About two hours west of Chicago, west of Wheaton, west of DeKalb, along the Rock River in Lee County, is Dixon, Illinois.  The nearest towns are Gap Grove and Prairieville.  Highways 88 and 52 intersect near there, as do state roads 26 and 38.  In most ways Dixon, Illinois, is a rather non-descript piece of Midwest real estate.

 

But its reputation has been considerably enhanced by the fame and fortune achieved by two of its favorite children.  Louella Parsons (the Hollywood gossip columnist) came from Dixon as did President Ronald Reagan.  Even though Reagan’s childhood there must have been difficult because of an alcoholic father, he seemed to be genuinely fond of the place.  He wrote in his autobiography that “One of the benefits of my success was being invited to visit Dixon for the annual Petunia Festival.”

 

Just a few weeks ago I returned to my place of origin to attend my high school reunion in Seattle.  To mention a number would be too scary for you and me, nevertheless it has been a long time and all sorts of memories of family and friends and roots were stirred up.  It is probably true that you can’t go home again, but it is important to reflect from time-to-time on the meaning of family in our lives.  And that’s what I want to do this morning within the context of a couple of the goals we have set for ourselves as a church.

 

For the last month I have been reflecting with you on our church’s strategic objectives for the next five years.  You need to know that these were not arrived at one night in a smoke-filled room out of thin air.  The input that you as a congregation gave to the Planning Committee and the Session was taken seriously and two of your highest priorities had to do with youth and the family.

 

So what else is new!  That is what the family values people are constantly telling us.  Without rock solid families the moral erosion of our country will cascade into an avalanche that will bury us all.  The apocalyptic edge to the rhetoric should not veil the truth of the belief.  Healthy families are important to our well-being and we want to support them and encourage them and protect them.  My only problem with the family values emphasis is that a rather narrow group has co-opted the discussion.

 

In preparation for this sermon I decided to go to Google and see what came up when I pushed the “family” button.  I was hoping to capture the insights of current research or access the reflections of some of the scholars in the field.  Instead Google sent me directly to Dobson’s “Focus on the Family” and The Family Research Council’s website which was headlined “Defending Family, Faith, and Freedom”.  We know the family is important but my, that is a heavy load for it to carry -- the defense of family, faith, and freedom.  Make no mistake the family is important but sometimes it is difficult enough to live in the same house let alone to carry responsibility for the future of civilization.

 

Of course, family is one of those words you don’t have to define.  We know what a family is from experience, and we know what a family is from the images that have bombarded us over the last 60 years.  It is interesting how those images have changed.  Early on and within the memory of the grey heads in this congregation there was “Ozzie and Harriet”, “Father Knows Best”, and “Leave it to Beaver” -- even my namesake -- “The Life of Riley”.  The roles and the numbers were carefully choreographed to remind us what the perfect family looked like.  Father worked outside of the home while Mother managed the home with such efficiency and ease that she had plenty of time to have her hair done every day and present herself impeccably dressed when her husband returned home so that she could cater to his every need.  The kids were cute and precocious whose acts of rebellion and experimentation seldom went further than lighting firecrackers under the neighbor’s window.

 

But our images gradually changed as our understanding of reality changed.  The Brady Bunch heralded the reality of the blended family, and then Candace Bergen introduced us to challenges of the single parent.  It is interesting that while we have been introduced to the reality of gay relationships we have yet to see to a situation comedy focusing on same sex family life.

 

Dobson and his cohorts continue to hold up an ideal of the family as father and mother, brother and sister, us four and no more!  This is advertised as the Christian-based model.  How fascinating!  Especially when we turn to the Old Testament and find the practice of polygamy to have been the dominant expression!  But some will say, “That’s why we call it the ‘Old’ Testament.”

 

Yup!  And when we do flip to the second half of the Bible there it is, just as predicted -- one man for one woman.  But our ultimate authority, Jesus, had a way of further confusing the situation.  Remember how he said, “If you do not hate father and mother, brother and sister, you cannot be my disciple.”  We’ve been puzzling over that one since Jesus first uttered it.  But then we puzzle over a lot of things he said.  Furthermore, he doesn’t help us out when on the edge of his teen years he runs away from home to the Temple, and when his anxious parents finally find him, he brushes them off with the hurtful remark, “I must be about my father’s business.”

 

Nevertheless, I’m willing to let him have that moment of teenage rebellion, but what are we to do with that time near the end of his life when presented with his family he seemed to cast them aside by including them in the great mass of his disciples when he said, “These are my brothers and sisters.”

 

Please understand, this is not to undermine the importance of the primary family unit whether that is understood narrowly as nuclear or broadly as that “bonded circle of belonging where love and acceptance and support are present”.  The important thing here is not to reject the primary family unit but to support it and strengthen it in every way possible.  I will give a nod here to the issue of gay marriage.  As my friend, Dr. David Meyers of Hope College put it in his recent book, how can we not provide societal and spiritual support when two people seek to enter a monogamous and committed relationship?

 

The question before us this morning is how can the church provide the kind of support for youth and family whatever its configuration that will contribute to their growth and well-being?  For us this will be an on-going question that we will ask in every part of our church’s life.  And as we ask it we need to ask it informed and guided by scripture.

 

If there is one book in the Bible that can be described as “The Book of Family Values”, it is the book of Ephesians.  It is in Ephesians that we have that well-known and often misunderstood passage about the relationship between husbands and wives.  “Wives be subject to your husbands as to the Lord; and husbands love your wives as Christ loved the Church.”  How sad that some have taken away from this passage a hierarchal view of marriage that can justify all sorts of abuse when the clear message is one of mutual service and commitment after the model of the sacrificial love of Christ.

 

Furthermore, in chapter six the writer discusses the family duties of parents and children.  As important as each of these duties are, they are not to be understood in isolation but rather in the context of the passage read as our scripture lesson this morning.  For here the writer summarizes the whole purpose of the Christian family -- “to grow up!”  Verse 14: “So that we may no longer be children…but rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

 

Some of us may have heard that phrase in a different context when a parent said to us with some exasperation, “Grow up!  For goodness sakes, grow up and act your age!”  If the truth be known, at whatever age we are, the secret desire of our hearts is to grow up.  I love that Peter Drucker quote, “Here I am 55 years old and I am still trying to figure out what to do when I grow up.”

 

It’s hard for a child or a teenager to fathom what that might mean when uttered by an adult because to them growing up means attaining a certain level of responsibility.  It means having a certain level of knowledge.  It means receiving a certain level of respect from those whom we consider to be adults.  It means not being looked down upon, not being patted on the head, not being excluded from important conversations.

 

Therefore, the question for the church is how do we help our families and our youth grow up?

 

The purpose of the family is to grow up and this is not always as easy as it may sound because as we all know growing up involves change and change involves pain -- “no pain, no gain” as they say.  Before I let you out of here I want to make a few modest suggestions as to how we can fulfill this goal of faith and the church.

 

1. First, the unique contribution of the church can be to look at the family wholistically and not partially.  We have been raised with a snap-shot view of the family which does not capture it on the wide screen in all of its wonder and complexity.  Over the last 75 years the church has operated with a corporate view of ministry organizing itself by division and even encouraging competition one with the other.  So Christian Education never talks to Youth, and Youth never talks to Mission, and, of course, none of them ever talk with Music because what could Christian Education, and Youth, and Mission ever have to do with Music.

 

Friends, that is not what we mean when we talk about the family of the church.  That is why your Session has set goals that cut across our whole life together as a church in order to help us to realize that our ministry to youth and families, our missions and our stewardship are not just the prerogative of one group or committee.  As an example that is why you have seen our youth more involved in worship leadership and even the serving of communion.

 

2. Secondly, we can help each other understand our gifts -- not just spiritual but also all of the positives that we see in each other.  This has been such a strength of Westminster Church over many years that it barely needs to be mentioned.  It is what makes this such a positive and satisfying place to be.  Our men’s quartet is fond of singing, “There’s a sweet, sweet spirit in this place”, and there always will be as we understand that whatever our differences we will always be stronger when we affirm our strengths in the spirit of Christ.

 

Frankly, I truly think that this is one of the marks of growing up -- that we are secure enough in ourselves that we can build up others rather than tear them down.

 

3. Another, and the last that I will mention now though there are certainly others, is that we will grow up as the family of God to the extent that we help each other understand our core values.  They are highlighted in our scripture lesson and each is woven like the threads of a tapestry into the ministry of every healthy church:

 

1. To affirm the dignity of every person as created and loved by God.
2. To teach the knowledge of the Son of God.
3. To speak the truth in love.

 

Can we live in the same house?  Can we live up to the ideals of the family of God?  We know that we live in a broken world.  Families are broken.  The family of the church is broken.  We do not live up to our own highest ideals.  But you know sometimes we love a place because it so much needs to be loved, and if we do that we will be able to live in the same house as the family of God and bless one another in the process.

 

Amen.