In Jesus, we are all family

The dominant symbol of the Christian church is a cross. Crosses dominant church architecture both inside and outside of church structures. The cross is the subject of a majority of Christian jewelry.

In my Baptist rearing, I was reminded in sermon after sermon that Christ died on the cross as a sacrifice for my sin and the sins of the world. Our hymnals are filled with songs about the cross. “The Old Rugged Cross” is the favorite hymn of millions of Christian believers, myself included.

While most crosses in Protestant churches do not depict Jesus hanging on the cross, in Roman Catholic churches the most prominent spaces present a bleeding Jesus hanging on a cross. Catholic Mass is centered on the sacrificial Jesus, who died on a cruel cross. Most Protestant Communion services are designed to remind us all that Jesus died on a cross for the sins of the world.

It is, “In the cross of Christ we glory.” The cross as the great symbol and image of the Christian churches is written indelibly on the hearts and minds of most Christians.

I suggest the emphasis on the cross has not produced spiritually healthy Christians. Other images need to be placed alongside of the cross to produce a more relevant Christian witness in our world.

The observations I will make over the next weeks are not new. My comments are reminders that followers of Jesus have other powerful images from the life and teachings of the rabbi from Nazareth that need to be embraced. One of those is the understanding of God as a heavenly father, who loves his children with unbounded love. This is an image that sharply contrasts with a God who demands a blood payment for the sins of wayward human beings.

In the dominant theological tradition of first century CE, God was rarely seen as a loving heavenly father. The central father figure was Abraham. Family was narrowly defined as the children of Abraham. When a person of faith died, he/she went to the “bosom of Abraham.” Those outside of the family of Abraham were strangers and aliens. Jesus expanded the meaning of family to all sorts of outcasts. His teaching tool was to refer to the God of creation as father.

When the disciples came to Jesus and asked him to teach them to pray, he gave them a model prayer that is commonly called “the Our Father.” In almost every worship gathering of Christians, the prayer is recited in unison: “Our Father in heaven …”

We pray that prayer without grasping the implications of the prayer. Jesus was teaching us a new way to relate to God and to one another. Jesus was teaching that God is our father, not Abraham. Under the new understanding, we are all brothers and sisters in God’s family. Jesus was teaching a new understanding. The family of God was a lot larger than was commonly thought. It was unknown to mainstream Judaism.

Jesus was a master storyteller, and many of the stories he told were constructed to draw very sharp lines of conflict with prevailing thinking. One of the Jesus stories is the parable of the Good Father. In the story, a father had two sons. The younger of the two had a rebellious streak. The young son asked for an early division of the family wealth. Some would say the father made a foolish mistake. He honored the request of the son and gave him a big hunk of the family assets. The son quickly blew his whole inheritance on riotous living and found himself broke. He returned home defeated by life.

The father welcomed his son and threw a party in celebration. The older brother was outraged. The father assigned no penalty to the wayward son. He was simply overjoyed to see the younger son. After all, the younger son was family.

The story as told by Jesus was a challenge to common thinking. Jesus lived in a society in which “the guilty must pay a price for his misdeeds.” In a sense, the younger son had already suffered the consequences of his foolishness. He ended up with the pigs. Need we be reminded that pigs were unclean according to the religious standards of the day? With the story, Jesus made a profound statement. The past was the past. A new day had arrived and debts did not carry over. In his role as father, he welcomed his son, called a celebration and announced that the new day had begun.

This is the way family works. When family love takes over, the rules of debt payment are lost.

The story of the good father includes a side story. An older brother is pictured as a hard-working, responsible, law-abiding part of the family. The older brother is outraged with the treatment of his younger brother. He represents that portion of the human family that cannot accept the replacing of penalties with a loving embrace. They firmly believe that chaos will result from the granting of love, acceptance and a whole-hearted welcome to the offenders of our society.

We, who claim Jesus as our Lord, need to take a fresh look at the images we hold dear. There are more pictures in our family album than a series of photos of beautiful crosses.

The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in Palmer. His e-mail address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.