design, we become “family” to one another when we come to Christ and, and by His grace are accepted into the Family of God. And with that relationship comes both privilege and responsibility.
Our Scripture reading from First John this morning takes us again to something our church leaders have determined to be essential to us—our sense of connection with one another, the sense of “community” which we share, our committed love for one another. Our church’s mission is “Passion for God/Compassion for People.” Our understanding is that this is something we are by God’s design to carry out together—as a church…as a church family. As followers of Jesus Christ, all adopted into His family, we are now by the grace of God related—just like Chelsea and our two Joshes and little Annabelle are now related to Cindy and me!
Listen now to what John wrote to the Early Church—and what God wants to impress upon us as we as a church begin this New Year together—
[Read 1 John 4:7-12, NIV]
Jesus Himself had issued the original command, as recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter 13—
A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. (John 13:34-35)
What does it mean to love one another? How do we live that out in the context of our relationships with others, particularly and initially in the context of our relationships with other believers? Jesus said that our relationships with one another will be the litmus test to the world of whether or not we are true followers of His—and we know that’s exactly how it works in the world! People look to the church to model the kind of love Christ called us to live out in our day-by-day lives! They want to first see how we get along with one another before they are willing to give any thought to giving Christianity much of a try!
If we’re going to understand the biblical concept of love, we need to understand that it is reflective of the very nature of God. It’s not just a matter that “God loves us”—as if it is just one of the many things that He does. Scripture tells us that “God is love.” And so everything that God does is done in love—All that He does—creating, judging, guiding, correcting, helping—He does in love, because that’s Who He is!
And thus the only way we’re going to be able to love others is by being caught up first in a vital connection with our Heavenly Father, who is by His nature the embodiment of the word “love.” And to get a better glimpse of how such love is lived out, we merely look at what God has done—knowing that it is all done in love, because that’s simply Who He is!
John reminds us that God showed His great love for us by sending His Son to us. So it’s clear that the nature of love is unselfish and sacrificial. If we define love by God’s standard, our loving response to others will not be because we “have to” love others, but it will be the outflow of an inner compulsion to love others just as God has loved us. It’s certainly not an optional kind of thing reserved just for those we may think of as the “super spiritual” folk—it’s what every follower of Jesus must do, without exception! We are to love one another!—despite the fact that some of us are pretty interesting creatures, despite the fact that we’re all so different, despite the fact that in our humanness we’re known to step on one another’s toes and irritate one another from time to time! But because the nature of God’s love for us is unselfish and sacrificial, so should our love be for one another.
And we learn this love from our relationship with God. We learn love from the Cross. We continue to learn love along the way in our Christian journey, with all of its challenges and ups and downs. New Testament love is not an ideal; it is a relationship! Love is dynamic; it’s the growing result of a relationship with God through Jesus Christ—that finds its expression in our love for one another.
And to say that we “love” God goes way beyond sentimental mush. Christians are known to sometimes voice, “I love the Lord.” And those are good words to say! But our antennas need to go up if we say those things and yet ignore the needs of people sitting in the pews near us! There’s something wrong if we’re okay bad-mouthing someone else in the body of believers and still find the words “I love the Lord” to be a wonderful thing. There’s a disconnect there! We can’t say we love the Lord and not love one another! That’s just sentimental gibberish!—besides the fact that it gives the world a false picture of who God is! Our unselfish, sacrificial love for one another should be a picture of God’s love to the world around us. A man named Dallas Willard even went so far as to describe the church as “a school of loving.”
Such relationships with others frees us to be honest and open and real—with ourselves, with God, and with one another. And I think we’re hard-pressed to live out love for one another without such openness—otherwise we’re never getting below the surface of things; otherwise we’re so guarded that we don’t let people see what’s really happening in our lives. We put our churchy faces on and never let anyone see beyond them. And when we do that, we’re just scratching the surface of knowing one another—living cautiously with one another because we don’t want to risk getting too close…we don’t want to risk being hurt…we don’t want to risk others seeing that we don’t have it all put together. Our pride causes us to present ourselves to others in “glamour shots”—so we look like we’re far more “put together” than we are.
I knew a man a few years ago who fell in love with someone from afar, proposed to her over the phone and didn’t see her until just before they were married. They hadn’t seen one another for 15-20 years. The picture he was showing to others was what is commonly called a “glamour shot”—professionally done to make someone look glamorous! I had seen that lady since he had seen her, and she didn’t look anything like the picture he was showing of her! But then, he was an old man himself—40 years older than her, by the way—and he didn’t look much like he had 20 years earlier either.
I really do believe that pride keeps us from letting others see us as we really are—just as glamour shots present an unrealistic image of us to others. Evidently, we don’t want others to know too much about us—for fear they might not accept us or respect us or—dare I say it—they might not love us! But then we’re not sure we want to know too much about others as well—because it might make it harder to love them. Putting on our facades seems a bit safer—but it keeps us from being real with one another.
Four years ago this month, I had the most frightening and sobering health crisis I had ever experienced. What started as simply acknowledging a little pressure I was feeling in my chest ended up in a 3-day hospital stay in which the doctors discovered two almost completely blocked arteries going into my heart. They corrected the problem by angioplasty and stents. And I still remember the strange thought that I was now a “cardiac patient.” I hadn’t even had my 50th birthday yet! There just didn’t seem to be a connect between me and what I had gone through. That was the kind of thing that happened to others. Particularly that was the kind of thing that happened to people much older than me and to those who were far more careless about their health…but it was my new reality.
I’m doing great now. Fortunately I didn’t have a heart attack, and I’m grateful for that. I’ll be honest with you—there was a part of me that didn’t want the whole world to know what I was going through. It went through my mind that there would be those who would from that point on discount my potential for effectiveness, seeing me as “damaged goods.” I knew there might be those who would pass judgment on why I had been so careless about my health. I knew some might be overly guarded in me getting back up to speed and others who might wonder what in the world was wrong with me for making such a big deal out of nothing.
But I recall a conversation I had with an “elder brother”—a semi-retired pastor who served on my staff at the time. We talked about the fact that this was an opportunity for me to model openness and vulnerability to the church, and I felt that in this case he was particularly right about the need for that to happen. How could others understand me or what Cindy and I had gone through if I kept it all hush-hush? Oh, I’m not saying that it’s never okay to handle some of these things in a more private or personal way, but, on the other hand, we don’t build relationships by erecting walls of silence between us—especially in those times when we need each other the most! We build relationships in the midst of the realities of life—good and bad—by sharing life, with all that it brings! It’s what a family does!
And we may as well admit that such relationships require a bit of risk. You see, a lot of people don’t want to risk others knowing too much about them or getting too close to them because they fear rejection, indifference or judgment. And frankly, there’s a good reason why some people have these fears—because it’s exactly what has happened in the past! And they’ve been hurt! And while I hate to admit that “the church” has ever hurt anyone in the past, we may as well be honest and admit that, in our humanness, it has happened! We all know that—so we may as well be honest about it!
But we can’t afford to transpose our lack of trust to everyone. What’s past is past—but the hurts of the past don’t need to forever hinder relationships with others. God’s Word calls us to love one another. Love sees past the scars. Love doesn’t jump to uninformed conclusions. Love goes the second mile. Love doesn’t need to know all the details. Love sees beyond circumstances to see the person…real people in the midst of real life, without the sugar coating!
The love of God in and over our lives is always healing, cleansing, uplifting, preserving, helping. And when we learn to love one another as Jesus commanded us, our love for one another will also be something we can depend upon and trust. Such love will be healing, cleansing, uplifting, preserving, helping—just like the love of God.
If the only way I can love God is by loving you, then that casts a whole new dimension on our relationships with one another in our day-by-day lives—in our homes and in the church. In a very real sense, if I trust God’s love for me, then I am pressed forward to deliberately, consciously risk loving people—and that’s truly how we come to love God more! I learned a long time ago that loving people is risky business, because you might get hurt along the way, but I also concluded that having loving relationships is worth the risk and that, for God’s sake, I must take that risk! You see, God is not so much interested in my “feelings” for Him as He is in my actions of love for you—day-by-day—in the context of our relationships.
And if we’re going to talk about the kind of love Jesus had in mind, we’re going to have to move out of the level of “liking” one another and warm, fuzzy feelings for everyone else—to the level of our intentional will. To choose to love others is like a posture, an attitude, a frame of mind toward others that’s shaped by God’s unconditional love for us—despite all the reasons why we may not always be so lovable! The kind of love we are called to live out with one another means caring for people as persons—seeing one another in a personal way.
Do you remember when you were in school…I know, for some of you that’s right now! Especially in our early years we saw our teachers in a different way than we saw a lot of other people! And then you happened to run into your teacher at the grocery store one day and she was with her husband and they had just come from the soccer field where their kids had played ball. And suddenly you saw her as a real person—not just as your teacher! I suppose it may be sort of like our sons-in-law coming to see us as just people—rather than as the pastor and his wife.
Love gets beyond labels and positions. Love says “I care for you as a person.” Love says in words and actions—
I see you.
I’m listening to you.
I respect you—as a person.
I am aware of you—as a real person with feelings and thoughts and fears and dreams.
And love helps us drop our own pretenses. Love sets other things aside and focuses on the person. Love listens. Love welcomes. Love covers the back of another person.
In the fall of the year, Linda, a young woman, was traveling alone up what I’m told is a rutted and rugged highway from Alberta to the Yukon. Linda didn’t know you don’t travel to the town of Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory alone in a rundown Honda Civic, so she set off where only four-wheel drives normally venture.
The first evening she found a room in the mountains near a summit and asked for a 5 A.M. wakeup call so she could get an early start. She couldn’t understand why the clerk looked surprised at that request, but as she awoke to early-morning fog shrouding the mountain tops, she understood. Not wanting to look foolish, she got up and went to breakfast. Two truckers invited Linda to join them, and since the place was so small, she felt obliged. “Where are you headed?” one of the truckers asked.
“Whitehorse.”
“In that little Civic? No way! This pass is dangerous in weather like this.”
“Well, I’m determined to try,” was Linda’s gutsy, if not very wise, response.
“Then I guess we’re just going to have to hug you,” the trucker suggested.
Linda drew back. “There’s no way I’m going to let you touch me!”
“Not like that!” the truckers laughed. “We’ll put one truck in front of you and one in the rear. In that way, we’ll get you through the mountains.” All that foggy morning Linda followed the two red dots in front of her and had the reassurance of a big escort behind as they made their way safely through the mountains.
That’s what we get to be and do for one another—we “hug” one another through the dangerous passages in life. Some of our fellow Christians already know the way and can safely lead us. Others come behind, gently encouraging us along—so we can make it through safely. It’s the wonderful concept of doing life together—as Christ intended for us.
I want us to do something as we conclude our service this morning. I want you all to stand and, if you’re willing, take the hand of the person next to you. Oh, I understand, that when we force being “together” in this way, it may seem superficial in one sense. And I suppose it has the potential for that. But on the other hand, it’s a tangible way we express our connection with one another. And as you’re standing there holding the hands of those next to you, I want you to bow your heads and I want you to first pray for the person on your right…then pray for the person on your left…[then I will close in prayer]
