This week's service poses the question 'A Christian Family?' and will, I think, be an exploration of something around intergenerational relationships. Whilst the topic doesn't feel quite as 'hairy' as last week's, it is not easy - since families come in many shapes, sizes and guises. I will start by debunking the myth of 'we four and no more' as some sort of Christian ideal, and do so by reference to historical and Biblical insights.
Whilst walking to work this morning, I was pondering the, relatively few, Bible stories that are about families. That is, stories that extend beyond the bland statement of their existence. We have, for example the Abraham family, two women, two sons, and dysfunction. Or the Isaac story, with a devious wife and squabbling sons; more dysfunction. Or Jacob's family - two wives, two concubines, twelve sons and some daughters, with all manner of intrigue and awfulness; yup, dysfunction again. Move to the New Testament and, I hate to say it, but we find more than hints of dysfunction in the 'Holy Family' itself, with Jesus' relatives on one occasion being reported as thinking he had gone mad. And that's before we look at the things Jesus says about breaking up families!
Rather than the Bible giving us family examples to aspire to, we find stories that make the average British Soap look tame!
The Bible gives us household codes (e.g. Ephesians 5/6) that hint at a different set of attitudes but, I fear, fix the parent-child relationship as an adult-child one, at least as interpreted by any commentator or theologian I have read. Over the last day or so, I have read stuff on theology of family that is essentially a (needed and laudable) attempt to develop a theology of childhood and of 'childness' (the childlike qualities advocated by Jesus) but nothing, not one jot about adult children and elderly parents, or grown-up siblings, or grandparents and grandchildren. Easier by far to find Biblical examples of 'blended' families than to find something helpful to say, for example, to the overseas student thousands of miles from a blood relative or the elderly spinster who has no-one left apart from a distant cousin...
I thought this one might be easier... more fool me!