We are Family

I walked into the kitchen looking for a snack and saw my mother pouring a can of cream of mushroom soup into a casserole dish with green beans in it.

“Oooh!” I said. “Are you making green bean casserole?”

“Yes,” she said. “But it is not for you. It’s for church.”

“For church?”

“Yeah. There is a funeral tomorrow. Mrs. Martin, Molly’s great aunt, died,” she said, pulling the garbage can out from under the sink.

“Why don’t you ever make green bean casserole for us?” I asked. “The only time we get it is Christmas and Easter.”

“I don’t know. You can have some at the funeral dinner tomorrow. Would you please take this garbage out?”

“We’re going to the funeral? Did I know her?” I said as I mashed the garbage down and pulled on the sides of the bag. “She sat toward the front on the pulpit side. She was there every Sunday.”

“But we never talked to her,” I said, pulling the bag out of the can.

“Well, I did, a little. But it doesn’t matter. She is part of our family, our church family,” she said, smiling as she slipped a wrapper into the very top of the garbage bag. “Our church family?” I asked, heading for the door, afraid she’d try to get more stuff in and the garbage would fall out on me.

“Yes. Our church family,” I heard in my mom’s firm voice as the door swung shut behind me.

I threw the garbage into the bin and tried to remember what Mrs. Martin looked like. I had a vague idea, but I couldn’t get the details. I had a sense that she wore elegant clothes but couldn’t bring anything exact into focus. We were going to the funeral and Mom said she was family, “church family,” but what kind of a relative do you not know?

That night we went to the visitation. It was a bit like a family reunion. My mother kept introducing me to people who knew me when I was little even t hough I didn’t know them. They oohed and ahhed over how big and how pretty I am. Even though it was quiet, there was more laughter than I expected. And we had the normal reunion type of food: cold cuts, pickles, and olives. Compared to a typical family reunion this one had a bonus: Molly was there. She was sad, but mostly she was sad for her mom. Mrs. Martin was her mom’s favorite aunt, but Molly said she didn’t feel that close to her and the whole thing was kind of weird.

During the funeral the next day, I thought about our church as a family. Like all families, we spend a lot of time together. Of course, my biological family spends more time at church than most. My dad never met a service he didn’t like. If the pastor bothers to prepare a sermon, my dad figures we should listen. So come what may—Epiphany, Ascension, you name it, even a funeral for someone we barely know—we’re there. We’re not the only ones. The pastor’s family and Molly’s family are always there too. So is Mrs. Martin. Other families are there most of the time but not always. Not everyone comes for Ascension. And some don’t even make it every single Sunday. But if they’re there a lot of the time, I at least recognize them. And if they’re old, they seem to know me, even if I don’t know them—just like relatives.

I was singing “I Know that My Redeemer Lives” as the casket was carried out the door, and I couldn’t think of a time when we gather with my extended biological family that we didn’t also gather with our church family. Christmas? Thanksgiving? Weddings? Funerals? Baptisms? Reformation? We always see my grandparents and cousins at those times. We also always go to church at those times.

Later I realized that is not why we’re a family. We’re a family because of what we do together. I walked into the kitchen looking for a snack and saw my mother pouring a can of cream of mushroom soup into a casserole dish with green beans in it. We’re not at a gun show or a spelling bee or a basketball game. We’re worshiping together. We’re sharing in something. We’re communing together. Holy Communion is a family meal.

Since that funeral, I’ve been looking around on Sundays and silently assigning relationships to people. It is kind of corny, but it is fun. I’ve decided the people who usually sit behind us are my aunt and uncle and their children, who I sometimes babysit, are my little cousins. Mrs. Martin was my grandmother. Molly, of course, is my sister. Her parents are more than an aunt and uncle. They are a second set of parents. I’ve assigned relationships to just about everyone even though no one but Molly knows it. Most of them aren’t really that close. They are like slightly distant cousins.

It occurred to me that if we’re all cousins or related in some way, if our parents are all siblings or cousins themselves, then the pastor is the grandfather. He is the one we gather around to listen to. He dispenses advice and tells the family stories. He ties everyone together. But that didn’t fit. For one thing, our pastor is nothing like either of my grandfathers. I just couldn’t think of him that way. Besides that, the people in the pew are pretty stable. They’ve been there a while, or at least I expect them to be. But this is the third pastor I’ve known. I really love him, but I know that pastors come and go.

He can’t be the grandfather if he might leave. Jesus is the grandfather. He is the patriarch that ties us all together. We don’t gather around the pastor. We gather around Jesus. He is the person, the relations hip we all have in common.

I suppose that is pretty obvious, but it took me a while to figure it out. I’d just never taken this idea of church family seriously before. So now I figure the pastor is a stand-in for the grandfather, some kind of old friend of the family. He brings Jesus to us. He stands in Jesus’ stead. He speaks Jesus’ words. And as great as he might be, as much as I would miss him if he left, he is not the one who binds us all together. That is Jesus’ job. Jesus makes us all relatives, all family. Jesus is the grandfather. And in Jesus we all share the same last name, His Name.We’re all named “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” That is the Name into which we were baptized, by which we’ve been adopted and made children of heaven. We belong to Him, and we belong to one another. All this to say my mother was right: we are family.

Kathy Luder, a big fan of Strongbad e-mail, can be reached at KathyLuder@ hotmail.com. She promises to be nicer than Strongbad.