Meditation on Family

This was based on the text of Ephesians 2:11-22

Those of you who attended chapel last year got to know me and my family. My wife Stacia and two-year-old son Avery came as often as possible to worship and I always felt blessed by how readily they were accepted into this community. Though, Stacia and Avery will often be away this year at the Fairfax/San Anselmo Children’s Center and therefore make fewer appearances in chapel, my experiences with them make me humble to offer a brief word on the meaning of family here at SFTS.

A Seminary, any more than a Church, is not a conventional family. We’re not genetically related. We didn’t grow up together. We don’t know each other’s neuroses intimately, all the better to prey on them and exacerbate our siblings. We don’t have to be together whether we like it or not. We have the choice to go away. No, a Seminary community doesn’t look much like a family, as we understand it.

And Yet! … And yet, I am here today to say that this is exactly what God’s family looks like. This… motley crew of adventurers embarking on a bold and terrifying journey of discipleship together… this is the family God is assembling.

The Worship team welcomed you on Monday to Stewart Chapel and to worship. We welcomed you on Tuesday to Montgomery Chapel and to prayer, but I have a secret to share with you. It is a secret that is not very well guarded, because you know it already in your hearts. It’s not me or the other chaplain’s assistants who welcomes you. It’s not Charles or Dan who welcomes you. It’s not the Dean Jana Childers or the President Phil Butin or the Board of Trustees or the Auxiliary or the GTU or the PCUSA who welcomes you. It is Jesus Christ who welcomes you.

Now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ. You who once were far away.

But you should beware because Jesus doesn’t offer you a shallow welcome. You’re not welcomed only to this place, or these facilities, or this curriculum. Jesus isn’t content until he has made the two – ONE and has destroyed the barriers, the dividing walls of discomfort and unfamiliar faces, so that in this ONE body we are reconciled to God through the cross. And this ONE body is God’s family. Us, together with all the saints living and dead, Jesus will bind, is binding, has bound us together.

And if Jesus the Christ is not content for us to be anything less than God’s family then we should not be either. We shouldn’t settle for being colleagues or classmates, acquaintances or friends. If we are family then we can’t let each other bear our trials in solitude. If we are family then we can’t sit down to supper unless the bell has been rung and everyone knows that the soup is hot. And if we are family then we notice when one of us is missing from the table. We wonder where each student, each teacher, each spouse, each child, each staff member, where each and every member of our family is when the supper is on the table and I’m asking you to pass more bread and you’re asking me to pour more wine. We wonder and we go looking. That’s how families behave and we have been welcomed by Christ, every single one of us, into this family – this strange and wonderful collection of God’s children.

We have been called here by Christ, individually yes, but also collectively. Consequently you are no longer foreigners and aliens, but members of God’s household. I am honored to call you brothers and sisters.