The Family Mission Statement

Third Week of Easter

I John 3:1-7

We began listening to this letter last week, to find out what God might be saying to us through it.  So let’s back up a bit and get a running start.  This is a letter written to encourage a congregation that has been through a crisis.  Because of some disagreement we can’t fully put together, some have left the congregation.  Those who remain are shaken and confused by what’s happened.

Last week we listened to the letter’s beginning.  It opens by reminding us that faith is about fellowship and friendship, more than about believing a list of doctrines.  And it strikes a posture of modesty when it reminds us that we cannot demonize or scapegoat others, no matter how much they’ve hurt us.  “If we say that we have no sin, we make God a liar and the truth is not in us.  But if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just and will forgive our sins.”  Broken relationships and hurt feelings might tempt us to point a finger at what others have done, but this letter reminds us how important it is that we practice the regular confession of sin.

 

This week’s reading asks us to imagine ourselves in a new light.  In chapter 1 we hear that Jesus Christ has made us friends with God and friends with one another.  Now the image shifts as we hear that Jesus Christ has made us God’s children.  He has loved us by including us in a new family.  So now we’re kids in God’s household.  And we all need a little help learning about the expectations and guidelines. 

Maybe we can imagine this reading along the lines of a family mission statement.  You know that most businesses and organizations have mission statements.  But did you know that many families have mission statements now?  If you work in a business that has a mission statement but doesn’t pay any attention to it, you probably downplay the importance of mission statements in general. 

But let me make a little case for the family mission statement.  There are all sorts of blogs and websites offering to help you write a statement of purpose for your family.  Some of the areas a family mission statement might include the way money will be saved and spent, the importance of education, the amount of family time you will spend together, the importance of activities outside the home and school, the responsibilities each member of the family will have in the household.

My guess is that all families already have one.  They just don’t know it.  There is some cluster of core values, some set of expectations that shape how the family lives together.  A few families go to the trouble of writing this down.  For most families it is never explicitly articulated.

We talk pretty regularly with our kids about what we value and what we expect.  It’s never been written down as a mission statement.  But our kids know that we value curiosity, adventure, and sharing what we have.  And then there are just some habits we’ve gotten into that we like.  For example, we have a family rule that there are no electronics during the week.  So after school, there’s no TV, no phones, no computer, ipad, or video games.  The benefits of this policy have been wonderful.  We don’t have to fight about it each night.  They know what the rules are.  And so they read a lot, like we do.  (So I guess reading books is another family value).

Sometimes the mission statement doesn’t work.  Early on we told our kids we didn’t care about grades.  We told them formal education wasn’t as important as the path of exploration and discovery.  We taught them to value learning and curiosity over grades.  But . . . this policy was instituted before our oldest ever received a grade card.  Long story short, we have reversed course!  We had to announce to our kids that there had been a policy change: all we care about now are your grades.  Actually do your homework, and turn it in.  We don’t care if you’re learning or not!

 So what is this letter teaching us about what it means to live together as God’s children?  Why does it matter that we see ourselves as part of a new family, gathered by Jesus Christ, and gathered around Jesus Christ?

The first thing to notice is the importance of how you got here.  How you tell your story as a child in this family is crucial.  And it goes like this: we were included in this new family because God’s love was “lavished” on us.  So we need to talk a little bit about “lavish” love.  We might not use the word a lot.  But sometimes the life of faith calls us to expand our vocabulary a little.  To do something “lavishly” is to spare no expense.  When I baptize children, three times I scoop water from the font on their heads.  And I get as much water as I can.  I want the water to run down over their heads.  I want them to experience baptism as outpouring excess of God’s love for them.  I’m all for water conservation, but not during baptism.

Because of Jesus Christ, you are part of a family where children are gathered in from elsewhere.  You belong to a family not naturally yours – you’ve been born of the Spirit.  In times of crisis and distress, it’s good to be reminded that you’ve been loved into a new family.  Not just tolerated, but lavished with love.  You need not worry about your own status.  And you are forbidden from acting as if you’re more important than others.  All of us together have been loved by God and showered with gifts through Jesus Christ.  The universe in all its complexity, the world around you, and you yourself – all of it is here because God has loved it into existence.  And once here, all of us are held and sustained by a love that believes in us more than we believe in ourselves.

Now there’s a problem of course.  You will have to learn to live this way, even if others do not recognize or reinforce it.  In the terms of the letter, the “world” does not know you as a child of God, and will not treat you that way.  Others might demean you, disrespect you, trivialize you, and discount you.  But you cannot lose sight of who you are as God’s child and how you’ve been loved into a new family.  So this is going to take some practice and some imaginative effort on your part.  For a congregation that has experienced a confusing division, the letter reminds us that as children we will need to remain within the rhythms of this family’s life so that we can grow deeper in our awareness of who we are and how we live together.

The disturbance or crisis in the lives of the letter’s original hearers involved dangerous teaching.  “Do not let anyone lead you astray” (v. 7).  So there has arisen within the congregation some leaders who are causing trouble because their teaching contradicts the values held most dear by God’s new family.

Now the letter does not quite come out and say exactly how the congregation is being led astray.  We have to read between the lines and guess a little bit.  It looks to me that some in the congregation were teaching that life with God doesn’t really involve our bodies.  Physical things, matter, material, flesh, bodies – these aren’t God’s concern.  In this new life in Jesus Christ, we have transcended or escaped our bodies and are now living the life of the Spirit.

I get the sense that some were teaching that Jesus’ resurrection was an escape from his body, the release of his real spiritual being from its encasement in flesh.  And if that’s what you believe, then you would come to see the goal of our lives as leaving the arena of concrete bodies, and flying up into a new kind of life, above the body, lived in the Spirit. 

To be fair, it is difficult to make sense of Jesus’ resurrected body.  On the one hand he can appear out of nowhere, can materialize through locked doors, and he ascended into heaven.  All these things lead us to imagine that this glorified body doesn’t have much heft to it.  And yet the risen Jesus invited Thomas to feel the wounds in his wrists and his side.  He ate fish with his disciples on the sea shore.  And when Paul wrestles with this question of resurrected, glorified bodies in I Corinthians 15, he seems to raise as many questions as he answers. 

This letter does not pretend to know what our glorified bodies will be like.  But instead, it strikes a note of modesty.  “We don’t know what we will become.”  We are God’s beloved children now, but when through death we share in the glory of the risen Christ, we don’t have language for that yet.  But we do know this: “when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.” 

This simple but powerful phrase goes a long way towards opening the heart of the letter to us: we shall be like him.  To experience God’s lavish love, to be included in this new family, means that you have been ushered into a new life where growing likeness to Jesus Christ is one of the family’s core values.

This is the theme of vs. 3-7: because we hope in him, we purify ourselves, as he is pure.  We are not to continue to sin, as there is no sin in him.  We do what is right, because he is righteous.  These are three ways of saying the same thing.  Life in this family as children of God involves growth towards likeness with Jesus himself.

Some were leading others astray by teaching that Jesus’ body wasn’t very important.  And if Jesus’ body wasn’t very important, then ours aren’t either.  And if your body isn’t part of what God loves and values, then what you do with your body doesn’t much matter.  You can abuse and neglect it.  You can let it go to pot in terms of physical health.  You can ignore its needs for good food, play, rest, and affection.  You can starve it or gorge it.  You can give in to its every whim and craving.  You can grow careless about how you use it and how you treat the bodies of others. 

All through the letter, we are reminded to confess that Jesus is the Messiah, and that Jesus came in the flesh.  God appeared among us as a living, personal body.  And God has included us in this new family in a way that calls for attention to Jesus’ body, to our own bodies, and to the bodies of others. 

So the family’s mission statement needs some clarification due to a crisis.  This is often how it happens in families.  And the letter is written to make clear to us that we are now called God’s children.  Having this name and identity is to come to understand ourselves as the recipients of God’s lavish love.  God’s lavish love for you is not exhausted in the way God’s welcomes you into the new family.  This love also begins to shape you so that you become more like Jesus Christ.  You are called to be faithful to God and others in the concrete ordinariness of your body.  You are called to wash and feed your body, rest your body, care for your body and the bodies of others. 

We cannot yet know what the future holds in terms of God’s promises.  We confess hope in the resurrection, that our bodies will be glorified.  But we aren’t there yet.  And we aren’t allowed to rush to a way of life that disregards or downplays the importance of learning to love the world in all its materiality, in its enduring physicality and fleshiness.  We don’t find God by trying to fly above our bodies and their needs.  We find God in food, celebration, song, rest, work and play.  In the faces of friends.  In the way we use our hands and feet to bless others who are hungry or cold or in prison.

Being part of God’s family comes with enormous, breathtaking privileges.   But also with serious responsibilities.  Jesus loved God and others faithfully, in a way that reflected wholeness.  He loved God with heart, soul, mind and strength.  And you’ve been included in this family so that you can learn from him.  So that God can use the Spirit to shape your life to look more and more like his – joyful, generous, caring and compassionate.  That’s what we value.