SERIES
ON THE FAMILY:
FAMILY
FOUNDATIONS
Families of Unity
(Last
in the Series)
John
17:20-26
May
12, 2013
Seventh
Sunday of Easter/Mother’s Day
”I ask not only
on behalf of these, but also on behalf of those who will believe in me through
their word, that they may all be
one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that
the world may believe that you have sent me. The
glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we
are one, I in them and you in me,
that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have
sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.
“Father, I
desire that those also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to
see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the
foundation of the world. “Righteous
Father, the world does not know you, but I know you; and these know that you
have sent me. I made your name
known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have
loved me may be in them, and I in them.”
See if this sounds like your family or a
family you know:
·
Dad
leaves for work before 6 am to beat the traffic. Maybe he’s home in time for supper. He brings work home from the office.
·
Mom
drops the kids off at school or daycare.
She’s at work all day or busy cleaning, volunteering, raising the
children. She feels like a taxi service
– carpool, music lessons, soccer and baseball games, gymnastics, PTA. She’s lucky if she and her husband have five
minutes to say hello.
·
The kids
are at school or daycare all day. Then
there’s ball practice, Scouts, homework, playing with their friends or at a
friend’s house.
The family feels like strangers living under
the same roof.
It’s like the dad who came home from work
early one day and said to his wife, “Who are those two big guys eating all our
food and making us do all their laundry?”
She told him, “Those are your sons!”
It can be hard for families nowadays to feel
much unity, especially as children get older and want to go their separate
ways.
That was always an issue for my family. We have always been scattered all over the
country. I had aunts and uncles and
cousins in Indiana. I had an aunt and uncle and cousins in Utah. I had an aunt and uncle in North Carolina. My brother and sister lived in Oregon. My parents lived in Wichita Falls. We might visit one or two relatives at a
time, but there was never a family reunion where we got to see everyone all at
the same time.
I’ve always been kind of envious of families
where most everybody stayed fairly close to home and you got to see your
parents and grandparents and siblings and aunts and uncles and cousins every
day if you wanted to. I’m sure there are
drawbacks to that, but I’d be willing to give it a try.
Jesus and his disciples were facing a
challenge of unity – how would the disciples stay together after Jesus was
gone? He was the glue that held them
together.
Jesus decided that they would have a final
meal together. The “Last Supper” that
Jesus ate with the disciples was a “family meal.” They gathered around the table for food, prayer,
and fellowship.
This kind of meal has become a lost art for a
lot of modern families. Who has time to
sit down and eat together, what with after-school activities, late workdays,
and long commutes?
However, study after study shows the benefits
of family mealtimes:
·
Families
eat healthier meals, with more fruits and vegetables. They learn to eat new foods.
·
Kids
learn table manners.
·
Kids get
better grades, and they tend to stay away from cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs.
·
Families
talk more. There’s better communication.
·
There’s
less stress and tension at home.
·
Families
save money by eating at home more and eating out less.
At the Last Supper, Jesus did several things
for his disciples:
·
He
washed their feet.
·
He
announced that he was going away.
·
He
comforted the disciples with the promise of his Holy Spirit and his peace.
·
He
prepared them for tough times ahead.
·
He gave
them a new commandment, that they should “love one another.”
The last and maybe most important thing he
did was he prayed a “family prayer.” We get to overhear this prayer in John 17. This is sometimes called Jesus’
“high-priestly” prayer or intercessory prayer.
It’s also a family prayer because the disciples had really become part
of Jesus’ family.
This reminds us that one of the most
important things we can do is pray for our families. Parents pray for their children. Children pray for their aging parents.
We have the privilege of listening in on Jesus’
family prayer. It breaks down into three
main parts. We read the third part this
morning.
·
In the
first part (vv. 1-5), Jesus prays for himself
to be glorified. He’s ready to give his
life on the cross.
·
In the
second part (vv. 6-19), he prays for the disciples
– that they be protected from the
evil one; for their unity; for their
joy; and that they be kept in the truth.
·
In the
third part (vv. 20-26), which is today’s reading, he prays for the believers to come – those who will come
to be believe in Christ and be saved through the work of the disciples in the
days to come. In other words, he prays
for the church: that we all be one. Our
unity as believers is to be a sign to the world that Jesus really was who he
said he was – the Son of God.
Today we’re focusing on this third part. I hope we will hear it as a prayer for the
unity of faith family that is called the church and for our own families also.
After all, how can we have unity in the
church if we don’t have unity in our families?
I know all the hundreds and even thousands of Christian denominations
and churches that exist in the world must be a confusing sign to
outsiders. They must wonder, “Why can’t
these Christians get along with each other?
Why can’t they be one?”
A lack of unity in our families also weakens
our Christian witness. I’m not saying
that Christian families should be perfect.
But if Christian families don’t look any different than those who don’t
follow Christ, what kind of message does that send? I think people want to know if our faith
makes any difference in the way we live – by ourselves, at work, at school, and
in the family.
I’d like to invite us to look at this prayer
of Jesus a little differently this morning – that is, as a prayer not just for
the disciples but as a prayer for us and
our families. Think of Jesus praying
for you and your family right now. What
is Jesus praying? That we experience faith, love, peace, the things that
I’ve been talking about the last three weeks.
And he’s praying that we be one
in our families.
Jesus is praying for our unity. Now unity is not the same as unanimity. Unanimity would be when everyone in the
family agrees about everything. Is your
family like that? I didn’t think so. Neither is mine. Healthy disagreement in the family is
okay. It’s just that – healthy. Unity in the family doesn’t mean one person
in the family forcing everyone to agree with them.
Unity is not the same as uniformity either. That
would be where all the members of the family are the same. They all conform to the same mold. There’s no individuality. That wouldn’t be healthy either. God created each one of us as wonderfully
unique individuals and we should glory in our individuality. The challenge is how to find unity among all
those unique individuals.
Let me suggest three ways we can do this, by:
1. Pulling together.
2. Coming together.
3. Believing together.
Families
find unity when they pull together for a common goal.
Picture a team of horses harnessed together. Each one is different but they’re all working
to get the job done.
Or look at the unity of a sports team. The successful teams are usually the ones
that can submit their individual egos to the good of the team.
A family experiences unity when they can pull
together for a common goal. We’ve been
working on a mission statement for
our church: “Our mission is to know
Christ and make Christ known.”
Lots of organizations have mission
statements. What if you wrote a mission
statement for your family? What would it
look like? For example, “The mission of the ___________ Family is
to serve God, love each other, and help each other grow into all that God wants
us to be.”
Sometimes the family mission statement
doesn’t sound all that different from a church’s mission statement because, as
Martin Luther said, the family is like a “little church.”
Has your family ever unified around a common
goal? Some families make it their goal
to buy a house. So they make the
financial sacrifices necessary to achieve that goal. Or they save together for a special family
vacation, or a pool. We experience unity
when we pull together for a common goal.
We
also find unity when we come together around a common need. I
mentioned on my Facebook page that Thursday was the 20th anniversary
of the Mother’s Day tornado in Wylie, Texas, where we were living and serving
the Wylie UMC at the time.
We just thought it was a bad thunderstorm,
even when the power went off as we were grilling steaks in the backyard. But we came to find out that a tornado had hit
the center of town, damaged a lot of homes and businesses, and one person was
killed. Our church received a couple
hundred thousand dollars worth of damage – mostly roof and windows.
Wylie had been a badly divided community that
spring. There had just been a
contentious local election. A certain
faction of long-time residents thought “newcomers” were trying to “take over
the town and schools. There had been a
tax-rollback vote not long before.
But all those divisions were erased as the
community came together to clean up and rebuild after the storms. It was amazing.
The same thing can happen in the family. Challenges in life can either split us apart
or pull us together. For example, if a
family member is stricken by a serious illness, the family will often heal old
wounds to help the sick one get better or deal with the illness. Or a family might come together by taking on
a family mission project – volunteering together for VISTO or DASH or Second
Time Around.
Finally,
families find unity in believing together in a common faith. Our
true unity is grounded ultimately in God.
As Jesus says, people are in Christ and Christ is in God, so we are one.
Faith can be the greatest unifying force in a
family or it can be a source of serious divisions. You all have seen this when people of
different faiths or no faith get married.
Sometimes it works, but not always.
I believe that the family is a part of God’s
creation. Just like the church has many
parts but they all function together in unity for the good of the whole, the
family is like that. Different kinds of
people make up a family, but they learn to function together as a whole (or
should!).
God has created an ideal order for the church and for family: Christ is the head of the
parents; parents are the head of the family.
This doesn’t mean that parents rule the family like a dictator, any more
than Christ rules the church like that.
Christ is a servant, and so
the parents are the servants of the family – always seeking what is good for
the other people – husbands for wives, wives for husbands, parents for
children, children for parents.
Families unify around their common faith in
God and their mission of sharing God’s love with others. Remember, that as families we can “bear
witness to the love of God in the world, so that those to whom love is a
stranger will find in us generous friends.”
Families of unity don’t live by a “Look out
for #1” mentality. They’re willing to
put their individual agendas aside and pull
together for common goals.
Families of unity don’t bail out when the
going gets tough, but they come together
to help each other through tough times.
In a time of doubt and unbelief, families of
unity share a common faith and love for God and a common passion for service.
May we seek God’s help in establishing homes
that abide in God’s faith, love, peace,
and the unity of God’s Spirit. Amen.
