Ephesians 4:1-6, 11-16 John 17:20-24

No one likes to belong to a dysfunctional family. Some of you may have grown up in one. If that happens, perhaps some of your motivation in joining the church is to join a healthy family. One of the insights that I had while in the hospital was how important a healthy family (faith family) is to all of us.

Probably the best example in the Old Testament of a dysfunctional family is the family of Joseph. Do you remember Joseph and his multi-colored coat? Joseph had three step-mothers, ten step-brothers and a step-sister. Joseph's dad played favorites. In fact, Joseph was his dad's favorite and as you can imagine, that didn't go too well with the step siblings. Remembering the story, the dad created a special coat for Joseph. I discovered while researching for this sermon that it was a coat that symbolized superiority. His brothers probably had short-waisted coats and Joseph had a long coat. That made the difference. Joseph's coat, having multi-colors, symbolized that his dad was giving him authority. Well, you can just imagine how that went over in his family with the other brothers. None of them wanted the youngest, the baby of the family, to have authority. Oh boy! That just didn't sit well with them at all. Then, Joseph had two dreams which he shared with his step-brothers and step-sister. The first dream was of sheaths growing up. Each one represented his family members. When his grew up, all the others bowed down to him. Can you imagine sharing that with you brothers and sisters? What was he thinking? They didn't care for that much at all. In the second dream, he dreamed of the sun, moon and the eleven stars. All paid homage to him again. That represented his family  even his parents. Oh boy! So it was no wonder when they had the opportunity to get rid of him, they threw him into a hole and planned to kill him. Then they got the opportunity to sell him to some merchants. And as you know, he then went to the home of the pharaoh where he grew up and became regarded highly, after interpreting the pharaoh's dreams and was put in charge of all the agricultural development there. Then in the time of famine, his brothers came to him. He was kind to them. He hid his identity from them for a while but then let them know that he was their brother. He brought them to a place where they would be fed and get through the famine and live as a functional family. Pretty interesting example. What it says to me is that if you ever grew up in a dysfunctional family, you don't have to be a prisoner of your past. You don't have to let the past determine your present or your future. You can overcome those things with the grace of God.

The epistle reading from Ephesians and the Gospel reading that we read from John are readings about unity in the church. Actually in both readings, unity is created by love - members loving one another. As one theologian said, the one cosmic force that can create unity and maintain diversity is love. Now think about that for a minute. The one force that can create unity and yet maintain diversity is love. So all of us get to be ourselves, keep our individuality and yet by loving one another, we create the faith family, the church, the body of Christ, and we still get to be who we are. We get to be our selves and maintain our own individuality. That is why Paul would talk about differing gifts - people having different gifts and having different abilities. That is why it is the whole group that really makes up the church and makes it work. Now at a time when dysfunction is everywhere, we receive Biblical instruction as to how to create a healthy faith family. As I probed further into these Biblical concepts, I came up with five traits of a functional faith family. These traits meant a lot to me throughout my hospitalization.

The first one is belonging. One has to belong. There are people today who don't believe you have to belong to a church and they still will get to heaven. I am not sure about that. Some say, “My church is a TV evangelist. I just watch television.” But it is clear in the Bible that we have to belong to a local faith family where we can be involved. You can't really be involved in a televangelist's faith family except maybe by sending them money. All the good televangelists recommend that we get into a local church and get active. Belonging is important. How do we belong? We belong through baptism and we belong through profession of faith. Then we belong through commitment to each other and to God in love. Wow! So, belonging is number one.

Number two. Strong faith families are filled with compassion. I felt your compassion when I was in the hospital. I am constantly aware of the compassion that we have for one another here at Pilgrim. When one of our members is sick, many will call me or my wife and let us know about that person so we can pray and visit that person and extend our compassion. If there is a crisis in the faith family, we can extend compassion which lessens suffering. That is tremendous. So I am very grateful to all of you who extended compassion to me during my illness. And I am grateful to all who extended compassion to Jan, my wife, and supported her as well.

Thirdly, I discovered that in a strong, healthy faith family, people go beyond the expected. They do more than what is just expected of them. We could see that this past week with all of you who made the effort to come out and donate blood. Boy! That is going beyond the expected. So, congratulations and thanks for those of you who did that.

The fourth thing that makes for a strong faith family is that strong faith families extend mercy to each other. We are all imperfect. I know you didn't know that, right? We all have flaws. We all have weaknesses. Sometimes we get into disagreements with each other. Sometimes we offend one another. Sometimes we don't follow through when we should or we do too much and overdo for someone taking their power away or smothering them or something of that nature. In other words, in the vibrant faith family, people goof up all the time. They make mistakes. They offend. And they hurt feelings. But in a vibrant faith family, they extend mercy to each other which is a way of saying they forgive and they forget and they move on. I have found that is very true with our congregation here. There was a huge controversy before I came here. You have marvelously moved away from that. If any of you were deeply involved in that, it is clear to me that you have forgiven one another, extended mercy and moved on. I don't have any sense of anyone holding a grudge from that time - eight or nine years ago. That is a marvelous example of getting past old hurts and being part of a vibrant faith family. Extending mercy to one another is essential for a vibrant faith family.

The fifth trait of a vibrant faith family is that it is a place where joy and recreation can be found. I like to split apart the word recreation and explain its parts  re  creation. When we fellowship with one another, we are communicating with each other. We are playing with one another. We are enjoying each other's company. We have fun with each other. We celebrate life with one another and this re-creates us. Imagine the witness that it gives the world. Can you just imagine if the faith family was always dreary and if there was no playing with one another and if there was just drudgery, if everybody walked around grim  Oh woe is me. Our faith family just doesn't do anything. We are a dying dead church. Can you imagine what kind of witness that gives the world? A horrible witness. But the faith family that enjoys one another, plays with each other, goes out and eats with each other, celebrates birthdays with each other, does things with each other outside of the walls of the church - that is a vibrant faith family. And other people have to look at that and say, “Wow! I want that. I want to be a part of that! I want to be involved in that, too. Hey, include me in, will you?” So we want to invite people in to experiencing our joy. When something good happens in the faith family, we want to celebrate it. When something special happens, we want to recognize it. So those are the traits of a vibrant faith family.

I don't have too many more sermons left in this series on what I learned while I was in the hospital. But I learned that we do have these traits. Belonging, compassion, going beyond the expected, extending mercy and experiencing joy and re-creation with one another. We can do better. Who can't? You've heard people say, “I'm not going to join the church because there nothing but a bunch of hypocrites there.” Well, yeah, that is true. And if you joined, you would just be one more. And that would be OK. The church is a place of healing. As we grow in faith, as we grow in these traits, we become stronger and better and give more witness and become the kind of church that Jesus was talking about when He wanted all of us to be one, when He wanted us to celebrate our unity through love.

We are not a perfect family. We will never be a perfect family. But that doesn't matter to God. What matters to God is that we are a loving family.