March 3 2024
Mark 3:31-35
I talk often about my three kids, Elizabeth, Sarah and Matt but, to be honest, we actually claim another young lady named Taylyn as one of our own. Taylyn came into our life in the fall of 2011. She was a friend of Sarah’s. Sarah has always had a knack of looking out for the people on the margins who need watching out for, and, knowing this, I told her if any of her friends needed a place to crash they were always welcome. You have no idea how interesting life can get when you make a promise like this. So, Sarah came home one day in the fall of her senior year and said that Taylyn’s Mom was kicking her out of the house and she had no where to go, so would it be alright if she could stay with us, just for a little while? As it turns out, it was actually Taylyn’s foster Mom who no longer wanted her. Taylyn found herself living with her because her parents were drug addicts. So, here was a girl who had experienced more abandonment than most people should in a lifetime. What she needed was someone who would be there for her as she made her way in the world and God called us to be those people for her. So, Sarah and I drove over to where Taylyn lived, found all of her belongings shoved into their garage and loaded it all up and brought her to live with us. Now, I would like to tell you that bringing a girl with abandonment issues into a family was an easy thing to do but in all actuality, it was rough. Matt and Elizabeth were not very happy having this stranger with hang-ups suddenly crash their party. When they wondered just why we would do such a thing, I told them that I simply did not have a choice. You see, the choice I made to pledge my allegiance to Jesus meant that I had no other choice than to bring Taylyn into our life and treat her as one of our own because the truth is that she really is family, one of those who make up the one, great, big, happy, family Jesus came to create.
You see, what most people just don’t realize is that doing the will of God, something that we pledge to do every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, is tied into just who we consider to be family. At least this is what Mark records Jesus as telling us when he says that, ‘…whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” Paul also understood this because he writes in the first chapter of Ephesians that our Heavenly Father has, “…made known to us the mystery of his will , according to his purpose that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in heaven and on earth.” We might say that God’s will is that we know ourselves as being part of one, great, big, happy family, us and God, at last together forever.
Now, it should come as no surprise that uniting us together into one, great big, happy, family should be what God is up to because right at the beginning of his journey with his people, God instructed them that they were to pray a certain prayer which they did for thousands of years. That prayer is called the Shema, in Hebrew which means, “Hear”. Every morning God’s people were to, as it were, listen up, turn your ear toward God, step in and hear what God has to say to them. Every morning, they heard: “The Lord our God is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all of your soul, and with all of your power.” Even though God’s people prayed this prayer, over and over again, the significance of what they were praying for was lost on them. We know this to be true because Jesus taught that this was not just a prayer but it is instead the greatest commandment, the ultimate way that we are to structure our life. So, we are forced to ask ourselves just how are we to structure our lives around this idea, ‘The Lord our God is one Lord.” What does this have to say about how we as people are supposed to live together, because after all this is ultimately what the law of God is all about. Well, listen to what Paul says about this very verse as he teaches us from the third chapter of Romans, “…is God of the God of the Jews only? Is he not the God of all of the other nations as well? Yes, God is their God as well since God is one…” What Paul had become convinced of was that if there was only one God then we as humanity must think of ourselves as one people. This is quite interesting because this is not the way that Paul had originally thought about God even though he had prayed the Shema faithfully every day. Paul was bent on persecution of the early Christians because their God simply could not be the same as his God, or could he be? What had changed his mind is that he had an encounter with King Jesus.
You see, when people have encounters with King Jesus they begin to realize that here is a king who rules in the power of life. After Jesus made his proclamation, “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the good news.”, he went forth from there proving the truth of this statement. Jesus demonstrated his authority over unclean spirits, he healed those who were sick and oppressed by demons. Jesus went forth and cleansed people who had a dreaded skin disease, and he not only healed a paralyzed man he also forgave his sins. Jesus even says, in so many words, that he had plundered the very house of Satan. All of these different situations had one thing in common and that is that they induced fear. Imagine how afraid one might be to suddenly be seized upon by demonic spirits, or to contract a skin disease which meant that you had to be expelled from your home and family? Imagine the dread to believe that you had offended God so greatly that you cannot fathom how you will ever have a right relationship with him again? Haven’t we all been terrified by the dark and evil forces of this world which seem oft so strong, and we wonder is God really the ruler yet? In each and every terrifying situation, Jesus enters into them and commands that the fear be gone. Jesus gathers disciples to go with him, to witness to the truth that the King of life defeats every source which causes in us the fear of death. These followers would come away from their experience with Jesus having the same exclamation as Paul at the end of the eighth chapter of Romans, where he is convinced that, ‘…neither death nor life, nor angels or rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height or depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in our King, Jesus our Lord.” No matter what might cause fear to rise up in us we can be assured that the love of God will be there to counter our worries.
The result of what Jesus our king did against these forces of fear is that he defeated all of them. In their place came a sense of peace, souls that at last had found rest. Here in his presence was what all previous Sabbaths pointed to, this time when God would return and the people would enter into a time of rest from all of their fears. This is why Jesus could say that he is the Lord of the Sabbath because he is the one who has conquered all of our sources of fear and replaced them with an everlasting source of peace.
All of this we can all agree really is good news, but you might be wondering just what does this have to do with God making us all into one, great, big, happy family? The answer is that only in an environment of everlasting peace, a peace founded through the actions of our life giving King Jesus, can we go from our birth families to living in the big family of God. You see, our birth families are God’s way that we enter into the world. Our families are the place where we hopefully experience love and where we can demonstrate our love to one another. It is in our birth families where all that we need for life is hopefully given to us, a place where we can grow and hopefully mature, a safe and secure place to figure out who we are. In spite of all these good intentions though, sometimes the people in our families may have left us down, they may not have always said or done the right thing, simply because we are all a lot more broken than we care to admit. So, families also need to be places of forgiveness and grace because it is a terrible burden to always have to be everything to everybody. What we figure out from life in our birth families is that the ones who love us are the ones that we show our love to. We do so because when we love those who love us we have a much better chance at getting what we need to live.
So, our birth families are where we begin and we go along until we have an encounter with King Jesus. Here is one who demonstrates that he is able and willing to conquer all our fears. Here is one who proves that he and he alone is our life giving King. No longer then must we consider that it is our families and the people who are in it are the ones who give us life. No, now we find that it is King Jesus who proves that he is worthy to hold our life in his hands. No longer do we need to love and expect love in return for now we know the love of our King Jesus which nothing can separate us from. Peace comes upon us because Jesus our King has conquered all of our fears, and it is this peace that we now pass on to those around us. In this peace making, this is when Jesus says we have gone from life in our birth family to life in the one, great, big, happy, family of God. As strange as it might seem, here is where we hear King Jesus call us his brothers and sisters.
You see, this one, great, big, happy family God is bringing forth has to be made up of those who are willing to love without any expectations in return because this is the very way that God has so loved us. Jesus, in the fifth chapter of Matthew teaches us, “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you might be sons and daughters of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and he makes it rain on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors love those who love them. If you only greet your brothers and your sisters, what more are you doing then anyone else in the world? Don’t all of the people of the nations love those who love them? You must reach the goal God has for you, to love those who show you no love in return because your Heavenly Father, he loves those who show no love to him.” Of course, we know this is how our Heavenly Father loves all people because this is how he has loved us. As Paul describes in the fifth chapter of Romans, “it was while we were still weak, at the right time, our King died for those who were ungodly. ..God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, our King died for us…while we were his enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son…” You see, if we know that we have been loved with a love like this why should we ever care if someone does not respond when we love them?
To live as people who know that there is only one, true, living God therefore, means that we must be willing to live as one, great, big, happy family. The only way that we can be this one, great, big, happy family of God is that we love each other with this same love that God first showed to us. Yet, the truth is that love simply cannot be commanded. Love like this can only be brought to life by the King who rules by the power of life. When our king Jesus conquerors every source of our fears, he creates an environment of peace where love can flourish. This is why even though the Shema was prayed for thousands of years this one, great, big, happy family spanning round the globe never happened. Only as God came to us as one of us, as one of the family, could we witness the authority of our King Jesus over all that frightens us. Only in the presence of the peace that comes in the presence of our king can we experience peace in our presence. Now we know that God in his power serves us by giving us life, a greater life, a life in his one, great, big happy family where all find love and love is given with no strings attached.
This bringing all of life together in one, great, big, happy family is the very will of God. As Jesus teaches us in the sixth chapter of Matthew, “..your will be done as it is in heaven so may it be done on earth.” In heaven, there is one God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit who are three persons bound together in eternal love. So here on earth, we are many persons who are to be bound together in eternal love for this is the will of God that we, his people that he created, bear his image throughout the world. What better way to do this than to know ourselves as the one, great, big happy family of God? You see, there really is no God’s will for your life and something called God’s will for my life. This is simply is not what is found in scripture. No, there is the will of God, which is that everything in heaven and earth will be united together. When we know this, then the only question is, are we going to align ourselves with the will of God in how we live or are we going to go against the will of God to our own peril? Can you see how such a response can actually simplify how we do life with each other? I mean, if we understand that God is doing everything necessary to bring everything and everybody together into one, great, big, happy family, then when we interact with each other all we have to do is ask ourselves, am I doing something that goes along with this plan and purpose of God or am I actually doing something that is opposing this new creation that God is bringing forth? I heard a pastor the other day call these kind of decisions, top button decisions because just like if you put the top button of your shirt in the wrong hole every button after it will be wrong. If we don’t first align ourselves with what God is doing, if we don’t allow what our King Jesus has done to bring us into a place of peace, if you refuse to be a member God’s one great, big, happy family then none of our other decisions after that will be right. If you are ready to love with reckless abandonment, then hear Jesus say to you, welcome to the family, the one, great, big, happy, family of God. Amen.
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