The Family of God

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Facebook phenomenon of picking sides in political and philosophical battles hurts families. Facebook has made it easy to tell tales out of school, and many have found themselves filled with sorrow at such actions. At one time, we disagreed with our parents’ politics in dorm rooms. We complained about our in-laws over coffee to close friends. Those we loved, but disagreed with or even disrespected, in part, remained mostly unaware of it. They were not hurt very much by it. We could strut and boast and conduct thought experiments in relative safety, without much long-term damage. Now we broadcast our disagreement, and often our disrespect, all over the world in an indelible, digital format that might well follow us the rest of our lives. Was the old way more dishonest than the new? Perhaps. But it was also less damaging and less painful, easier to correct and amend.

Our families are more broken and dysfunctional than we care to admit. We look back at the medieval idea of courtly love and Victorian romance with derision for its artificiality. But any judgment on our part reveals our hypocrisy. We are a people raised on sitcoms and pop music. Our culture’s view of love is that it is mainly a matter of affection and that the good feeling it gives is the highest good. We think love is god, but by love we mean our own amusement and pleasure. Thus, we have little room for sacrifice or duty. If it feels good in the moment, it must be love, and if doesn’t feel good, or if it grows stale, we drop it.

If the ancients veered toward an artificial ideal, we veer toward a shallowness that they would find despicable. At least they had an objective ideal toward which to strive.

In fact, you can love people you do not like. You can love people whose opinions and behavior are absolutely contrary to everything good and decent, to everything you love. If this were not the case, then there would be no hope for us. For how could God love sinners like us?

The death of Jesus Christ is a story of love in and for a broken, blended family. At most, the brothers of Jesus are half-brothers. No Christian believes that the brothers of Jesus are His full brothers. At most they share a mother, but have different fathers. Only Jesus is born of the virgin by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit. He is the only-begotten of His Father. Tradition holds that His brothers are not half-brothers at all, but are step-brothers, that Joseph brought his sons with him from a previous marriage.

The point is that then, like now, the word brother was broad. The affection is too deep to be constantly pointing out who is not a full brother. Half-brothers and step-brothers, even close friends, are true, real, actual brothers. So the family of Jesus was a blended family.

It was also a broken family. The brothers of Jesus, like the brothers of Joseph, were jealous. They did not believe Him. They even plotted against Him. And it was a family afflicted by sorrow. Joseph must have been dead, or else he was a dirtbag. Poor Mary, with her heart pierced, stands at the cross without any family. Her Son is being tortured and dying. His brothers have abandoned not only Him but also her. Something is seriously dysfunctional if a grown man does not know enough to hold his mother’s hand while the state kills her son – even if she is only a step-mother.

But for all their sins and dysfunction, their petty grudges and jealousy, the Lord still provides for them. “Woman, behold your Son.” “Behold your mother.”

He takes care of Mary. He takes care of John. So also He will take care of James and the others. The Lord setteth the solitary in families. He does not give up on Joseph’s sons even if they had given up on Him. His Blood is thicker than water.

The Church is a family. It is not a replacement family: it is an extension. Mary did not lose the sons of Joseph, even if they failed her at the cross. Instead, she gained another son, an additional son. He will support and pray for her, despite his own imperfections and sins, even when, or maybe especially when, her biological family fails and, in particular, when she is suffering for her faith.

You also need such sons, such mothers, such brothers and sisters and fathers. And the Lord, in His death, also provides for you. Look around you. Behold, your family. What Facebook strains, grace restores and supplements. The Lord setteth the solitary in families. The Church is the family of God. You are not some stranger. You are family. You belong to the Lord. That water is thicker than blood.

Thus the first Collect for Good Friday reads: “Almighty God, we beseech You graciously to behold this, Your family, for whom our Lord Jesus Christ was content to be betrayed and given up into the hands of wicked men and to suffer death upon the Cross.”

The Lord Christ was betrayed and given up into the hands of wicked men. He died for you, His family, that He might look upon you graciously, that is, that He might declare you righteous, forgiven, and reconcile you to the Father. Dear children of the Dear Father, you are.

That part we usually get, but there is more. He also did this that you might be His family, the adopted sons and daughters not only of His Father in heaven, but also the adopted sons and daughters of Mary. If she is His mother, then she is your mother. If He bears Mary's flesh, and you bear His flesh, then Mary is also your mother.

He says, “Behold, your mother.” He is not only talking to John. If you are the brothers of Jesus, Mary is your mother and John is your brother. And therefore, most significantly, you are also brothers and sisters of one another.

In what Luther meant to be his death-bed confession, the Smalcald Articles, he outlines five ways that God comforts us in our sorrows, ways that He forgives us and restores us to Himself. They are (1) preaching, (2) Baptism, (3) the Lord’s Supper, (4) Confession and Absolution, and finally, the (5) mutual consolation of the brethren. Those five things have not received equal attention in the history of Christianity. Lutheranism has its favorites. Confession and Absolution, for example, has been neglected and rediscovered, forgotten again and found again. Today it seems to be hanging on by a thread.

It is doubtful if there ever was a point in history when the simple Biblical reality that the Church is a family which consoles and prays for one another has ever been treated at any length or commented upon in a serious way. That is a sore oversight. It needs to be corrected. Because we have never needed each other, we have never needed mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, needed family, as much as we do right now.

Behold your mothers and fathers. Behold, your brothers and your sisters, your sons and your daughters. The Lord setteth the solitary in families. The death of Jesus Christ makes all things new. He forgives your sins and nurtures your faith unto life everlasting, not just individually but corporately – as a family altogether. He gives us a place with Him and with each other. Thanks be to God.

In the Name of Jesus. Amen.


[I am indebted to Pr. David Petersen of Redeemer Lutheran Church, Fort Wayne, IN for the use of this brilliant homily.]