The Family of "God"
Every once in a while you hear someone jokingly or cynically say, "God gave us our family but, mercifully, we get to choose our friends!" A recent poll indicates that, when asked what word springs to mind when we hear the word "Family," most respondents came back with "dysfunctional." In short, the whole notion of what a family is and does has been changing a lot in recent years. The change is not for the better. Gone is the former American ideal of Mom, Dad, 2.3 children, a dog, and the Volvo station wagon. Now I'm not suggesting that model was so wonderful but what's replaced it? Two-job parents, absentee parents, drug culture, latch-key kids, routine media depiction's of violence, inadequate schools, and all sorts of other factors have made us wonder whether family has any real meaning these days at all.

In the midst of all this, the Church still works hard at trying to bring people together as "God's Family." We just baptized nine children into membership at our Easter Vigil. We can take that to mean that they are now a part of the people who gather to worship at Second and Adams or we can take it to mean that they are now related in some new and special way to ALL people in the whole world-everyone whom God has created: God's Family.

What I'm getting at is that we Christians believe God has made (and is making) the whole human race into the BEST kind of family we can imagine-a loving, caring, faithful global household in which we seek each other's good just as much as our own. That's the clear and unequivocal goal that is articulated again and again throughout the Bible. It has staggering dimensions. Whatever else, whether we like it or not, it means that Mr. Arafat, the Mansons, Fidel Castro, the Unibomber, and even Jerry Springer are all members-along with you and yours-in the Family of God. However much we may want to hate, reject, and disown some or all of those folks you just can't do it. Even though within our day-to-day life at Calvary Church, within the city of Memphis and all around the planet, it may seem like we human beings are engaged in perpetuating chaos and confusion, in God's eyes we are still sisters and brothers. The fact that we can't see or understand that Vision is the proof that we are tragic victims of our own self-centeredness. All of us- the whole world around- are flawed and fragmented. We desperately need God's forgiveness and grace if we are ever to find the harmony, unity, and peace to which God is calling us-and toward which, in spite of every sign to the contrary, God is working hard to lead us.

During the season of Easter we celebrate the new birth that is ours through the Risen Christ. God wants us to see things in a new light. God wants us to understand our world as a single Household-one in which we learn to live together in spite of our differences, faults, and quirks. Like our own nuclear biological family it takes a lot of living to make a house a home. It's a process, one that happens gradually, day-by-day, glacially. We are all like patients in a hospital for sinners, not statues in a museum for saints. Each one of us needs lots of understanding, forgiveness, and patience. Those are precisely the core values that lie at the heart of being a family.

Faithfully,
~Bob Hansel