Family Matters

There are few things I enjoy more than trying to predict what others might ask before they actually do. I especially enjoy this exercise in my role as parent. Many parents I think possess this internal radar when they are about to get hit up for something: money to buy the latest thing that is all the rage, something everyone at school has, or to stay up late or permission to go out or sleep over someone’s house. When I see the set up coming, my usual and immediate answer is a quick “no” not merely because I know it makes my kids crazy but also to show that I knew what was coming all along. I don’t what to lose my parental edge, you see. Then I allow the case to be made, and I will more often than not give in to most of the requests.

Predicting a question before it’s asked is certainly not limited to parent/child relations, it can also happen around the office when co-workers fish around for some time off or perhaps for a raise or promotion. Here at the Cathedral, in our ongoing educational process about our current restoration work - that I dutifully keep before us as a congregation - we have tried to predict as many questions about the project as we could imagine. Why the restoration? Why do it now and not later? What is included, how much will it all cost, and how will we pay for it? These are questions we have tried to predict would be asked by you.

My confessed penchant for anticipating questions allows me to see something in common with the tactics of the main character of Advent and our gospel this morning, John the Baptist. John too was ready with an immediate response for the many people coming from the cities and villages to experience baptism and listen to his preaching. Granted, John has a strange way of warming up the crowds: he first calls them “you brood of vipers” which was another way to say “sons and daughters of snakes.” It might not sound that bad to our ears -- more strange than anything -- but imagine what it conveyed in a society where family lineage was all-important to have someone associate one’s heritage with that of a snake. Let’s say it got the crowd’s attention.

As we journey further into Advent and move into Christmas, one is reminded how matters of family and ancestry fill the stories we hear. The gospel writers go to great length to tell us the towns people came from and who their ancestors were. Luke’s gospel tells us that the mother of John the Baptist was Elizabeth, who was a descendent from Aaron, the brother of Moses and first in the line of priests. John’s father Zechariah was also a priest in the Temple. Mary, the mother of Jesus, would spend three months of her pregnancy in the house of Elizabeth her relative – perhaps her aunt. The gospel tells us that Joseph would travel with Mary to Bethlehem because he was descended from the house of the family of David. Matthew’s gospels begins by setting Jesus' lineage back fourteen generations to the exile in Babylon, then fourteen more generations back to King David, and fourteen generation again to Abraham. Genealogy, heritage, and family matter in the Bible.

Which makes it all the more interesting when John the Baptist throws a proverbial bucket of cold water on the ties that are supposed to give the people their faith identity. As the crowds approached, John predicts the question they never got a chance to ask: “do not begin to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor,’ for God is able from these stones to raise up children of Abraham.” John offers a cautionary counter-balance to the family dominated stories that fill both Advent and Christmas.

Think for a moment about how and why most people throughout history and today believe what they do. It is not first and primarily about personal choice, but rather because we are born into a faith identity. Born a Jew, a Muslim, a Christian, a Hindu. We are brought up, taught the basic tenets of the faith, and then in time we as adults either embrace the faith of our ancestry or move into another direction or no direction at all.

The message of John is this: do not come out of the wilderness thinking that you have any advantage based on something you had no say over – the family, traditions, race, tribe in which you were born – but come if you want to examine your own lives and change your behavior. Decide for yourself what kind of person you want to become and what kind of society you would want to live in and the condition of the world you would want to pass down to future generations.

John introduces and then Jesus embodies that yes, family, heritage, culture, and ancestry are important -- family matters -- but it is not everything. Should a person really want to accept God’s invitation to a new kind of life, then with it comes a new kind of family and heritage. One not limited to biology, race or social class. John de-couples the experience of faith with the accident of our birth.

What matters then? Results. A tree is only good if it bears fruit, so too for a life of faith. Put to our modern ears, a life must be productive, but not productive in the ways of manufacturing and commerce, but in ways of living that reflect what the good news of Jesus Christ is all about: to lift up, to bring light into darkness, to heal what is broken, to repair damages done, to protect the innocent, to search for the lost.

John coaxed the crowd through day-to-day decisions that they could make to demonstrate that they got this connection to a new way of living. Anyone who had more than they needed should seriously think about sharing it with someone who had little or nothing. How do we as a society known for our abundance and consumption hear these words? John said “collect no more than the amount prescribed for you.” Do the right thing.

He said it to those who too often make excuses that they do what they do because everyone else does it – whether in their case it was collecting too many taxes – or perhaps in our case today of cheating on one’s taxes, or downloading music illegally from the internet, or cutting corners we think no one will notice. John calls these actions out for the dead end they are likely to become.

What can you and I take from John’s wilderness message? In one way it can be an invitation to free us from measuring this season solely for how it fits within the narrowly defined or imagined scenes of holiday movies or the many family drenched Christmas letters that many of us receive in the mail. So much of the stress or sadness or emptiness that can accompany this festive season comes about if and when “all is not well” with family life. Loved ones are missed. Soldiers once again this year will spend another Christmas far away from home and family. When sons and daughters in college decide to go skiing instead of coming home. The empty nest can seem really empty this time of year. Divorced parents enter in the annual negotiation of who gets the kids Christmas Eve and who Christmas morning. Newly married couples who live near both sets of in-laws must make careful decisions about where they will have dinner or open presents. Some people can make or break the joy embedded in this season by allowing the idealized family portrait or lack thereof to determine if all is well. As important as family is, the message of the season is much greater. God’s sense of family has always been larger than our understanding. A family where there are no outsiders, orphans, estranged relatives, crazy uncles, feuding siblings, and where no one leaves the dinner table in a huff.

In this time of expectation and waiting where it is difficult at times to see through the many sounds, mixed messages and clutter of the season, we are reminded of how faith is not so much a birthright but a way of living. How we live matters. How we spend our money and time matters. The things we do with what we have been given matter. How we conduct ourselves in our work, at school, in our relationships matter.

God cares less about who we were yesterday -- what we did or did not do, the mistakes we might have made, the opportunities that might have been squandered – rather what God really cares about is who we are willing to be today and who we might become tomorrow.