Resurrection Lutheran Church, St Catharines

Dear children of God,

 

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins” (Galatians 1:3-4).

 

 

There is a lot of family emphasis at this time of year. That gives most of us a lot of joy. But for some people it adds confusion and brings forth feelings that are hard to reconcile. Not everyone feels like they fit in their family. Parents may have been divorced and then children are unsure whether their true home is with mom or dad. One or both parents may have involved themselves in a relationship with another family that brings a step-parent and step brothers or step sisters into the picture.

 

Some people are orphaned at a young age, or even as adults when their elderly parents pass away and the Christmas family times have changed. Foster children and adopted children may struggle to fit in, even more than children who notice that they have different interests, abilities or even different outlooks on life than the rest of the family. Any of these situations and more can make Christmas family-time somewhat of a struggle if not a plunge into confusion and a search for identity.

 

At different times of life and in different ways everyone experiences this kind of identity crisis. Although that puts us all on a plain where we can have compassion and empathy for each other, it doesn’t really solve the problem. But there is a solution when we look at the family dynamics associated with Christmas. I am not talking about how things went around the dinner table at your house last week, but about what God’s Word reveals to us of the Son of God being born into the world.

 

Mary was perplexed from the first announcement of the angel that she would give birth to the Son of God without the intervention of a human father (Luke 1:29, 34). So also, Joseph wondered what was the right thing to do when he found out that Mary was pregnant and the child was not his (Matthew 1:18-19).

 

As if this was not enough for them to deal with as a family, the Bible also reveals brothers and sisters of Jesus later on. It has been long-debated whether those were younger half-brothers and sisters born later to Mary and Joseph; or older step brothers and step sisters, born to Joseph from a previous marriage. Some take them to be cousins or another kind of close relative. In any case they are reported to be opposed to Jesus when He begins preaching and healing publicly (John 7:3-5).

 

What might their earlier family gatherings have been like? How would each one of them have felt about their place in the family? This is the kind of dynamic into which God sent His Son. It was perhaps not as idyllic in family dynamics as we tend to imagine when we see sacred art depicting the holy family.

 

Although Mary gave herself fully to her calling to be the mother of our Lord (Luke 1:38), and Joseph acted admirably in taking Mary to be his wife (Matthew 1:24-25) and in defending Jesus from the murderous rage of King Herod (2:13), I am sure that they struggled to fulfill their familiar vocations as do we. Yet they took their infant Son to the temple to do all that the law required (Luke 2:27, 39) for the purification of Mary after giving birth, and for the redemption of her firstborn son.

 

But perhaps no one would have had a more difficult situation than Jesus Himself. The eternal, holy, almighty, immortal Son of God was sent to be “born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law” (Galatians 4:4). In His perfect obedience to His heavenly Father, He submitted to the earthly family dynamics into which He was placed.

 

Like His parents, who in obedience to the Law of God went to the temple to make the offering for the redemption of their firstborn son, Jesus lived His life as an obedient son of Israel according to His station within His family. “And He went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them” (Luke 2:39). He kept the law to “Honour your father and your mother” (Exodus 20:12) as all of us who are under God’s law are commanded to do.

 

While we never hear of Jesus saying to Joseph anything like, “I don’t have to listen to you, you’re not My real Father,” there is a superlative emphasis on Jesus’ continuing obedience to the heavenly Father. He never denies the Father who sent Him into the world, not even when that sending required the humility of a servant healing and feeding and washing feet; not even when that sending required obedience unto death, “even death upon a cross” (Philippians 2:8).

 

In agony, at the point of His last breath He cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” (Matthew 27:46). He felt alienation not just from a stepfather, but from His eternal Father within the surpassing love of the economy of the Holy Trinity. There was anguish as He suffered and died for the sins of the world: for His step brothers and for His fellow Jews who mocked and ridiculed Him while He hung there naked and dying; His faithful mother beneath Him, looking on with tender love as He once again finally fulfilled His sending as the Son of God in human flesh saying, “Father, into Your hands I commit My Spirit! And having said this He breathed His last” (Luke 23:46).

 

When we feel a crisis of identity within our family, within the world in which we live, or even within our own selves, we tend to fill with resentment or anger or even violence. We do yell out things that Jesus would never say, like “you’re not my real father”; or “I don’t want to have anything to do with you anymore”; or even “you’re all dead to me.” We can do this kind of thing by our silence, too, holing ourselves up in our own space and keeping everyone else out, setting up walls of division within our minds, convincing ourselves that we have no real connection with anybody.

 

Those are sinful, self-centred responses to our identity crisis. Because we do not understand ourselves and think that things would be better if we were someone else, we disconnect from anyone who reminds us of who we are or who keeps us grounded in the reality of our family.

 

Things are never Christmas card perfect 365 days of the year in any earthly family, and we do have a true crisis of identity within ourselves, each and every one of us. We were born into sin under God’s holy Law. That means that we resist the family rules and expectations that are given, not only in the fabric of every society but also revealed, founded, and fine-tuned in God’s Word for families and individuals.

 

We resist God’s law because we want to be independent and we think that we can make better choices for ourselves that will turn out better than listening to anything that anyone in authority wants to tell us, whether father, mother, grandparents, or God; whether what they say is “You are mine,” “We will never let you go,” or “We love you.”

 

Parents and grandparents and brothers and sisters often make mistakes. They often do hurtful things and say hurtful things. But they, too, have a calling from God and are set in their place to live according to His holy Law. They have their own identities to figure out as they wrestle with their sinful self-centredness also. What are we to do, having been thrown together in such dysfunctional families of sinners?

 

Sometimes, it just takes a little patience, time, and forgiveness. A lot of our identity crises work themselves out as we realize that we are not the only ones who struggle in these ways. The faithful patience of parents and children and siblings to bear with each other goes a long way. But to truly repair the crisis and to overcome broken family bonds will take something beyond us. To save us from our sins against the heavenly Father’s holy Law will take more than realizing that we all have the same feelings from time to time.

 

He doesn’t have those feelings. He never wants to be separated from His children. Our Lord Jesus Christ never wants to be apart from those whom He has redeemed to be His brothers and sisters. Although the Father gave up His only Son, sending Him into this world to be born into a broken family and to suffer and die in agony on a cross, He did this so that He might have you as His child. He gave up His Son for adoption, but it was for your adoption not His. His Son was the price for God to have you as His child.

 

“When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). Mary and Joseph took the infant Jesus to the temple and they paid the redemption price for her firstborn son. All Jews did that because God had redeemed His people from slavery in Egypt and took them to be His own.

 

Jesus went to the cross and gave His life as a ransom for all people. He did that because our sinful self-centredness had us enslaved. He paid with His life to set us free, that we would be the people of God. When the old woman, Anna, went to the temple that same day that Mary and Joseph brought the infant Jesus, “coming up at that very hour she began to give thanks to God and to speak of Him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem” (Luke 2:38). The redemption of Jerusalem, the price for them and for all, was the infant Child that Mary and Joseph brought and that the man Simeon “took up in his arms” (2:28): “salvation... prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to Your people Israel” (2:30-32).

 

“All people” includes you. You belong. You are God’s child through the redemption paid in the life of His only Son sent to redeem those under the law. You have been freed from slavery to sin through Jesus Christ in whom you are forgiven and redeemed. God gave up His Son to incarnation and death for your adoption. He became the infant Child of Mary, was under the guardianship of Joseph, and when He reached the time set by His heavenly Father, He obediently suffered death upon the cross for you, before rising from the dead and ascending bodily to His place at the right hand of God the Father.

 

This was so that you could be adopted into the family of God. That means having full rights as God’s child, inheritance rights. And God in His Word is very specific to say that you have been adopted as sons. That is not to deny who you were born to be in this world. It does not change your genetic make-up. It does not take away the struggles that come with everything that is specific to you and your place in your family. But it says that when it comes to inheriting as God’s child, you have it all. There is no need to try to be anything else than the child of God that you are in Christ Jesus.

 

You have full forgiveness, full redemption, full restoration, and the full and complete love of God. You have eternal life and all the eternal glory that comes with being a full member of the family of God. Whenever you find yourself questioning your identity or your place, cry out to Our Father in heaven and listen to what He has to say to you in His Word.

 

 

“The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen” (Galatians 6:18).