A sermon given at Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church
24 June 2018
Hebrews 2.11-13; 3.13-14; 9.15
Matt. 12:46-50
This morning, I’d like us to think about what it means
for us to
be part of Jesus’ family,
and also about what it means
for him to
be part of our family.
If you’ve been following our sermon series
on the book
of Hebrews over the last few weeks
you’ll know that we’ve been looking at a number of different
ways
in which
the book of Hebrews presents Jesus
as someone
who can be known and encountered
by
those who are wanting to follow him.
We’ve seen that the basic problem for the recipients of
Hebrews
is that
Jesus is experienced as absent from them;
either
high up in heaven,
or
lost in an increasingly distant past.
And the preacher of this written-down sermon that we call
Hebrews
is trying
to explore with his congregation
a variety
of ways in which Jesus is not in fact distant from them at all,
but
rather can be encountered as real,
and
still very much present to and with them.
So in the first sermon we saw how the preacher describes
Jesus
as the
sustaining force in the cosmos,
in
and through all things,
intimately
intertwined with each person, each animal,
each
tree, and each flower.
Then in the second sermon we encountered Jesus the pastor,
who offers no
quick fix to life’s problems,
but who
travels with us through difficulty and hardship,
and
ultimately through death,
giving us
the gift of renewed hope even in hard times
by
releasing us from the guilt of sin and the fear of death.
Last week Dawn led us in an exploration of the Speaking
Jesus,
who speaks
the words of God in ways that we can hear.
And today we come to the Familial Jesus,
who invites
us to be part of his family,
and becomes
part of our family.
Now, I don’t know what comes to your mind when people talk
about family?
Maybe you
think about your own childhood,
your
parents or whoever it was that brought you up;
and any
brothers or sisters that you may have.
Maybe it’s a happy memory, or maybe it isn’t;
maybe
childhood for you was a time of stability and security;
or maybe it
was a time of loneliness or stress or abuse.
The reality for each of us, of course,
is that who
we are as adults is deeply affected,
and
to some extent determined, by our childhoods.
Our ability to relate to others as adults
will be at
least in part a function
of the key
relationships of our formative years.
For better or for worse, families matter.
And those who have had children, and raised families of
their own,
will know
that we repeat in our own families
the
patterns that we inherited from our parents.
Do you know the poem by the great Irish poet Philip Larkin,
entitled
‘This Be The Verse’?
I committed it to memory as a teenager when we studied him
at school.
It has some
rude words in it,
so I’m
going to give you the clean version today:
They [m]uck you up,
your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the
faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.
But they were [m]ucked
up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were
soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.
Man hands on misery to
man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as
you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
Well, I don’t fully share Larkin’s cynicism about family
systems,
despite the
fact that my own childhood experience
was
not always straightforward,
and that I
have indeed avoided having any kids myself.
Families can be wonderful,
and they’re
not all about the transmission of misery
from
generation to generation.
But one of the more helpful insights that the poem can offer
us
is its
recognition that problems experienced in the present
are not
simply the fault of those experiencing them.
We are all the inheritors of attitudes and actions
over which
we have had no control;
and any family – whether functional or dysfunctional –
will always
be more than a mere collection of individuals.
Families, you see, are systems which contain individuals,
but which also
have an existence beyond the level of the individual.
If this sounds strange to you,
it might
help to think for a moment not of your own personal family,
but of the
church family to which we belong.
Bloomsbury Central Baptist Church, like all churches, is a
family system.
We are
individually members of it, but it is greater than any one of us.
The family of this particular church
is one
which stretches back 170 years,
as
we shall be celebrating next Sunday,
and all of
those who have been part of this place over the years
have
left their mark on the community.
In a very real and tangible way,
those who
have gone before have an effect on all of us
who make up
this church family in our own generation.
The culture of our church family,
the things
we stand for and the things we do,
are not merely the product of those of us
who gather
here week by week,
they are the product of all those
who have
gathered here down the years,
stretching
right back to the people who first founded the church.
And this is because we are a family system,
not a
family of individuals.
This insight that families are systems
has been
highly influential in the way therapy is offered
to people
who are struggling to address problems in their lives,
people
who may be anxious, stressed or depressed,
or
who feel trapped in repeating patterns of harmful behaviour.
An individualistic therapeutic model would focus on the
person,
their
problems, and how they can be addressed.
But a family systems model would recognise
that each
person in the family, both past and present,
has a role
to play in the functioning of each other member of the family;
and so to help an individual
you first have
to help them understand
the
relationships within their family.
And, therapeutically speaking,
the path to
wholeness, healing, and integration for the individual
will be
found in looking unflinchingly
at
the family system to which they belong,
for both
better and for worse.
To quote the former Rector of my hometown Sevenoaks, John
Donne:
No one is an island entire of itself;
every one is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.
So where does this leave us,
as sisters
and brothers in Christ?
What does it mean to say that I am your brother?
That you
are my sister?
That you
are my brother?
What kind of church family system do we inhabit?
What sort
of a family is Bloomsbury?
These questions are going to be really important to us going
forwards,
because if
our church is to be a functional, rather than dysfunctional, family,
we
will need to give time and attention
to
the relationships that bind us to one another.
Whether we’ve been here five weeks, five years, or five
decades,
none of us
are immune from each other,
and we will need to continually work together at discovering
the nature
of this church family that we belong to.
Are we a confident family?
Are we a
loving family?
Are we nurturing and empowering of one another?
Or are we
defensive, anxious, stressed, or depressed?
Do we have habits of love,
or habits
that are more destructive?
The answers that we discern
when we
consider questions like this
will need
to be more than just our personal perspective or state of mind.
How ‘I’ feel is
not the complete answer
to the
question of how the church family is doing.
It takes conscious effort to tune into the emotions and
actions of others,
to pay
attention to one another
and not
just to our own needs.
Discerning the nature of our church family in this way is
not an easy task,
because it
brings us face to face with the flaws and the hurts
that we
would rather ignore or paper over.
But it is a necessary task,
because if
we are each other’s sisters and brothers in Christ,
then we are
called to be a family, for better or for worse.
And it is in our family life together that, according to the
book of Hebrews,
we will encounter
Jesus.
You will remember that the congregation
that this
sermon of Hebrews was written for
were
struggling to find Jesus?
Well, the preacher tells them, and us,
that the
Familial Jesus is discovered right here - in our midst.
Because we are not just siblings one of another,
we are
siblings of Jesus;
he is our
brother, and we are all children of God.
You see, a Christian
community such as a church
is far more than a collection of
individuals
who have gathered
together around a shared set of values,
or some shared goals.
We aren’t just
brothers in arms
in some fight against evil in the
world.
We are a family –
sisters and brothers with Jesus, and children of God.
We are partners with Christ
in his mission to bring
good news to all people,
and we are the heirs of the promise
that the dwelling place
of God is with humans.
Jesus dwells in our
midst;
he is our brother, and we are his
family.
And therefore who we
are as the family of Christ matters,
because it is through our familial
relationships that Christ is made known.
If we are
dysfunctional,
then we present a dysfunctional
Christ.
If we are anxious or
destructive,
then we present an anxious and
destructive Christ.
One of the fascinating insights of family systems therapy
is that
people in a community such as a church
live in a system
of swirling, emotional processes.
Have you ever heard someone say
that they
‘could sense the emotion in the room’?
Well, whether we’re directly aware of it or not,
we are all
affected by the emotions of those around us,
as well as
by our own emotional responses.
So if someone is chronically anxious, or depressed, or
stressed,
we will
find that we too start
to
take that anxiety, depression, or stress into our own lives,
as the
emotions of the other person become our emotions.
And of course, if someone is joyful, happy, or calm,
we will
find that we too start to exhibit positive emotions
the more we
spend time in their company.
This is true more for some people than others,
and some
people leak their emotions more than others,
just as
some people absorb the emotional atmosphere more than others.
But to one degree or another,
we’re all
affected by the emotional field that exists
within a
family community like a church.
And if we don’t pay attention to the emotional systems of
our church family,
we will
never be able to differentiate ourselves
from
the emotions of others,
and we will
be blown backwards and forwards like grass in the wind,
as
we are overwhelmed time and again
by
the emotions of those around us.
What we need to discover,
as
we work out what it means
for
us to live together as the family of God,
is who we
truly are.
Who am I, truly, before God?
Who are
you?
I’m not you, and you’re not me.
We may
belong together in this family,
but we are
not the same.
This discovery that your problems are not the same as my
problems,
and that
mine are not the same as yours,
is the key to discovering that when you are weak, I can be
strong,
and that
when I need help carrying the burden of life,
you can be
the one to help me and pick me up when I stumble.
The discovery that we belong together,
but do so
as individuals emotionally differentiated from each other,
means that we can escape the cycles of reactivity
where one
person’s anxiety
triggers
a domino effect of anxious responses
that
travels through the whole community.
If we can learn that each of us, individually,
matters
uniquely to God,
then we can discover together what it means
for us to
be the family of God,
where we
emotionally affect each other for good.
If we can learn that each of us, individually,
matters
uniquely to God,
then we can discover ways of being together
across
disagreement.
Just because we do not always agree,
doesn’t
mean we don’t belong together.
And while an emotionally undifferentiated family system
will find
this a stressful situation to live with,
those of us who are mature in Christ,
will
discover that our call to belong together
transcends
the negative emotions of disagreement.
So, I’ll ask again, what kind of a church family are we?
What is
this family to which we belong here at Bloomsbury?
Do we hear Christ in our midst,
calling us
his brothers and sisters,
and valuing
us uniquely?
Can we discover what it is to belong together,
respecting
the fact that we are different to one another?
Will we support each other,
recognising
that emotional maturity is the path to wholeness?
Do we have the courage to recognise those times
when we act
out of our own anxiety,
and to be honest about those times
when we are
destructive of the relationships that exist between us?
In a moment I’m going to lead us in a period of silence
that’ll be
slightly longer than normal
And I’d like to invite you to use it
to quietly
reflect on the emotions that you sense around you,
and those
that you sense within you.
Do you feel anxious or at peace?
Do you feel
at ease or ill at ease?
And in response to that discernment,
I’d like to
invite you to offer a silent prayer
that
God will draw alongside you
through
your brother Christ Jesus.
And then
I’d like to suggest that you just listen, carefully,
to
what it is that Jesus wants to say to you, and you alone.
Let’s be silent for a couple of minutes…
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