Family
If you had the power of knowing the number of hairs on my head, you would notice that this week I have significantly lesser number of hairs. The reason is that I have been pulling out my hair ever since Pastor announced that this month’s theme is Family. Last week, Rev Appu spoke about the Pharisees trying to trap Jesus, by asking him a tricky question about money. Jesus was wise enough and he did not allow himself to be trapped. I am no way wise enough, so when Pastor asked me if I can preach on the first Sunday of September, I said yes of course. But weeks later, Pastor in his wisdom decided that the theme is going to be Family. Pastor really managed to trap me. My Goodness, Me, Preaching on Family? All that I can do is joke about Family, Laugh about Family, but preaching about Family is something that I never thought I will be able to do. The reason is simple, I do not believe I still have figured out the success mantra of a Perfect Family. We are not a perfect Family.
When I was in Pondicherry, I was the Manufacturing Manager in IBM and I used to always complain about the cleanliness of the shop floor and the toilets etc to the Admin Manager. It is not that I have a very high sense of hygiene myself. My wife knows that. The first time she came to my village house in Kerala, she was horrified at our sense of hygiene. I grew up in a village, and in a big family. We used to have one bathroom, and one towel for 8 people in the house. Everyone used the towel, rinsed it out and the others used it afterwards. Leslie was simply horrified at the thought. You see, she comes from a background where she used one towel for the face and another towel for the feet and a third one for the rest of the body of the same person. So it was a cultural shock for her. Anyway, I am deviating from the main story here. Like I was saying I used to complain about the hygiene levels in the factory shop floor and the toilets and canteen etc to the admin manager. A few months later I got the shock of my life when the Factory Manager (My boss) appointed me as the head of the Housekeeping Committee. I went and confronted the Admin Manager who had by then become a good friend of mine. He smiled and said (he was a Malayalee, and so he said it in Malayalam). Haven’t you heard about “Entrusting the Key to the Thief” principle? (It sounds better in Malayalam .. “Kallente Kayyil Thakkol Kodukkanam”.) See, God has a great sense of humor, and He chose me to speak about Family exactly because He knows that I am the least qualified person to speak about the topic. God then reminded me about what I said in my previous sermon here. I said , No one is completely useless, and I introduced the T shirt slogan that read “ I am not Utterly Useless. I can be Used as a Bad Example”. God is asking me this morning to put that into practice.
So, I am not going to preach out of my great examples or things that I have practiced in our family life. Today, I am going to preach from our failures, and hope that it will make some sense to you.
Actually, the rules for a perfect family are rather simple. Bible gives us four simple rules to lead a perfect Family life. You know the rules,
• Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"— (Ephesians 6:1-2)
• Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord (Ephesians 5:22)
• Fathers, do not exasperate your children; (Ephesians 6:4)
• Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, (Ephesians 4:26)
So you could look at the Kumar Family and say, oh.. here is a family that obeys all these rules and leads a perfect family life. You will be wrong!! These are rules that we disobey multiple times. That is what makes us imperfect.
But then we realize that we are not alone. Matthew Chapter 1 begins with a long list of Jesus’ genealogy for his human side. One look at the list will tell you that the lineup is far from perfect families or perfect people. The families of Abraham, Sarah and Hagar; Jacob, Leah and Rachel; Judah, Tamar and Perez;
Salmon and Rehab; David and Bathsheba etc. that form the lineup of families to Jesus’ birth are far from perfect families. These are just the families in the genealogy of Jesus. There are many other imperfect families in the Bible.
So, the BIG question. What makes our family go on? Why did God allow the imperfect families of the Bible be written about and included in the Bible. Why did God choose a lineup of such imperfect families to bring His only begotten Son into this world.
The answer is simple enough. GRACE!!
It is His Grace that used the imperfect families of the Bible to be used to bring the perfect one to this world. It is by His Grace that those imperfect families became part of His love story towards humankind. Yes, it is by Grace alone that we Kumars exist as a family. It is by Grace alone that we have completed 24 years of family life. It is by Grace alone that we will celebrate our Silver Anniversary in February next year. It is by Grace alone that we will grow old together. It is by Grace alone that we will continue to grow closer to each other and to God.
So as recipients of this Grace what is our responsibility in Family life? Do we sit around and let the Grace of God work itself out. Not really. There are ways by which we can we can practically apply that Grace in our family lives.
Actually there are two practical applications of Grace in our Family that I would like to highlight. Let us look at them
The First application is from 1 Peter 4:8 (MSG) : Most of all, love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. The message translation says it better, Love each other as if your life depended on it. Love makes up for practically anything. It makes up for your shortcomings, it makes up for the shortcomings of your spouse, it makes up for the shortcomings of your parents, it makes up for the shortcomings of your children. For a change, Paul agrees with Peter in Colossians 3:14 (NKJV)
But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection. Paul calls Love as the “Bond of Perfection.” In 1Cor 13:13 Paul says that Love is higher than Hope and Faith. So the first practical application of Grace in our family life is the attempt to love each other the way Paul described in 1 Cor 13:4-8 Love is patient and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. And then Paul makes the audacious statement “Love Never Fails.”
This is not easy. This is not something that can come to us naturally. But with God’s help, we certainly can make a sincere attempt at “Loving each other as if our lives depended on it”. If not for ourselves, we owe it to our Lord who showed the true extent of His love by hanging on the cross for our sins. Just before he begins his journey to the cross, just before his last supper, just before he demonstrates true servanthood, Jesus shows the true extent of his love to his disciples (John 13:1). As followers of that Servant Leader, it is our Christian duty to “love each other as if our lives depended on it”
The second application of God’s Grace in our Family lives is in answering the question “Who is the boss of this family”. Leslie thinks she is the boss of the family. Neville thinks he is the Boss. I would like to think that I am the boss. I guess this is one question that will never be answered. Does the bible answer this? Yes of course the Bible gives answers to the Headship question in 1 Corinthians 11:3 (NKJV)
But I want you to know that the head of every man is Christ, the head of woman is man, and the head of Christ is God. Many a time, this verse is used (misused) to establish male headship in families. This is something that I will not be able to do it in our family. Anyway, that is beside the point. To me this verse is more about the nature of the “headship” or leadership behaviour. It really does not matter who the boss is, what we should learn from this verse is what is true leadership, true headship about. To do that, we have to only look at the headship relationship between God and Christ and Christ and man. What is expected is that we “submit” ourselves to the “head” of the family, isn’t it? Actually let us dig a little deeper into this “submit” command. My study of the bible tells me that there are as many as 11 “submission” requirements in the bible.
1. All creation is called to submit to God (Jas 4:7; Heb 12:9).
2. God is the head of Christ (1 Cor 15:28, 1 Cor 11:3).
3. All creation has been put under the headship of Christ (1 Cor 15:27-28;Heb 2:2;Eph 1:20-23;Phil 3:21;1 Pe 3:22)
4. Church is asked to be submissive to Christ (Eph 5:24)
5. Church is also asked to be submissive to it’s leaders (1 Cor 16:16; 1 Th 5:12;Heb 13:17)
6. Children are called to be submissive to Parents (Eph 6:1-4; Col 3:20-21; Lk 2:41-52; 1 Ti 3:4)
7. Young men are asked to be submissive to Older men (1 Pe 5:5)
8. Slaves are required to be submissive to Masters (Eph 6:5-9; Col 3:22-24; Tit 2:9-10; 1 Pe 2:18-20)
9. Citizens are called to be under the headship of Government (Rom 13:1-6; 1 Pe 2:13-15; Tit 3:1)
10. Every Christian is asked to be submissive to Others (Eph 5:21)
11. Wives are asked to submit to the headship of Husbands (Eph 5:22-24; Col 3:18; Tit 2:5; 1 Pe 3:1-7; 1 Cor 11:3)
So how did Jesus understand and apply this headship or submission command? What is the headship relationship of Christ to Man? Jesus himself lays it out in Matthew 20: 25-28 (NKJV) "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and those who are great exercise authority over them. Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant. And whoever desires to be first among you, let him be your slave-- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many." Jesus’’ idea of being a boss of the house is not to be served but to serve. Just imagine all those 11 relationships that I described above fitting into this explanation of headship. Yes, life and family life will be beautiful if the headship relationships are seen from the Servant Leadership perspective. Submission becomes enjoyable and does not become an ego issue when we see that the “head” to whom we are “submitting” is actually a Servant Leader, who has our wellbeing in mind.
So that is the second practical application of Grace in our family lives. Serve each other, not “Lord over each other”
In conclusion then, we are an imperfect family and we exist because of Grace alone. But we can apply that Grace to our family lives through Godly love and seeking to serve each other.
To illustrate that point I asked Leslie to write down what she would say at my funeral. She wrote a beautiful message. I asked her if I could record her reading the message, and she refused. So we hired a professional actress and recorded my funeral message. Let us watch what Leslie had to say at my funeral. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nw0s4C0g5SM)
The message ends with these beautiful words. “In the End, it is these Little Things that You Remember. The Little Imperfections that Make them Perfect for You!!” Let us remember that Paul boasted about his imperfections (2 Cor 11:30, 2 Cor 12:9-10). And let us do this, not because of anything else but because our chief end, our whole purpose in life is to Glorify God and to Enjoy Him forever (Westminster Shorter Catechism). So let us apply the Grace of God to our Family lives with the sole purpose of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ, who gave us the Upside down Gospel that to live, we have to die, to gain we have to give, to lead we have to serve. Let us glorify Him even through our Family lives , imperfect as it might be!!
Let us pray!!.
