We’re thinking today about family and I saw this great story on the news that illustrates the problems of family and why God has a special lifesaving story about families. You may have been caught in traffic Friday when three young guys decided to get drunk and climb the Williamsburg Bridge. They set off a terror alert, the bridge was closed for hours, and everyone from the Strategic Air Command to Emergency Services came to see them down. They haven’t been in trouble before, so the press calls their families for comment and the parents are naturally surprised. One mother says, ‘my kid is nice. I don’t want you to think that he’s a beer-drinking yahoo.’ Well, I really hadn’t thought about it until she helped me, and I’m afraid that his mother has helped me and he’ll be a beer-drinking yahoo until he dies.

 Families are supposed to be places of protection, and love, and understanding. One nice image is the spring bird nests that we have around. But birds have their challenges just like people. Many songbird nests are blown out of their trees. Sometimes the parents don’t calculate how sharp the March winds will be or there isn’t enough nesting material for a great job.

Songbird babies are naked. They must be kept covered until they are able to control their own body heat and have to be fed predigested food often by their parents.

 As they begin to fly, the parents have to teach how to avoid the many dangers. The fledglings are clumsy and easily distracted.

There is virtually no family without problems. Sometimes it’s the kids that are clumsy when they learn to fly and sometimes the parents built a nest that was torn apart by the winds. I made a list of great families in another church and all of them had challenges to overcome. And I don’t mean respectable challenges, I mean suicide, abuse, and failure that we pretend aren’t part of regular families.

That’s why God has a story for us that promises everyone an experience of family as it was meant to be. If you’ve ever agonized over your own family story, then lift up your heart as we explore God’s good story of family today.

In these moments, why not close your eyes, open your heart, and ask God to let hope bloom anew today that you can experience God’s promises.

The lifesaving stories are about the days of our lives and God’s promise. And God knows the pain. Jesus is doing his work in Mark and his message of the kingdom is so inflammatory that the leaders plot to kill him. His family sees both his fame and hears the rumors of his capture or murder and decide that he is beside himself. They try to call him out of a meeting by himself to grab him physically.

If you’ve had a difficult time in family life that you never dreamed could happen, then you know here that Jesus understands. Here is Mary, the virgin about whom songs and prayers have been written, standing outside the meeting and hoping that Jesus will stop the very message that she suffered so much herself to bear.

I have a passage from a young man writing in a journal. “On the drive home from Ohio, my mom talked a lot about family, mostly. She said that there have been so many bumps along the way and that sometimes the easiest thing to do sometimes is quit. The easiest thing to do sometimes is close yourself off and not let anyone near you, but that's no way to live life. That you just gotta get back up and dust yourself off and try again. I’ve spent so much time trying to get away from my family, I’m trying to act like I don't connect with them or need them, but the truth is that I do need them. They’re my family. Maybe I didn't choose them, but they didn't exactly choose me either, y'know?”

God’s plan for every person includes the care, security, tenderness, tough love, understanding, belief, and respect that fathers and mothers are supposed to offer. The role of father and mother are so sacred that God refers to one member of the Trinity as ‘our Father.’ Jesus says of himself, “Like a mother hen, I would have gathered you under my wings, O Jerusalem.’ I can think of no more precious images of God out of the 200 names and titles of God that the Bible describes.

And there is no time in life that we should be bereft of them. There is no time that you are too old to pray ‘Our Father.’ There is no time that you are so successful that there is no need for parents and grandparents. Death robs us of even the best of parents. My parents and I keep getting together and marveling that God has given us one more good time together. My father thought he was dying in 1988. I bought 7 tickets so that our whole family and Phyllis’ mother could go out to say goodbye. About two weeks before the trip, Dad called and said, ‘I’ve go terrific news. The doctor tells me that I didn’t have a heart attack. I pulled a muscle in my chest.’ I’m silent, and Dad thinks I’m stunned by the good news. He repeats, ‘Ron, I’m going to be OK.’ And I’m thinking, ‘Dad I just took out a loan for non refundable tickets and you’re not going to die?’
 God’s promise is that through the church, we will still know the richness of the support of loved ones, the wisdom of elders, and the joy of youth. Even as one lifesaving promise is about heaven to come, this promise is about heaven on earth.

I’ve joined a chat on the internet called ‘AntiChristian Christians.’ Its for people who are turned off by the church but want the promises of God in their life and I wanted to listen in to see what people are thinking. The few things that I’ve looked at so far are fair complaints. Is there phoniness among some Christians? Is there too much bureaucracy? Are some of the rules wrong of some churches?

I can admit all those things, but you cannot experience the lifesaving promises of God without participation in the church. When I was first ordained, a superintendent said to me, ‘Ron, your biggest task is to protect the holiness of the church.’ When the church is operating in love, preaching the justice of God, living without gossip and bitterness and all the ills of the world, it is God’s forever family for each of us.

What is the process by which God offers family to you and me? It happens some through projects together and even more through Disciple groups. We have great committees in Jackson Heights. I like the Rummage Sales here because they good in good ways. Volunteers treat each other with kindness and affection. There’s not tension in the air as you visit the sales area. It’s people being the family of God. And the choir. The rehearsals are people supporting each other as friends. I don’t hear meanness when I walk into choir rehearsal. You know in seminary, they called the choir, the War Department. A friend of mine played organ for a church choir upstate and one of the members didn’t like the anthem and pulled the electric cord off the organ during the service. This choir isn’t like that. Although our piano isn’t electric, just in case anyone ever joins the choir who’s sensitive……

In your program today is a brochure about the Disciple groups. They are the best way for many people to experience God’s promise of family. The meetings have four goals, to study the Bible together so that we grow as Christians, to share in a family way, to pray for each other and show love and care, and to support each other in our witness to others.

I first got into a Disciple group as a freshman in college. The weeks of involvement started to create rich friendships, some of which still exist today.

The Disciple group slowly trains you to show trust, and caring, and vulnerability just like a family. Some of us have been hurt so bad that we have given up hoping that family experience is possible. You may feel so scarred that the Disciple groups are not possible as a first step. And sometimes 12 step groups or special support is most effective.

Some people need time and training to learn to believe in family again. That new hope and reparenting can happen in the best of churches and this is one of the best of churches. I still remember a moment in my third year of college when one of the leaders said one night, I’ve got something to share. I’m pregnant and my folks don’t accept it.

We mourned with her, prayed with her, and supported her in rough decisions of the next anxious weeks. Other people shared areas where they had made wrong decisions as they were inspired by her openness. We were all only 20. We had no idea that challenges the lay ahead for her. But we knew that it was a moment to be the family of God.

I believe this church is striving to be God’s family. I believe that there are older persons here who are models. I have seen some older persons adopting and caring for our youth. That is being the family of God. I believe that there are people of middle age who are supporting others and sharing and receiving love as a brother would with a sister. That’s the family of God. I believe we have young people who are happy to come to church because they sense that there is an extension of the home on Sunday morning. This is the richness of being the family of God.

The division in Jesus own life was just as sharp as any you will know. The crowd tells Jesus that his family are outside and he knows they want to seize him. The most godly man on the planet doing exactly what God wants and his family wants to stop it. [Mark 3:32] A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, "Your mother and your brothers and sisters are outside, asking for you."  [Mark 3:33] And he replied, "Who are my mother and my brothers?" [Mark 3:34] And looking at those who sat around him, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers!

Who is here who wishes that you could feel a father’s arm or a mother’s prayer today? God has provided a family. Have you trapped feelings of loneliness and fear because there was no one to fall back on? Receive God’s lifesaving story of family, a basic story of Christian faith.