Metaphors Can Cut

“Metaphors Can Cut”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
Scripture Reference: Matthew 12:46-50

While he was still speaking to the crowds, his mother and his brothers were standing outside, wanting to speak to him. Someone told him, “Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside, wanting to speak to you.” But to the one who had told him this, Jesus replied, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And pointing to his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Early on in ministry I preached a sermon that described the complexity of extended families. I spoke of what I saw at holiday gatherings as a child. It was well received and people laughed because it was funny and something they could relate to. I mean who hasn’t been at a Thanksgiving gone awry or a birthday party with tears? There is a reason for the song: It’s My Party I can Cry if I Want to.
I mention this early sermon because it was the first time I was accosted in the reception line. I am not accosted much, but this was not a one and done either. This first time though took my breath a bit. The member, Helen, made it clear to me how inappropriate it was to speak of families as I did from the pulpit. People might get the assumption that such dysfunction (poker games, gambling, drinking of beer and swearing) some might get the wrong impression that this was acceptable, normal, even likely. “No one in my family acts that way; and no one I know has families who are like that.” This is the last thing Helen said before she stormed off.
I was a bit stunned. The next person in line, a person who had known Helen and Helen’s family since Roosevelt was president, this long-time friend of Helen took my hand, pulled me to her. She whispered in my ear, “everyone in Helen’s family thinks she’s nuts; she drives them crazy; and there is a whole lot of crazy to go around.”
While I was relieved, I felt like I had stumbled into a potential mine field. Moving forward I would couch any such stories with caveats like, I am sure your family is not like this, or please don’t think I am talking about your family. I did this to be sure the would-be Helen’s out there knew I wasn’t trying to make assertions about her crew of supposedly non- dysfunctional family members.

And then about twenty years ago I read a book that helped me. The book was called The Way We Never Were. Never is underlined for emphasis. The author, Stephenie Coontz, wrote this best-selling work with wit and bravado, but she also wrote it with a mound of data. Survey after survey, tons of demographic figures, and even more, a freight train of historical evidence all about families.
Her book was based upon a strange phenomenon.
People who had families before the 1950s knew that Father Knows Best and Leave it to Beaver were a wildly idealistic depiction of a fantasy world, a vision of domestic bliss; they knew this was a wonderful, syrupy image of families. Somehow though the next set of generations didn’t know it was all a lark. It was as if they didn’t know this was a dream. People believed that Ward and June Cleaver, with the private study and the pearls, the next generation thought this was real life, not their life of course, but the life most other people lived.
Stephanie Coontz describes this as part assumption and partly the power of nostalgia. And she is right. When social behavioralist study our memories of childhood events, they find we often filter out the bad and keep the good. Ask children how their summer was in September and they will list off some good and some bad. Ask the same question in May and they mostly remember only the good.
So it could be that the generation who actually lived through the 1950s may no longer remember the not so wonderful parts of their upbringing, or the way families really were, they might remember only what was good or believe everybody else lived with a father who knew best.
And we encourage this behavior. Don’t dwell on the negative. Let’s not talk about that. No one ever quiets conversation of a pleasant memory. Bring up a lovely day when everything was fine and wonderful and all the children are “above average” and no one says, “do we really need to talk about this?” Dysfunction, broken relationships, grudges, skeletons: these are often silenced with a good clearing of the throat.
It turns out that families have always been rather fragmented. Yes, each generation creates ideals and standards and definitions supposing they are not, but the data shows otherwise. And each generation also has ideals, standards and definitions we seek to shed as things are supposed to be getting better. It’s a bit convoluted really. When marriage was being debated on account of folks who are gay and lesbian there was a lot of talk about what marriage has always been, how it was a gift of God, and should reflect the intent of God. Big claims.
Deep cultural shift and change is hard so I am not going to dismiss the struggle to see a new way of defining marriage. I get it. What was funny to me was that our idea of marriage was what God intended and what marriage was supposed to be is found in the bible. The Bible is not a good guide for families and especially terrible for marriage.
Case in point. When I do weddings, I have couples pick from a list of scripture passages to read at their ceremony. There are few passages to choose from, but not many. Let’s just say the pickings are slim. When the apostle Paul wrote about marriage it was either not helpful or offensive. All Jesus had to say about marriage was “don’t divorce” and he said this because divorce in his day was when a man discarded his wife. And if we look to the Old Testament things start going downhill fast. Try reading one of the passages from patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and the passages are all related to their many wives and concubines. King David is not a helper. Solomon. O good lord!
Lest I offend I will stop there, but just let me say, the next series of examples of what marriage and family mean in the bible is really, really rough. So when people would say we need to defend marriage as ordained by God as evidenced in the Bible I want to laugh and say,

you gotta read this book a bit more. Nobody in their right mind would say, “hey this is a great image of family.”
Okay. I can’t help it. Abraham offers his wife as a prostitute, tries to kill one son, and then sends his concubine and first-born son off into the wilderness to die so his wife won’t be jealous. Not the stuff of role model. I mean just think of what Helen would have made of this!
I want to be really careful with what I have to say here. Helen died many years ago, but the spirit of Helen, the possibility of offense, is ever alive. I want to make a confession. Sometimes when people say the church is a family, when people talk about church families, I get a bit nervous. I do. Because families to me are great and lovely and wonderful. I love my family and in spite of my shortcomings most of my family loves me. But families are also nuts and broken and maddening. And this is what Helen couldn’t see, wouldn’t see.
When we say the church is family, we are perilously close to the danger of metaphor. For when we talk about families today, there is a very real likelihood that we are conjuring a very romantic, a nostalgic image, “we have lost what a family is supposed to be,” or, and this is the dangerous part, an exclusive image, “no one in my family is like that.”
Stephanie Coontz in her book shows this again and again. Family is good and lovely, but it is a good and lovely thing that is supposed to be a certain way. We have very strong definitions of what a family is. Families are to be whole not broken; families are meant to be headed by a man and supported by a woman who are married and their two and half kids are well behaved and born in wedlock. Her book showed that such is not the reality of families in America at no time. This image/metaphor of family is what we create not really what we live.
Families are all the same color, the same tribe, the same faith. Broken families are a problem because of race or education or environment. Again, there are so many misperceptions about families and also how families are whole or as we say broken. Coontz’s book is such a help here showing the way the ideal of the family is used as a verdict, a judgment, a measure to exclude, not include. “None of my friends have families like that."
At first it seems as if Jesus is buying into this fantasizing of family, creating an image of a “holy family” by connecting the definition with God. Yet, if we look at what he says, he is not creating an image of an ideal family, but calling on us to do two things, blow open the image of the family and then recast the measure of family as an ethic of love. For the definition of the will of God that Jesus gives in the gospels is that we love God and love our neighbor.
The idea of a church being a family makes me nervous because of how the definition of the good family not only devalues many, but also creates a profound silence. And we gain this silence through exclusion. In the early church and today the kin or kindred, the family name, the family image is too often nurtured by exclusion. To be a part of the family in a church used to hinge on right beliefs. Today more and more it is hinging on right politics. Yet, this change is not so much a new course, but a new silence.
I can’t tell you how many times I have heard nostalgia for a church that had no politics, no ideology, no statements. What we so often fail to recognize though is that saying nothing is a statement. Being unable to speak is the result of a statement. “We don’t talk about those things.” No one today can fail to grasp how perilous it is to speak. “Can we just not talk about these things?”
One of the most common forms of therapeutic counseling today is something called Family Systems Theory. Here you look to relationships and communications and experiences based upon the structure of families. And this is a powerful tool to understand how we talk to each other, how we exclude one another, and ultimately how power is used to control what can

be spoken and what cannot be spoken. This is a powerful model because it recognizes the way families are dysfunctional in nature. Helen really wanted me to stop talking.
Jesus’ family come to fetch him. According to Mark they thought he was going a bit nuts; wasn’t eating right; needed to come home and rest. Jesus responds with a statement that any normal person in a normal place would suggest his family had legitimate concerns. And they were right. Jesus was being swamped by the crowds and it was not a healthy situation. His life was not a model of good time management or an ideal of work and rest. Lots of people criticized Jesus’ lifestyle. We forget that because we need to maintain an image that he was perfect.
Jesus didn’t say families were great or a great family is “this.” Nor does he make some sort of nostalgic claim of the families and scripture. He says in essence family is loving God and your neighbor. No boundaries, no definitions, no standards, or terms of agreement. Family was doing the will of God, love. And fortunately for you there is no time left, because if you think Helen got mad about what I believe about families, she would have been even more upset about what I believe love is: I mean that is really messy, love that is. Amen.