The Ties that Bind
Christian Family Sunday - Mother’s Day
Sunday, May 10, 2009

Let us pray: O God, loving Parent, Mother and Father of us all, we come to you today wanting to deepen and strengthen our relationship with you. May these words guide us in that venture. Amen.

Every once in a while, often as the result of some scandal having erupted in a legislature somewhere in North America, a right-wing politician will expound self-righteously about the need to return to biblical family values. Whenever it happens, I wonder what bible it is they are reading. The bible is many things: an amazing piece of literature, a wonderfully deep and intriguing story of the relationship between humanity and God, a theological library, song book, anthology of poetry, collection of letters and compendium of wise sayings. It’s a book which challenges, comforts, and instructs. It is all of these and more, but I’ve never ever thought of it as a resource book for functional family relationships. If anything, the Bible could be a resource book for how to live in right relationship with God in spite of dysfunctional family relationships. How can anyone read stories of polygamous marriage, attempted infanticide, deadly sibling rivalry, bearing a child with your wife’s maidservant, murder by royal decree in order to have a relationship with the victim’s wife, and just about every twist and turn imaginable when it comes to family relationships and think that the Bible is a guidebook for our present-day understandings of what is right when it comes to living together in family relationships. Even Jesus was pretty harsh when he spoke about family relationships. He predicted that his message was so challenging that there would be quote “five in one family divided against each other, three against two and two against three. They will be divided, father against son and son against father, mother against daughter and daughter against mother, mother-in-law against daughter-in-law and daughter-in-law against mother-in-law." endquote

If the Bible is to teach us anything about family relationships, it is pretty clearly the via negativa - an instruction book in what not to do in order to keep family relationships healthy, whole and life giving. That’s the downside of the relationship between the Bible and our present-day understanding of what it means to live in healthy family relationships. Of course there is also an upside. There may be story after story and concern after concern expressed about family relationships in the Bible, but the Bible also contains story after story about the importance of building, deepening and trusting our relationship with God. The relationship is described in many different ways - transcendent in nature and embodied, immanent in nature. God is out there, but God is also in here. God is unfathomable, mysterious, only to be glimpsed in moments of insight, and God is intimate, closer than our skin, and part of who and what we are. This is the nature of God - this is the presence of God - calling us to new understandings, and yet resting with us as a close and personal presence - bringing comfort, compassion and security.

Perhaps the most succinct description of our relationship with God, and one that both describes the immanent and the transcendent in three words is this: God is love. We know what love is, and yet it also remains as something never to be completely understood. There is always more that can be said about love - what it means, the effect it has on us, the different forms it takes, and yet we also know when we experience it in its many forms.

We know about love because of our family relationships. It is defined in part by the nature of those relationships. Who but a mother can understand the bond that is created with a child? But of course the mother and child relationship is only a part of the complexity of family relationships. We only need to look around us and see just how varied the definition is for “family”. Families are so different in so many ways - in levels of closeness, in levels of connectedness, in terms of how leadership is experienced. Families are also different in terms of makeup. As varied and complicated as families are in the biblical record, they are just as varied or more so in our present day context.

With this in mind, it is perhaps not surprising that the biblical stories find it easier to comment on family relationships from the point of view of what not to do. It just seems easier to depict the consequences of conflicted relationships, jealousy, and pride within families and among family members. How many family sagas have been told in novels about happy, trusting, uneventful lives? We all know it is the juicy stories that pique the interest, and it seems to be part of human nature to want to hear and read about them.

We may like reading about them, but I don’t think we want to live them. The Bible is very good about leading us to think about connections, and family is clearly one of the most important ways we understand connections. How many times do we hear prayers begin with this word “Father”? And yes, I myself wince a bit when it happens, for my eyes have been opened and my perspective widened by feminist theologians who quite rightly have pointed out the sexism, patriarchy and discrimination in the Bible, but I also recognise that the image of God as a parent is an image which rests in our understanding of “family”. I try not to pray that way - although it is challenging when the prayer of Jesus begins with an “Our Father”. You may have noticed that sometimes, most notably when we have communion that the prayer of Jesus is introduced in this way: We gather these and all our prayers, thankful that we may turn to you as to our Mother who loves us, as: Our Father, who art in heaven . . .” I recognise that when I begin a prayer by addressing God rather than as Mother or Father, there is something different about the prayer. We understand God in a different way when the relationship is defined by a family relationship. There is a difference between being God’s people and children of God. Both are helpful in their own way as we seek to understand our relationship with the Creator.

Jesus may not have always been positive about family relationships in response to the challenge of the gospel message, but he also described a clear path for the nature of all our relationships. He also understood a very clear family relationship in his own life. We learn in part to pray to our Mother or our Father because of Jesus. He talked about his Daddy - Abba - a familiar, closely personal way to describe his relationship with God. And as we heard this morning he described that relationship and our relationship with a typically familiar agricultural metaphor - vine and branches.

For Jesus the key is being connected - connected with God, and connected with each other - for that is just another way to be connected with God - the divine presence that is within each of us. We understand connectedness - both its blessings and its challenges - through family relationships. And so if those relationships help us to understand what it means to be connected with God then we can use them to strengthen and deepen our relationship. If through motherhood - being one and having one - we understand better the nature of love, then our understanding of God as love is developed.

It works the other way too. If we truly live in a way that is connected with God, then all of our connections - friendships, connections with the earth, connections with our neighbours, connections with our families will benefit and be strengthened.

O God, you are the vine, we are the branches. May we ever be conscious of the connections that help us to know each other better, for in that knowledge, we know you. Amen.