Sermon for Mother's Day, May 14, 2006“THE FAMILY STONE”: WHAT IS FAMILY?3rd in a series on Spirituality and The Arts By Rev. Dr. Harvey C Martz |
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Scripture: 1 Corinthians 13 If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3If I give away all my possessions, and if I hand over my body so that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing. 4Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant 5or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. 7It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8Love never ends. But as for prophecies, they will come to an end; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will come to an end. 9For we know only in part, and we prophesy only in part; 10but when the complete comes, the partial will come to an end. 11When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. 13And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. We are in the midst of a sermon series that explores some of the spiritual themes in current music, literature and film. We have had great attendance and interest so far in the first one on the book and upcoming film “The DaVinci Code”, and we still have materials for you and websites to explore. We will probably sponsor a discussion evening later for those who see the movie and want to explore some of the themes and correct the fictional claims. We had a great time all last weekend with our guest musical artist Carrie Newcomer and used one of her songs about communion in our service last Sunday morning. Incidentally, I hope you have noticed or are noticing that there are spiritual and moral insights in music and literature and film and even on TV. I saw a long article in USA Today on Thursday about the positive moral and spiritual influence that Oprah Winfrey is exercising, and I think most of that is good. The article quotes Marcia Nelson who wrote a book entitled “The Gospel According to Oprah” saying that Oprah is a spiritual leader for millions of people. A survey by the website Beliefnet.com a few months ago stated that for 33% of the respondents Oprah Winfrey has “a more profound impact” on their spiritual lives than their own clergyperson. Another commentator in the article compared her to a contemporary Billy Graham when he was at the peak of his influence in our country. So we are looking at the relation between some of the spiritual themes in the Bible and the ones in music and the media, and today it feels like we are doing something a little riskier—using a film that is just out on DVD to explore some of what it means to be a family. There are two risks I see. One is that people come to church on Mother’s Day with several expectations. Dr. Robert Fulghum, retired Unitarian minister and author of “Everything I Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten” said that when he as a parish minister, as Mother’s Day was approaching, a church member came up to him and said, “I am bringing my mother to church on Mother’s Day, Reverend and you can talk about whatever you want. But it had better include Mother and it had better be good!!” On the other hand many of us have mixed feelings about mothers or have unresolved issues with mothers and don’t need to hear syrupy things today that are not true or do not fit our experiences. The second risk that I feel is that the film we are looking at a short clip from gets some mixed reviews from me and others. It shows a real life family with incomplete people who are trying to love and accept each other. It is, in my judgment, unevenly done and contains some rough language that has earned it a PG 13 rating (we won’t hear that in our clip today), and it has a cast of mixed abilities including long time actor Diane Keaton who usually seems to me to laugh and smile at totally inappropriate times here and in other movies. But when our family saw it five months ago over the Christmas holidays I thought it had enough substance to cause us to think about family and how broad that definition is even in the Bible and how important our families are especially if we want to make true in our families as much as we can of that brilliant passage from St Paul in I Corinthians 13 about love at its best. I read that passage at almost every wedding I perform and it is a constant reminder to me about what I am called to do as husband and father. Judy and I also have those words in calligraphy form framed and placed in our bedroom. And I remind couples when I am doing the pre marriage counseling that if we have learned to love at all—to be patient, understanding, tolerant, forgiving, responsible to God and to each other, that we have most likely learned that in our families from our parents or siblings or grandparents or other family members who have loved us and been patient and supportive of us and held us accountable as well. Something else I often do in wedding ceremonies right before we read I Corinthians 13 is to give the couple a chance to involve their parents in a blessing, an affirmation of their wedding. I tell the guests that the bride and groom are honoring their parents by involving them in this way, and they are acknowledging that it is because they have experienced love in their families—some of those qualities of understanding, compassion, patience, forgiveness that have to be present in varying degrees for us to grow up at all—because we have experienced those then we are able to give vows of love to anyone else. I know the moment I speak those words that there are folks here who did not get much of those qualities in your family of origin but probably you did get those experiences and values somewhere along the way from a friend or teacher or coach or pastor because it takes those experiences of love and compassion and accountability for people to have some degree of emotional health and ability to function in the world. That is why family is important and why some people are today honoring family and perhaps other people besides or in addition to their mother who provided those experiences of love in their lives. Of course when we do our best job as a mother or father there is absolutely no guarantee that our kids will live by those values. That is why we feel some relief when we hear others give us feedback about our kids. Last week I was talking to our 28 year old daughter Meredith who is a manager at a Williams Sonoma Store in Manhattan. She was telling me about serving a customer last week, an elderly woman who was in the store buying a wedding present for someone on the store’s gift registry and the customer was having difficulty understanding how to use the gift registry. Meredith took the time to talk with her and explain carefully how it worked. The woman left and called the store later to talk again with Meredith and correct an address she has given. Then she went on in the conversation to tell Meredith how much she appreciated the time Meredith took to walk through the registry process patiently with her. She made a sad and poignant comment. She told Meredith that some people are just mean to older people and treat them with impatience. And she said to Meredith that her parents surely must have raised her right. Well, we were happy to hear that and I also thought that while we did some things right, we also did some things wrong and some things we would do differently if we had a new chance. Most of us parents here could say both those things. And I thought about how critically important it is that we parents do the best job possible of helping form character in our kids and help instill a moral compass and spiritual foundation in our kids. It is an awesome role and we consistently hear new persons in our membership classes tell us they are exploring church membership because they have young children and they want to be in a Christian community where we can all work on that character formation and that moral compass building together because the African proverb is right—it does take a village to raise a child. The research around the “assets program” confirms that kids need several adults in their lives besides their parents and grandparents and others, people who know them by name and listen to them and advocate for them and take time with them. That is the basis for the involvement of so many adults in our youth programming and particularly in our confirmation program. I thought of one more thing from this week’s experiences. I had the privilege of sitting down last Tuesday over dinner with several of the homeless families we have been hosting in our building. Most of us are so isolated from people who are poor or who have gotten some very bad breaks in life. In fact, many, many American families are just two or three paychecks away from financial disaster and all it takes is for some serious illness to turn some of us into homeless families. What I saw in the folks we hosted last week were families who loved their kids, parents who were doing their absolute best to turn things around, and kids who were working hard in school and were making decent grades. Our stereotypes about homelessness or about other things get changed when we actually talk with each other and get past labels and categories and get to relate to fellow human beings. Being with our families and seeing the love and respect reminded me of the story about 8-year- old Emily whose family experienced a fire in their home. It burned completely and they were living with relatives for a while. A friend at school said she was sorry that Emily did not have a home and Emily said, “Oh we do have a home, we just don’t have a house to put it in right now.” Let me look for a moment at some examples of families in the Bible that we can learn some things to do and not to do as mothers and fathers and families. There has been much talk particularly in Colorado over the past years about “family values” and one group that stands for “family values” is active in trying to get a ballot measure before us in November that will have some rigid definitions about who gets to be called a family. Those sorts of groups often say they are trying to institute some Biblical images of family and that usually makes me wonder how much Bible they have read. The actual families in the Bible give us some good examples and some very bad examples of family life as well. Bible families are not sweetness and light—in fact they are very diverse and many of them are dysfunctional! We could look at the families in the first chapters of Genesis: the first man and woman who refuse to take responsibility for their wrongdoing. He blames the woman; she blames the snake. The snake has stopped talking by then! One of their sons in a fit of jealousy kills his brother and then lies about it to God. Several chapters later Noah curses his son who discovers his father drunk, passed out and naked. A few chapters later Abraham, father of Israel, patriarch of Judaism and Christianity, lies and deserts his wife to save himself. A few chapters later, Jacob, another patriarch cheats his brother out of his privilege as first born and has to leave to the country so his brother won’t kill him. Jacob’s mother, incidentally, helps Jacob deceive his blind father and his short sighted brother. I bet Jacob sent her a nice Mother’s Day card! Let’s skip ahead several hundred years to the most revered king in all of Israel’s history, the king described as a man after God’s own heart. David is so arrogant he breaks four of the Ten Commandments in his quest for Bathsheba and confesses when he is confronted by Nathan the prophet. That is what prophets are supposed to do—speak truth to the powerful. David as you recall had several wives and one of his sons attempted to assassinate his father. This was a dysfunctional family! You remember of course that polygamy was not uncommon in the Old Testament; it was not something just dreamed up by HBO. Do you remember the outlook that Jesus’ family had about him? For a while they did not understand him and in chapter three of Mark’s gospel his mother and brothers come to get him because people were saying he was crazy. There are positive pictures of family life in scripture: remember the non traditional family of Mary and Martha and Lazarus, two sisters and a brother living together? There is the imagery in Paul’s letters of God adopting all of us as God’s children. There is the very positive role model of Mary the mother of Jesus. There are pictures of God as having both motherly and fatherly characteristics in scripture. But just as there is diversity in today’s world when we talk about family (there are grandparents raising grandchildren, single parent families, couples with no children, gay couples in committed monogamous relationships, senior citizens living together because they don’t want to jeopardize social security payments), there is also great variety and diversity in our Bible itself, and we might want to be cautious listeners when we hear someone talk about the need to return to a Biblical view of marriage—we should ask them which Biblical view they mean? We have heard about some families in the Bible who were a mixture of healthy and dysfunctional. The film clip I picked will show some of that also. Sarah Jessica Parker is being brought home to the family by the eldest brother to be introduced as his future wife and she just does not fit. [Movie Clip from The Family Stone] This film has strengths and weaknesses but here is what I like: it shows a family realistically. They do love each other. They experience tensions and arguments and misunderstandings. They show some empathy. They are honest with each other. They even argue at the dinner table. They are messy. But underneath they care for each other and because they care they can be honest and blunt and apologize and ask for forgiveness and persevere. There is rough language here; it is rated PG-13. But if that does not get in your way, there are insights and positive things in the film. Let’s go back to those verses we began with from I Corinthians 13. Paul is such a mixture for some people, and he is a controversial leader and writer. But if the only thing we had from Paul were these inspiring, idealistic words from this chapter he would still be a candidate for sainthood. Love is what keeps families and couples together through all the worst things life can throw at us and when there is love—patient, kind, compassionate, forgiving love— then we have family. We will close with some insights from another artist we have heard from before and we will hear his music a few weeks from now in this sermon series. Tom Waits is an extremely prolific maverick sort of singer/songwriter who has recorded thirty albums. The song I am quoting from is from the album “Mule Variations”, one of my favorites. The song is about a house on his block that is “abandoned and cold” now. He wonders about the people who used to live there, about what happened to them. Once the house “held laughter and dreams” but now it is empty and lonely and sad. Then he writes:
1 From “Mule Variations” by Tom Waits, 1999. |
