Church as Family

(“Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” Colossians 3:13)

If you are I are to know joy and freedom there are six words that must be part of our regular vocabulary: “I am sorry” and “I forgive you”. Simple ideas and nothing new, but revolutionary when we determine to practice them.

For too long Christianity has seen church as a sort of Sunday morning performance we attend more or less regularly. Whether it is a “high-energy stand-up and sing along worship” or stand up, sit down, read your portion at the right cues”, most of us experience Christian gatherings in an atmosphere where the talented and gifted lead the rest of us along for an hour or 90 minutes. In some ways we resemble a civic club with Christian words dubbed in.

No matter if it is new-charismatic or mainstream liturgy most of us experience “church” as either a rock concert or classroom atmosphere. Neither of these are conducive to development of relationships. Yet Jesus spoke of His followers as “family”, telling His own mother and brothers that those who did the Father’s will were His true mothers, brothers and sisters.

The language of forgiveness is relational. It has more to do with family than it does with high powered music or well-crafted lectures from Scripture. As I think over the last 20 years of my Christian experience, I would not use “family” to as the first word to describe it. Church can be nice, antiseptic and non-instrusive when we come to a building with a stage on one end with seats facing it. But relationships are often messy.

Think about the first phrase of the text: “Bear with each other.” That is family language. That is the way we deal with Uncle Morty who tells the same off-color story every time the family gets together. It is the way we put up with our sister’s kids who don’t behave quite as well as our kids. We accept behavior from our cousins that we might never from our friends because, well, they are our cousins.

We would rather Morty found a different story to tell and wish our sister would discipline her kids the way we do. We would be quite relieved if our cousins didn’t tease each other quite so much, but, well, they are cousins.

Very few of us, if we are “Smiths”, decide to have Thanksgiving at the “Jones’” this year because we just don’t want to hear Morty’s story this time. We rarely beg off family holidays because we have to put up with behavior we don’t allow in our own household. That is simply what families do. Good families put up a great deal more from each other than we do from the general public. And, as time goes on, often the annoyances turn into good-natured romps of laughter.

But, in the church, if we don’t like something, we just find another building and start listening to their speaker for a while. The music doesn’t suit as at First Church so we attend Thirteenth Avenue Church for a while. We feel ignored at Good Shepherd and we decide to hang out at Morning Star instead. That is what happens when church is just another commodity we are shopping for.

How different it all would be if we saw each other as family. We have become God’s children by faith in Jesus. He started this family. He chose a bunch of dirty faced, scrappy kids whose every inclination was to find ways to please ourselves. He picked the runts and the bullies, the beauties and the wallflowers, the geeks and the athletes to be brothers and sisters in a brand new humanity. He wiped every sin from our face and hands like a mother does the chocolate from a birthday toddler. He destroyed every barrier erected to separate “us” and “them” so that there is only “One”; a family built upon the quick and complete forgiveness of Jesus, God the Son.

Find ways to quickly forgive. Make it your intentional purpose to let people off the hook, and do it now. Don’t wait. What would happen if Jesus waited until we were “sorry enough”? Since we are family, why not learn to put up with some of the stuff that really isn’t important. And, the things that are important; remember how Jesus dealt with your own fatal mistakes…and go and do the same.