August 6, 2006: PILGRIMAGE COMPANIONS
2 Corinthians 6:1-13, Ephesians 2:11-22, Psalm 71:excerpts (from The Message)
Eileen Parfrey - Springwater Presbyterian Church

One of my childhood friends checked in with me after the 4th of July, as she often does. Both our families traditionally spend the holiday at the lake in northern Minnesota. Our families' customs are similar, because we go back five generations to our great-grandparents, who would come out together from Duluth on weekends. The lake community formed during the Depression, when the men and younger folks traveled the country looking for work, re-uniting during summers at the lake. Since then, that custom has changed so it's the 4th of July that has become a day of obligation, as important as Christmas. The cabins all around the lake fill up and burst with family reunions that weekend, each family observing the event with their own traditional foods and activities.

For my friend Deb, recent years have eroded this tradition. Her siblings' kids developed other interests as they got older, the maintenance of the cabin fell to just her when their parents got too old for the upkeep, and one by one the nuclear families went to other activities around the 4th. In her family at least, it was no longer a day of obligation. She wanted to have one, final 4th at the lake while their parents could still enjoy it, so she began planning the event last winter. She re-painted the old home place, and spent all her weekends cleaning and repairing and prepping.

We talked on the 5th, and she was still fighting angry tears. One brother never got back to her invitation and just didn't show, the other said he could squeeze in the cabin for a couple of hours, but that they'd been invited to another party. Her sisters spent the time telling her in detail that she'd changed too many things and her mother re-arranged the kitchen. The teenaged nieces and nephews complained about the food, the little ones left wet towels on the lawn and punctured the beach toys. As she hiccoughed through her tears she said, "I don't know why I even bother with that family. My real family is the neighbors at the lake."

I wonder if this is the sort of dysfunctional family reunion the early church organizers were running from, as they tried, instead, to put together a new church family composed of Jew and Gentile. What else could possibly possess two groups to form religious community around a reconciliation that had always been forbidden? I mean, besides the Holy Spirit. The immovable social boundary between Jew and Gentile not only went back a couple millennia, it applied to more than religious practice. To a Jew, the prohibition was more than praying together, it was eating, drinking, marrying, talking, doing business, learning. Everything.

How were these two opposing groups supposed to get past a 20-foot poured concrete wall, and live together? There was no door, let alone a checkpoint for passports or travel passes. Paul uses the royal "we" to tell the congregation in Corinth that the world is watching for the success or failure of this experiment. His trials illustrate the barriers to church family formation. But interspersed with his impediments are imperatives. Virtues. Advice. Things to do. Paul says both groups start level. Both Jew and Gentile-everyone-has been given a fresh start. Fine. But how do they live together? Even UN peacekeepers couldn't overcome these barriers-which, at the time, included sanctioned executions of church members by the government, the absentee government, Zionists, religious zealots, splinter groups, and political insurrectionists. Nobody trusted anybody, either in religious communities or neighborhoods. So the way to live together, Paul says, is to do it. Work hard. Live clean. Be honest. Treat each other as if you were one family. Let God work and stop living small. Open up.

Deb's new family was formed under less adversarial conditions than the early church, which grew despite religious, political, and ethnic hostilities. Deb's heartache about her own family has been transformed into loyalty to the new one, but like the early church, her new family formation taps into generational history. Her new family didn't just keep the old traditions, they found new ways to express them for the here-and-now. Kind of like Springwater. We're not all related by blood or marriage, but we are family, because we tap into our tradition, expressing it in ways appropriate to here-and-now. Deb's new family used tools our great-grandparents used during the Depression. They worked together on each other's projects, gathered on Sunday mornings for Bible stories and songs, and ate together, so that no one had extra and no one went without. From the rituals developed around summertime, they have naturally expanded into being family for each other as each needed support through illness, loss, bereavement, divorce. Their rituals reinforce celebrations as well-weddings, babies, graduations. The only way Deb's new family is different from Springwater is that no one preaches Sunday mornings, and they haven't started a mission outreach project.

If church is a family reunion, as one author claims, I hope our Springwater family isn't like Deb's original family-judgmental, disappointing, critical, belittling. I hope we're more like Deb's new, intentional family, forming through shared traditions and activities and holidays practiced in our own peculiar way. "Groups" can become "family" through intention. As Paul would say, when you live it. Deb might suggest when you practice it.

Today we'll practice forming family, using "holiday" as our talking point. Everyone likes a holiday. What holidays a family celebrates, and the peculiar way they celebrate, is one way they know they belong to each other. Special foods, who cooks what, particular activities for particular holidays. And besides, for many families, holidays are the only time they get together. Count off by sixes and we will form artificial families. Your task is to think up three new holidays that make your new family special. Not Christmas and Thanksgiving. An entirely new holiday-perhaps Uncle Bert's annual cannon salute to the summer solstice. Or the ritual removal of algae from the grandparent's deck. Or the ceremonial pruning of apple trees. After you've got three options to choose from, develop one holiday so special that it's a "day of obligation" for the family. Something so important that no one willingly misses it. And then decide "what" makes it special-what you'll do, what you'll eat-and why. Because this is family, your traditions will need to appeal to and include kids as well as adults. We'll share what we've learned.