If blood is supposed to be thicker than water, meaning that we have a primary responsibility to our families, then I guess we had better know who our families are. I guess we’d better know who our blood kin are if blood is thicker than water, as the saying goes, and there is some kind of special responsibility to our own kinfolks. Who are our families?
Someone said to me this week, as she was reflecting on her future, "I have no family, you know." Well, I probed a little bit. I knew that she had no living brothers or sisters, and I knew that she had never been a mother. But I thought I knew of some others who were family. "Well, yes," she said, "there are some cousins. But I hardly know them. I don’t really consider them family." So I probed some more. I asked her if she had some good friends? “Oh, my, yes! I have great friends, devoted friends, the kind who will help you in every need." Then I asked about her church. “Oh, my church is wonderful. There are some people there who would do anything for me. I have a great church family. Oh! Church …family. I guess I do have a family, don’t I?
You see, family is broader than the folks who have the same last name or who sprang from the same great-grandparents. Family are the people who care about you, who have been through a lot of things with you, who have struggled when you have struggled. Family are the folks, whoever they are, who have sweated and prayed great drops of blood with you. Family is much broader than merely the official relatives.
Someone else called me the other day to tell me of the death of his good friend, a man with whom he had done many things over the years, someone he had cared for during his long illness and protracted dying. As we talked, I sensed that this loss of a good friend was no less painful, no less agonizing, than the loss of a blood brother. The mere accident of being born from the same parents and raised in the same home is not the only thing that makes us brothers. We are also brothers when we struggle together, live through pain together, share disappointments together. Family are the folks, whoever they are, who have sweated and prayed great drops of blood with you. Family is much broader than merely the official relatives.
I want to think with you about the broader human family in which we live. There are people all around us who are or who can become our family, our brothers and sisters.
The apostle Paul, speaking to the polite skeptics on Mars Hill in ancient Athens, decided to teach them about being one family. This Jew from Tarsus in Syria ... of a different race from these Greeks, speaking a different native language, having a different religious background, being from a culture quite unlike theirs ... this argumentative man representing a tiny, unheard of religion, decided to tell the cultured Athenians that they were like him and he like them. Probably not as easy message to hear.
But Paul asserted that all of them were of one blood. One family. And being of one blood had some very definite consequences.
I
The first thing that Paul taught the Athenians was that because we are all God’s creation, because we are all of one blood, we are more alike than we are different. Now the differentness is there, it is important, but there is more to bring us together than there is to separate us.
"God who made the world and everything it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth … [this God] has made of one blood all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live."
To put it in plain and simple terms, God has made us all alike and yet God has also made us all different. God has made us of one blood and yet God has also allotted each of us different times, different boundaries, different ways, different styles. But the thrust is that God has made us family; God has made us of one blood, though we are different.
Now there are many ways to talk about this truth. If I were to recount the history of this congregation as a multiracial family, I would get no argument from you. We have achieved a great deal of the family feeling on that level. We are more alike than we are different, even though there are differences.
If I were to speak of the way we have been able, to some degree, to cross over other barriers, I would find agreement. One of our newer members told his deacon that he was attracted to this church because we spent no time parading our goodness or flaunting our righteousness. We just recognize that we are all simply sinners saved by grace. That’s a good tribute to the family feeling we’ve achieved. We are more alike than we are different, even though we are different.
But there is another level of family that we still need to achieve. There is another way to take responsibility for our brothers and sisters. And that is to see those outside the church, especially those whose lifestyles are way, way outside the church, as our brothers and sisters. Our next task is to understand that God has made of one blood all persons ... and that means the folks whose ways we may despise, the people whose values we think are terrible, the men and women in our neighborhood of whom we are afraid. God has made them too, of one blood with us.
Think of it: that drug dealer who stands on the corner, my brother and yours. Creation of God. Very different from you and me. Not what God intended him to be. But because God has made him, you and I have a responsibility to him. We need to love him and work to claim him.
Dangerous? Of course. Not easy, not by a long shot. But if that man is in this community, within the circle of our lives, he is our brother, he is our responsibility. God has made of one blood all persons.
Think of it: the prostitute renting rooms up at the hotel one hour at a time. But that’s not just a prostitute; that’s my sister and your sister. A creation of God. Very different from your values and mine. But because God has made her, you and I have a responsibility to her. It will cost us to reach her. It will take time, energy, and emotion, blood, you might say, to get to her. But she is God’s creation, she is our sister, she is our responsibility.
The first tough truth, then, that I hear from the wiry, eloquent apostle standing out on Mars Hill …the first tough truth that I hear is that God is calling us to be brothers and sisters, even to those who want to make trouble for us. Different, radically different though they are, they are God’s creatures, He loves them, and so we are called to be responsible for them.
II
But now let’s focus for a moment on this differentness. What does it mean that people are so different? What is the significance of the fact that human beings will spend their lives and their time in pursuit of such strange things, even terrible things? Is there any meaning in the harsh reality of the streets, where men and women do drugs and sell their bodies, where they push for power and beat up on each other? Is there a deeper meaning to all of this?
The orator on Mars Hill says that there is. Paul told the Athenians what they were really after, and it is the same thing that everyone wants today. They just don’t know that th1s is what they want.
Paul told the Athenians that what they really want is God. They want spiritual fulfillment. To know and be known by their creator. Their very differentness is an expression of spiritual longings.
"God has made of one blood all nations ... and allotted their boundaries and times ... so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him"
Strange as it may seem, in every human being down deep there is a hunger for God, there is a thirst to drink of the living water. In every human being there is what one thinker has called a God-shaped void, which can be filled only by God himself.
The trouble with the world is that we just keep on looking in all the wrong places for satisfaction. Some have been sold a bill of goods that says you’ll feel satisfied if you drive this car or party the night away. Others been suckered into believing that if you just get things or exercise power, you’ll be satisfied and your life will have meaning. But you and I who know Christ know that just isn’t true. It is not true.
What is true is that everything that men and women long for and work so hard to get is actually a mask for their need for God. Everything that we try to so hard to have is only a substitute, and a poor one at that, for fellowship with the living God.
This punk on the street: who is he? Beneath the snazzy clothes and the snappy car for some of them, or, more likely, behind the desperate eyes and the drug-slurred speech, he is your brother and mine in a search for God! He thinks he’s looking for excitement; in truth he is looking for the meaning that only God can supply.
This lady of the evening: who is she? Beneath the paint and the powder, or, more likely, behind the disease-ridden body and the drink-driven appetites, she is your sister and mine in a search for God! She thinks she is looking for a way out, for power over her own life; in truth she is looking for the freedom that only God can supply.
Oh, I know it’s hard to see a hunger for God in that kind of behavior. And I know it’s even harder to hear the cry of a thirsty soul in those who don’t say it the way we say it. But the Bible tells us over and over that God has made all persons and that all seek Him in one way or another. Every one of us is in a struggle to find Him. “God has made of one blood all nations ... so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him ... •
So, what have we said thus far?
First that we are family. Even to the least of these our brothers and sisters, we are family, and therefore responsible.
And second, that the fact that others may be different does not separate them from us; their differentness is just a signal that they are looking for God in all the wrong ways.
III
So ... what shall we do? If all around us are brothers and sisters, however different they may be, what must we do to embrace them?
If their differentness is at bottom a search for God ... maybe a futile, wrong-headed search, but a search for God nonetheless ... how do we take responsibility for them?
From preacher Paul on Mars Hill comes the answer. Unpopular as it must have been, ridiculous though it may have sounded to the skeptical Athenians, Paul lifts up a message of judgment, repentance, and salvation.
"While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead."
I hear Paul saying that in Jesus Christ there is an answer to the human dilemma. In Jesus Christ, crucified and risen again, there is a response to our search. What they are looking for but do not know, their unknown god, is found in Christ. And there is only a limited amount of time to complete that search.
You see, these are urgent days. Surely everyone can see that if something is not done soon about the fabric of our community, it will be torn beyond repair. Surely everyone can read the signs of the times and know that the onset of a deadly venereal disease, mixed with the desperation of drug abuse, and, stirred with the terror of increasing violence will bring us all down like a house of cards. These are urgent days.
So, church folk, in urgent times we can no longer say, "They are going to fall and we are going to be all right." We can no longer afford the luxury of speaking of the "they" who are condemned and the "we" who are saved. "They" is "we" and "we" is "they", if you’ll pardon the grammar! They are our brothers and sisters, and we are responsible for them. These are urgent times.
Oh, church, dream an urgent dream today! Dream of sharing Christ in every nook and cranny of our community. Dream of offering what you have found to every hungry heart within these streets. Dream an urgent dream today.
Church, dream an urgent dream of ministry. Dream of Discipleship Training that will train us and equip us to reach all sorts of people and serve their needs, so that they might know our Christ. Dream of going beyond, well beyond, the Wednesday Club, where a few volunteers faithfully serve the mentally impaired. Dream of more than a fellowship of a few of the senior citizens. Dream great dreams, dream expansive dreams, dream of ministries that reach young marrieds and strengthen married life. Dream of ministries that touch substance abusers. Dream of programs to help the grieving and the suffering. Dream urgent dreams today. Dream of offering Christ to these our brothers and sisters.
Paul says that God has appointed a day of judgment and that all must repent. That means that we, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, need to repent of our failures. Our failure to be so faithful and diligent and creative that scores of people would want to hear our message. Our failure to use everything we have to address the human needs that are all around us. Our failure to take risks with our property, our money, our time. We need to repent.
The only answer to the hungers of the human heart is Jesus Christ and Him crucified and risen again. The only fully satisfactory response to the thirsts of the soul lies in the sacrificial death and hope-bringing life of Jesus Christ. And God has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by this Christ, whom He has raised from the dead. These are urgent times! If that day were to be today or tomorrow, what would we have done? How would we have embraced our brothers and our sisters?
Lord, hold on just a little longer and fire your people with a passion!
"God has made of one blood all nations." And God wills that because of the shed blood of Christ all of us become brothers and sisters, in the one blood.
