Who is Family?

What does it mean to make a new family?  To make a family might seem a like a huge undertaking.  You need to get married to have in-laws, or have more kids (biological, adopted, foster, step etc).  Growing a family can seem limited to looking at how we are connected by blood or marriage.  But there is so much more to God’s “family.”

My spouse, kids and I just had a great afternoon and dinner with some distant cousins that we had never met before.  They live about an hour outside St Louis.  To be fair, we had met some of them before.  But we met their extended family for the first time and got to spend some good time with them.  We have had completely different upbringings, in different states, different understandings of who was considered “family”.  Yet we all had a great time together (it helped the kids all got along).

We gained four family members in one afternoon!  We also found out that they are part of an even larger extended family network.  It was both amazing and somewhat overwhelming to realize we were connected to this larger group of people that, technically, are “family.”  They joy of having people to feel close to and connect to made my heart swell with love.  We had not planned to add these “new family members” into our “original family” system, yet it was God’s plan to grow our family and we didn’t even know it!

It is also sad that Julia, our beloved secretary, is leaving.  In her time of being called here, God has allowed her to become like family to many of us.  Sharing in the life and trials of our congregation.  She and her husband Mark have shared their Mission work with us, their passion and their gifts and friendship.  Our congregation is like a family, with all the blessings and baggage that come with the title.  But our faith draws us into a new kind of family.  Julia may be Lutheran, but we are one in the family of Faith with an abiding hope in Jesus in God’s loving family.

We affirm that God’s idea of family is so much bigger and more diverse than some narrow ideas of family. In the Church we find a new kind of family, a family that God calls together not because of blood or marriage, but because of something deeper: FAITH.  When we have true faith in Jesus, we become part of a larger non-traditional family of faith.  We all start as strangers, coworkers or neighbors, and become something more: a community of believers, tied to each other with bonds stronger than we know. I give thanks for the family in my life, by blood, and by faith!

Pastor Karl