FAMILY POLITICS

Old Testament Lesson:  Isaiah 64: 1-9

New Testament Lesson:  I Corinthians 3: 3-9

Dr. Matthew Brown

November 27, 2005

Having never been to Europe it continues to seem such an exotic destination.  There’s not a college catalogue in distribution that does not highlight opportunities for a year abroad these days, so already my sons are speaking of trips about which I never even dreamed.  Imagine a young, fit man full of life having the opportunity to travel overseas.  Unfortunately though, for John Brown, that trip was to take place around 1918, and so instead of memories of hostels, cathedrals, edelweiss, or even maybe an evening at the Moulin Rouge, he would have to hold within him the nightmares of a Europe where pastoral rural farms were transformed into trench scarred killing fields.

I never had the chance to meet much less know my paternal grandfather whose life was cut short by the long term effects of the poisons he inhaled in the fog of chemical warfare.  Yet, the stories I’ve been privileged to overhear in my life paint a portrait of a serious minded, diligent veteran who worked incredibly hard to provide basic sustenance for his young family during the dark years of the Depression.

He was a barber by trade, and so over the years I’m sure he met any number of curious and colorful characters who climbed into his chair for a shave and a haircut. 

One day, I am told, he would discover that the man in his chair was a former dog owner.  The man in the chair did not know that he was a former dog owner.  In fact, he would learn this news at the same time as my grandfather.

You see, the relative quiet of the barber shop was interrupted when the door flew open as a consequence of an angry wind that carried with it a fuming little man who had something to say to the gentleman sitting in my grandfather’s barber chair.

The word colorful would not do justice to Fred Goodwin.  Pugnacious, irascible, short fused, sharp tongued, brutally honest, adventurous... If you were to combine those words with about ten others, you would just have scratched the outer layers of this complex man.  He had boxed professionally; he had been a conductor on a train; he had been a tailor; he had a penchant for steak so rare one would not be surprised to see it kick when stuck with a fork. 

Fred wanted to fight in the Spanish-American War, but had been traveling out west and by the time he made it back home to enlist, the war was over.  But no battle would threaten Fred Goodwin, and on this day his battle would be with the man in my grandfather’s barber chair.  There were to be no pleasantries, no how do you do’s, no talk of the weather.  No, this 5’6” stick of dynamite would not waste any words.  With his piercing blue eyes boring holes through the man in the chair, he simply said, (For young ears, I’ll edit the content)  “Your @#$% dog killed my dog, so I shot him.  What’re you going to do about it?”  I’m thinkin’ that what the man did about it was to pay for his haircut and go home.  Most people would come to know that it was not a profitable idea to cross Fred Goodwin, my maternal great-grandfather.

And so it was that the Browns were introduced to the Goodwins, a chance encounter no one would guess would lead to the gene pool soup from which my life sprang.  As is the case with any family, it is a soup that has produced any number of quirky characters who when brought together bring to mind maybe a bit more Norman Bates than Norman Rockwell.  Yet, nevertheless, we are and will continue to be family.

Family.  The thirty odd days from Thanksgiving through Christmas bring with them multitudinous concerns in regards to the family.  With whom shall we gather?  Where shall we travel?  Who will be manic?  Who will be depressive?  Who will be surly?  Who will be clingy?  Whose feelings will be hurt?  Who will be angry?  Who will be missing in action?  Who do we need to keep in separate rooms?  O, and of course, who will be the one to get on your last nerve?

Around the turkey laden table, a prayer of thanks will be said.  Around a twinkling tree, gifts will be opened.  But who knows what strange emotions are coalescing beneath the surface?  Whoever said that vacation was a time of rest and relaxation forgot to consider the complexities of family politics in his naive conclusions.

A friend who was preparing to embark on the family circuit this week summed it up well when I asked him if this time with extended family would be nerve soothing or nerve stressing.  He just grinned and said, “It’s pill takin’ time.”  

And yet, we still go.  We still gather.  We may pine for easier encounters, less volatile emotions, fewer emotional suitcases to carry around, but we are connected.  In spite of all our quirks and shortcomings, we are family bound by blood and a love that doesn’t always do such a good job of expressing itself.  When the crisis comes, who will be on the call list?  When tragedy strikes we will go.  We frustrate one another but we also are bound to one another and rely on one another, because that is what families do, no matter what our stations in life.

Over the years when I’ve made late night hospital visits I would often have to enter by way of the emergency room, and there around the door would always be these families clustered, often very rough around the edges.  There had been an accident, an overdose, a family get-together that had become drunken and violent.  Lord only knows what calamities constituted their lives, and yet they were there holding vigil because they were family. 

I remember one time passing through that crowd to go to the room of a wealthy executive who was dying, his family gathered around him.  And I was struck by the reality that this family was no less dysfunctional than the folks I had passed through on the way up.  The only thing separating them were the labels on their clothes and their grammar. 

Both groups had been marred by the experience of alcohol, mental illness, jealousy.  Both groups were basically broken vessels, but both groups were still precariously stitched together by that one important word.  Family.

Family.  Some people try to escape that word, try to deny that need, but their lives are always lessened as a result.  We know that, and so in spite of all the stresses, we never cease at least attempting to go home, even if we’re not quite sure what home is.  In a way the words home and family are interchangeable and I think Frederich Buechner stated it well when he said that, “Home is the place that when you go there, they have to let you in.”  And who is it who opens the door, even though it may be begrudgingly?  Family.

That’s the thought that kept coming to mind this week as I pondered these texts while church members and my own family began the march from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

The text from Isaiah is a lament lifted up by a people in the midst of a self-inflicted crisis.  The text from I Corinthians is a letter to a people in conflict.  Both are experiences that most families will face.

In Isaiah the people were either separated from what was home for them or they were returning to homes that had come to ruin as a result of their failures.  While they would like to blame someone for their woes, and in fact, do begin the lament hoping to put the guilt on God (not a good idea), there is eventually here the recognition of their culpability, their sin.

“We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.  We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away...”

“We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away...”  Take us away from parents, take us away from siblings, neighbors, friends; take us away from the very one who created us for relationship with him.

This ill wind has taken them to a place no one would choose to be:  call it exile; call it loneliness; call it estrangement; call it a dead end; call it failure; call it hopelessness.  They lift their voices in lament, praying for deliverance.  And to what do they appeal?  Family.  “Yet, O Lord, thou art our Father...”  Just this little reminder God, that though we are messed up something royally, we are still yours.  And blest be that family tie that binds us in spite of ourselves.

In I Corinthians, Paul will address a number of dysfunctions boiling in the Corinthian congregation.  They’re fighting over people hoarding the food when they celebrate the Lord’s Supper.  They’re quarreling with one another, suing one another, sleeping in places they shouldn’t, boasting when they should be confessing, and the older members are taking advantage of the newer members.  

Let’s just say the prospect of a visit with the Corinthians or even the experience of writing a letter to them would, for  Paul, constitute a “pill-takin’ time.”  But the contact is made and the bonds of relationship are not only confirmed, they are affirmed.

Writing to them as one would those relatives you can’t help but love even when you’re sorely disappointed in them, Paul says,  “I give thanks to God always for you because of the grace of God which was given you in Jesus Christ...

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son...

God is faithful.  God is a love that will not let us go.  Why?  Because we are family.

During holiday trips to my parents’ hometown, the town where Fred Goodwin and John Brown once walked the streets, we would make the obligatory journey to Aunt Neat’s house, and O how we dreaded that visit.  Aunt Neat was the first person I heard associated with the word “hypochondriac.” 

Our job was to sit quietly while she lifted her tear filled lament detailing her latest litany of woes about those who wouldn’t come to see her, about her newest and most serious ailments, about the son who had abandoned her and the life that had disappointed her.

On the way to Aunt Neat’s and the way back, my sister and I would complain incessantly about our need to endure such torture, thereby just adding to our parents joy-filled experience of the day, and for the longest time I just didn’t understand why we would make those visits.  But over time I’ve learned.  Aunt Neat was a mess, but she was our mess.  She was family, and Lord only knows how difficult we may seem to other relatives who stress over us.   

God, our Father, sees all our mis-steps, all our imbroglios.  God hears all our whining and complaining and blaming.  God watches as our iniquities carry us away with the leaves, and yet, as we gather around the family table, God is here as his Son hosts this holy day meal.  I don’t know if Father, Son, and Holy Ghost share a laugh about it being pill taking time as they enter our midst.  Yet, God is here.  Because we are family.  “Home is the place that when you go there, they have to let you in.”  And who is it who opens the door, even if it may be begrudgingly?  Family. 

Thanks be to God for a love that is faithful and will not fail.  Amen.

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