SERMON OF MAY 10, 2009

 M. Bruce McKay
 Pilgrim - St. Luke’s United Church of Christ

 "Our Family Tree"
  Acts 8:26-40, I John 4:7-21, John 15:1-8

A few summers ago, when I was on sabbatical, I went to Nova Scotia to learn more about my family’s roots.  I knew that my great grandparents, Rev. Kenneth and Margaret MacKay came from Pictou, Nova Scotia, but no one in my family knew when their ancestors had come from Scotland or who they were.
I learned that Kenneth’s grandparents, Norman and Jane MacKay had come from Scotland on the “Elizabeth and Anne” and arrived in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island on November 8, 1806.  They went from there to Pictou.
I also learned that Margaret’s great grandparents, William and Elspa Matheson arrived in Pictou on the “Hector” in 1773 as part of the first group of people from Scotland to settle in Nova Scotia.
The time I spent getting a better understanding of my family tree and its more than 200 year old roots in Scottish and Canadian soil gave me a deeper awareness of my biological family and the blood ties that connect us. 
Today’s texts also reveal how families are created and what connects family members with one another and with God.
If there's one human experience that's dear to us, it's our family.  It's difficult to imagine a more cherished human arrangement.  There is little in our lives that we value more than our families.
Our family is the source of our name, and our values.  Home is where you go when you have no where else to go.  Families are the people who take you in when everyone else has rejected you.
The church is praised as an institution that supports families.  Churches have "Family Night Suppers" and they build "Family Life Centers."  Many churches advertise that they are a "Family Church."   The most common word used by those in our congregation to describe our community of faith is “family.”  Time and time again I’ve heard people say, “This church is like family for me.”
We forget how deeply ambiguous - even negative - the early church was about family.  Pagan Rome had no more cherished grouping than the family.  Other than the military, there were no means of social advancement in ancient Rome except marriage into a family.  Your family determined your status in life and your worth as a human being - but the church saw things differently, because Jesus saw things differently.
I heard a sermon once on Jesus' calling the sons of Zebedee, who left their father with their fishing nets to follow Jesus.  The story doesn't say what their father thought about his two sons walking out of the family business and tagging along with this itinerant rabbi.  The story doesn't care. 
The preacher commented, "Jesus broke the hearts of many first century families."
When I was at seminary, a professor opened a class reading a letter from a parent to a government official.  The parent was complaining that his son, who'd received the best education, and was headed for a good job as a lawyer, had gotten involved with a new religious sect. 
His son gave all his money and possessions to this group which seemed to control his every move.  The parent pleaded with the official to intervene on behalf of his family.
"Who's the letter describing?" the professor asked.  “What group of people?”
Some said the Moonies, others said the Hare Krishnas. 
The professor said, "It's a letter composed from the letters of second century Roman parents concerning a group called the church.
 
Once people came to Jesus saying, "Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to see you."
"My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it," Jesus replied.  (Luke 8:20-21)
His family was that new gathering of people called disciples.
The church of Jesus Christ has always challenged, at some level, the traditional understanding of what it means to be a family.
While our family can be the source of our greatest gifts, it can also be the source of our greatest damage.  Many families, as someone once said, are held together by ties that both bind and gag.  I doubt that when psychiatrists are counseling deeply troubled people, they talk about much other than family.  The family becomes the one and only place of our identify and direction - the only place in our lives where there're people who really care for us and really know us.
This has led to a kind of tyranny of the family.  Lacking any institutions within our lives with the power to stand against the family, without any other source of identity or meaning, the family takes over everything. 
The sad state of American families results, in part, because we're simply asking them to do too much.  We're asking families to bear far too much moral and spiritual weight - to be all things for all people - and they crack under the strain.
The blood of the family may be thicker than water, but often it's not thick enough to stand the burdens our culture asks it to bear.
Our family trees are being broken apart by powerful forces in our culture and by individual choices that many are making leading to rapidly growing rates of divorce and rates of children being born to parents who are not married.
While the boundaries of our lives created by our families are breaking down under the strain of cultural forces and expectations, they are also more fluid than we often realize.
Consider your own biological family.   Think for a moment about the members of your family…both your immediate family and your extended family…both those who are living and those who’ve died.
I’m going to ask questions about your family.  If the answer is yes, please raise your hand……
Does your family include:
Men and women?  
Young and old?
People from different Christian traditions?
People from different religions?
People with no religious affiliation?
People with disabling conditions?
People who are gay or lesbian?
People of different ethnicities or races?
People who struggle with physical illness?
People who struggle with mental illness?
Perhaps our family boundaries aren’t as impervious as we might think.
God creates very diverse, very inclusive, and very fluid families – for us and for the family we call the church.
It was after Easter, perhaps five weeks after Easter, when Philip was sleeping and awakened suddenly to find an angel hovering beside his bed.
"Get up," says the angel, "And go toward the south to the road from Jerusalem to Gaza."
And there, on that wilderness road, Phillip meets someone - an Ethiopian eunuch, an official in the Queen's court.  He's returning from worshiping in Jerusalem, reading an Isaiah scroll.
And he comes to that passage from Isaiah that reads, "Like a sheep led to the slaughter, like a lamb silent before its shearer, he doesn't open his mouth.  In his humiliation, justice was denied him.  Who can describe his generation?  For his life is taken away from the earth."
 
Who can describe his generation?  Or, as another translation asks, "Who's going to declare his posterity?"  He will never have any posterity.   He's without generation, for his life is taken away.
Who is this person?  When Philip climbs into the Ethiopian's chariot, that's the first question he's asked, "Who is this?  Does the prophet say this about himself or about someone else?"
Why is this man so interested in this obscure passage from Isaiah?
Because he's a eunuch.  And the Scriptures say quite plainly in Deuteronomy 23 - "The eunuch shall not have a place in the congregation of the family of God."
There shall be no place in God's family for a eunuch.  Why?  Because it was all family oriented.  And he will never have a family, this sexless person by accident, or choice, or royal decree.  He will never have a family.  Throughout Scripture children are praised as a reward of God, a sign of divine favor.  But this eunuch will never have children, he will never have a family, and therefore will have no place in the family of God.  He can never enter the temple and praise God with the rest of us who've been blessed by God with family. 
Who is this in this passage, he wants to know, whose life is taken away - without posterity - without a future?  Who is this? Is this the prophet or someone else?
This man went to the temple in Jerusalem to worship - without being allowed inside - and now he's searching the Scriptures, trying to find his name - trying to find his place in the family he'd been told had no place for him.  
"Who is this?" he asks Philip.  He’s searching for an answer to this question because he’s desperate to know if there is a place in the family of God for him.
Philip then tells him the Good News about Jesus.  The Good News about the One who was taken away, with no children, without posterity.  The Good News about Jesus, whose love nevertheless would create a family - a new family, a family whose boundaries knew no end.
At that moment they come to some water, and the eunuch says, "What's to prevent me from being baptized?" 
What’s to prevent me – a Gentile, black eunuch from Ethiopia from being baptized?   What barrier remains? 
What stands in the way of my entering this new family? 
Nothing.  Nothing at all.  So together they go down into the water...into the water of baptism...a white man and a black man...a Jew and a Gentile…a Palestinian and an Ethiopian...an insider and an outsider…both entering water in the wilderness.
Ethiopia was end of the known world when this happened.  This new family of faith knew no boundaries for it extended even to the ends of the earth.
In this new family water is thicker than blood – as least that’s the way God intended it to be.
 
The water in the wilderness between Jerusalem and Gaza washed an Ethiopian eunuch with the love of God – a love that knows no boundaries - a love that redefines what it means to be family to one another.
As it says so clearly in the First Letter of John – “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” (I John 4:16b)
Jesus reveals this truth when he talks about his being the vine and our being the branches.  When he ways, “abide in me, as I abide in you,” he’s saying, “make your home in me as I make my home in you. “ (John 15:4a, The Message)
Our family tree, in the eyes of God, is more like a vine than a tree and it has more branches than we can possibly imagine. 
Our family tree, in the eyes of the God who is love, connects us to God and creates a family of those created in God’s image, a family created and called to love one another. 
In doing this we bear fruit – not in the form of grapes, apples, or pears, but in the form of compassion, community and commitment to justice for all those in our family – all those in our family – every child who goes to bed hungry, every immigrant who lives in the shadows longing for the light of being a citizen, every person who is sick without adequate, accessible and affordable health care. 
When we make our home in God, as God has made God’s home in us we discover that our true home isn’t just found in God but in each other.
When I was in Pictou, Nova Scotia I found the farm that my ancestors purchased in 1811.  My great grandfather, Kenneth grew up on this farm and went to the Bethel Presbyterian Church, just down the road before he left  town to become a Presbyterian minister.
His brother Daniel, one of 11 siblings, stayed on the farm and handed it down to his son Allie who in turn left it to his son Donald.  Donald sold the farm in the 1980’s.  While Donald died several years ago, I met his brother Allan who was a retired veterinarian.  Allan’s grandfather was my great-grandfather’s brother.   No one in our family knew that Allan existed and it was a delight getting to know another branch on our family tree.
Just before meeting Allan I drove up the long driveway to the farm that had been in our family for over 170 years.  The small original farmhouse was still standing, but empty.  A larger farm had been built nearby.  I was greeted by two dogs, one of which I soon realized was blind.
There was a car in the driveway but no one answered the door, so I began walking around.  I surprised a man sitting on the back steps.  His name was Phillip Brooks.  He was a 52 year old black man who’d been laid off when the steel mill in New Glasgow had closed.  He was the farm’s caretaker and handy man.  The owners of the farm were Alex and Donna, a lesbian couple each of whom worked in town.  When Alex came home later that afternoon and saw a strange car in driveway she still greeted me with a warm smile and lots of curiosity about who I was and what brought me to her home.
As it turned out the family I found in Nova Scotia weren’t just blood relatives but they were family members nevertheless – like the family members I’ve found here at Pilgrim-St. Luke’s – those who are gay and straight, young and old, black and white – those like the Ethiopian, searching for our place in the family of God and finding it in the one who said, “I am the vine and your are the branches.  Those who make their home in me and I in them bear much fruit…”
When we make our home in God and in each other we can’t help but know that any fruit worth bearing all comes from the same source – the love of God revealed in Jesus Christ!
We are all in the family of God’s beloved!
 
We are all nurtured and nourished by the love of God – a part from which we can do nothing.
As we thank God today for our family tree and God’s life-giving love may we be faithful, true and bold in bearing fruit to feed the world with hope and healing – with peace and justice for all!
Amen!

Note:  This sermon draws on material in the May 1994 edition of Pulpit Resource by William Willimon.