Every family has routines and values, and these are closely connected.  Take suburban family life as an example.  On the surface, we can see routines:  wake, eat, drop-off at daycare/school, commute to work, work, commute home, pickup kids, make and eat dinner, get everyone to bed, and repeat.

But we have to ask what values are behind that.  Why do families move to the suburbs?   There are choices, you could live in country, or the city.  Why here?

For some, it’s where they grew up.  Others want to be close to parents, or want their kids to have a yard of a certain size, or to be near nature.

Whatever the values, we chose the routine because of those values.

Yesterday, we saw Jesus shake up his family routine because he was pursuing a higher value.  He called it the will of his Father in heaven.  We have called these kingdom values, and it can be distilled down to loving God, and loving neighbour.

Jesus is challenging the extended family norms of his day, and replacing them with a new one.  A new kind of family.  With this new family will come new routines, all because of those founding values.

The other direction works, too.

We are trying to instill some routines in my family like saying a prayer before a meal (grace), asking our son the best and worst part of day, so we can say thanks to God in prayer, and ask for help or say sorry for the low parts of the day.  We also read a Bible story and say a prayer at bed.  We do this in hopes that our son will learn some values from those routines.

Let’s start simple, and look just at what it means to love God, and love neighbour.

Question: Based on the values of love God, love neighbour, what do you think Jesus’ family routines would be like?   What could your immediate family’s routines look like?

 

Ryan Sim - October 22, 2013

Tuesday - Study It - Becoming Like Family

Becoming Like Family

We asked yesterday if you could list of what comes to mind when you hear the word “church”. Our lists probably included buildings, events and services. It may have included organ and choir music, stained glass windows, dusty books, bake sales and more. It may evoke good experiences, or bad ones. But not how the Bible usually sees “church”. Church is described in several cases as a family. This is why our vision is to become a church made up of many groups who are “like family” with one another. But you might immediately think this means something strange and cultish, usually because our ideas of family today is pretty narrow. We think of family as the nuclear, immediate family in isolation. But in Jesus’ culture, in some cultures today, and not so long ago in Western culture, the family was the word used more naturally to describe an extended network of relations, often living in the same area. That was the context for family in Jesus’ day, and Jesus had plans to develop a new kind of extended family. Here’s a striking moment when he described his plans to create an alternate family: Matthew 12:46-50 While he was still speaking to the people, behold, his mother and his brothers stood outside, asking to speak to him. But he replied to the man who told him, “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” And stretching out his hand toward 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.” On the one hand, it seems Jesus just put down his mother. I just saw “Guilt Trip” where Barbra Streisand plays Seth Rogen’s overbearing mother. She calls several times a day, tries to get him to drink water constantly, and so on. In the middle of their road trip, he finally snaps, and tells her off. It seems like that might be what Jesus is doing to his mother here. Is he putting her down, in his plans to join another family? Look at it another way. Jesus is actually elevating his disciples to family status. His followers, fellow practitioners of his kingdom, are his family. She’s not excluded. Later in the story of Jesus’ life and death, we see Mary his mother appearing as a devoted member of this extended family, and Jesus even assigns one of the disciples to look after her after his death, saying he’s her new son, and vice versa. Jesus isn’t narrowing his definition of family to exclude blood relatives. He’s broadening it, to include his extended family of followers as if they are blood relatives. Question: Imagine your immediate family suddenly adopting a dozen new members. How would it change your way of life? What would be the pros and cons?

From Series: "Becoming Like Family"

This series looks at becoming “like family” with others learning to follow Jesus. We're exploring how the church is not a building, institution or event, but a community of people. It's important that explore what church means as we prepare to launch a new church in Ajax in 2014.

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