The Great Big Family of God

Why is equality important? Why should we care for our neighbor or feed those that are hungry or worry about justice for others at all? For most of us, I think it is so obvious that we should care for one another that we have settled with the fact that they are human beings and that they deserve it, but the question still remains: why does someone deserve love just because they are human beings? 

If we look out on the world we will realize a few things. First, love and care for all has rarely been practiced throughout humanity’s history. Second, there are still many today that do not believe this. Third, most people even though they might profess a kind of equality and justice are way more willing to fight for their rights, protect their families and try to maintain or build up what they have. Seeing all of this, it becomes especially important to ask, why is equitable love and care for all important?

That brings us to our reading from Genesis after Noah’s Ark. Sadly, I have to skip over the whole story of Noah and the flood. So, I won’t dig into some really important ideas. Like how God saw the corrupt human heart, an unjust society, and pervasive evil that continually resulted in suffering, destruction, and distance. How God chose one righteous man to try to recreate a humanity of goodness and love, but we have to skip ahead to after the flood. Noah’s family has just come off the boat and God wants them to be fruitful and multiply to once again fill the earth, but hopefully this time with a society that will be different, a society of love and goodness. This same blessing of fruitfulness is the exact same blessing given to humanity when they were first created. This should give us the idea of a new Eden is being created through them. 

There are so many amazing things that happen in these passages after the flood. We heard about the blessing. Next, we read about justice, that God will keep accountable those who act against their fellow human. Every time you hurt another person, you put your own life on the line. Right there, God is telling us one of the reasons we need to care for others because our fate is indissolubly tied to theirs. When we hurt another, purposefully or not, we hurt ourselves. This might not always be obvious in our world today, but I don’t think it takes long to see how a broken relationship leads to a more broken life, or how passing by a hurting human hurts our own image of ourselves, or how hurting someone turns us into more resentful, angry, jealous or greedy people. We need to care for others because we need to care for ourselves or as we are reminded numerous times in Scripture, love your neighbor AS you love yourself. 

We could dig deeper, why do we hurt ourselves when we hurt another? God tells us. It is because every human was made in the image of God. It means that every single person is deserving of a certain amount of honour, respect, and love because they carry with them an aspect of God. If you truly love God, then you should love your neighbor as it also leads you to love yourself. If you disrespect the image of God in another, then you disrespect God and yourself. We end up belittling ourselves. What’s more, as God is at the centre of all of creation, justice demands, (pause) what’s more our human nature demands a consequence to uphold the goodness of God which is creation itself. On top of that, if you hurt your neighbor then you are also hurting the image you bear. 

This has been a pretty revolutionary idea. Throughout most of history it was kings, pharaohs, and emperors that claimed to be God, to bear his image, and to be his children. As the soul benefactor of God, this meant that they could do anything to other humans as lesser creatures. Later kings during Christendom ignored this idea by calling other civilizations savages and tried to uphold the idea of a lesser humanity, but eventually a group of Christians led by William Wilberforce used the image of God and many other Christian ideas to abolish slavery at least in the British Colonies, which lead the way in other nations as well. 

The passage keeps going with its grand respect and love for all because next God makes a promise. He makes a promise to all of humanity, but also all creatures and the earth itself, saying, I will never again send a flood to wipe out all living things. On the surface, this might seem minimal, but it has grand consequences. God is saying, it doesn’t matter how evil, or how far you fall, I love you so much that I will never want to erase you. God is saying, there is something in all of you that I still want to hold onto even if you don’t show an ounce of it. It is actually a huge promise and one that requires great sacrifice on the part of God, but that is another sermon. The rainbow then becomes the sign of this promise. Every time we see a rainbow we are supposed to be reminded of God’s saving help through Noah, we are to be reminded of God’s great mercy, but we are also supposed to be reminded of our great sin and the evil that leads the world to corruption and once lead to the flood. 

The last part of the post-flood I want to look at is this little bit about Noah’s children: Shem, Ham, and Japheth. We hear that from these three brothers and their wives came all the peoples of the earth. Throughout the rest of the Bible, we see this, every nation Israel encounters is a child of one of these three families, including Israel. What we should realize from this is that we are all family. Because we are family, we should have a certain level of care for one another. I should care for you, my neighbor, the person on the subway as I care for my own flesh and blood. As God protected Noah and these 3 sons (along with their wives), he has a similar care for all of humanity as their children. 

Through all of this, we are meant to see that we are all the family of God and as brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers in the family of God we both deserve respect and honour, but also have a duty to one another to show that same love and respect. 

That brings us to the strange seeming contradiction that the church is actually the family of God as Paul often implies and God seems to imply when he talks about Israel and its kings. How can we all be God’s family and yet one group is actually God’s family? Well, it is quite simple, you have to want to be part of a family, you have to be present, and you have to recognize who you are and who the others are around you. This doesn’t change the fact that every person is God’s child like a long lost sibling is still a sibling even if they don’t know it, but they don’t function like family yet. Everyone was always meant to be a part of this family and to some degree, we are not meant to feel complete until they are. 

This has two very strong ramifications. First, this church is meant to exist as a family. The love and respect people experience here is meant to be far different than what they experience in the world. Paul mentions two ways, Be devoted in Love, and Honour one another above yourself, but his letters are littered with ways we are meant to be devoted to one another in this different kind of familial love. Second, one of our greatest purposes is to invite others into this family of God. Sharing love outside of the church is great, but until they understand and experience that they are part of God’s family then they are still lacking something they need, which is a fundamental part of who we all are. Everyone was meant to be in God’s family. 

Paul wants to go deeper still though. He knows most families don’t function in this ideal way, so he wants to make us a greater family. To do this he parallels the church family with the human body. We are meant to be so close and connected that we are like members of a body. As fingers, eyes, ears, toes, heart, and more, we all belong to one united body, but we also belong to one another. We all depend on one another like a body because nothing can function on its own. We all have our gifts and purpose and so that will make us very different - like a hand is from the eye. But with such a great difference we all still have our place, we are all still needed. Then as Paul tells us that we are Christ’s body, he is trying to tell us that it is only together that we might really be the love of God and introduce others to him. The church needs to be a fundamental way that people meet God, but also the way in which they realize they are part of his family. 

Through all of this, we see part of God’s immense purpose for humanity. We were always meant to create and gather people into the family of God. We were always meant to recognize God in others through respect and love. We were meant to see God’s love for people no matter how much we or others have fallen. Ultimately, we were always meant to create a little family of paradise with God as our Father so that we might welcome others in and so that this family might grow and spread in this world. Let's all work together to become a family where people might meet God. AMEN

Questions:

Why should we love and care for our neighbor?

Genesis 9:1, 6-7, 12-20 (The Family of Humanity)

Be fruitful and multiply

Blood for blood

Image of God

Never again punish

All Nations come for them

Romans 12:3-13 (The Family of God)

How can the church somehow be more of God’s family? (Functions as a family)

Special kind of love and devotion

United in the Body of Christ

How do these two ideas inform how we relate to the world? 

Why do we need to invite them in and introduce them to God?