We are Family

To be well taught and deeply cared for are two of the great treasures of experience in life. We cherish households, schools, churches, or any team for work or sport that offer good instruction in the spirit of caring. The household is called a family, and it is not unusual to see any of these groups as families of different kinds.  There are practical things to teach, and there are values and matters of the heart to teach in a family. Where you have that, you have a family in which the members learn and grow.

I remember the baseball-playing days of my son Andrew. As a little guy, brand new to the game, he played two seasons. The second season he had a coach that haphazardly drilled on this skill or that, and often shouted and shamed the youngsters in practice and in games. That experience convinced Andrew he did not need a third season of baseball. His first coach, from the business world and a teacher of Entrepreneurship at U of H, had a different style. He drilled efficiently on fielding and batting basics, and when there was a flub or error, it was an occasion for teaching. The tone and the precise instruction about how to improve came through as care. The fun of the game was emphasized as well. Improving steadily and contributing whole-heartedly defined winning on coach Jones’ team.

Most Christians have formed impressions of Paul, the apostle to the Gentiles, from the letters of the New Testament or the stories from the Acts of the Apostles. Certain passages turn people off. In those bothersome sections, it takes a full view of the historical context and the nature of the matters Paul was addressing to have a fairer view of what is preserved in the scriptural record. Looking at the whole corpus of Paul’s work leaves me with the conclusion: He loved the people to whom he was writing. He was concerned about how they fared in life and in their relationship with Christ. Paul held the deep conviction believing in Christ put the believer into a new reality of Christ. It was not just a matter of holding views concerning Jesus; it was the emergence of a new creature with a developing Christ-like state of being.

Paul was a kind of coach, caring and teaching on practical matters and on values. In his correspondence with the Christians in Thessaloniki, we see how Paul loved them as brothers and sisters in Christ. They had questions he wanted to answer; they had courses of action he wanted to correct. They had hearts that he prayed would be filled with the love of God. We have a short passage from this correspondence as our Epistle this Sunday. Please notice in it the urging of practices for the highest experience of God. Notice too his wish, the prayer of hope he has for them, that they would be fully blessed and protected through and through:

Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this. —1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

This is so affirming and loving if we will just take it to heart for ourselves. Paul urges finding a way to pray continuously, a way to be joyful and thankful no matter what. Christ allows the means for this fulfilling of God’s will. We are to never dampen the fire of the Spirit. With keen thinking and scrutiny, we are to take the prophetic word to heart, letting it form us to be repelled from evil and be drawn like magnets to the good. (Come some time to the zoom meeting to an offering of Christian Meditation or the Contemplative Café and let me teach you some of what the early church thought of as the practice of “praying continuously”) Paul shows by the loving letter he wrote, he thought of the church as a family.

I have served with some remarkable priests throughout the years. My first rector, in Midland Texas, way back in the mid-80s was exceptional. He taught me there were many aspects of ministry that we can fittingly emphasize, but the rector must emphasize two as foundational. Fr. Whitman said learning and pastoral care are foremost. Doing these well, consistently sets up other ministries and leads to a healthy community of faith. Fr. Bates ensures that for us, he emphasizes within the parish family the joy and importance of learning and pastoral care. He and Fr. Whitman are alike in many ways, except that Fr. Bates has greater ease with people.

Fr. Bates is a man of books and personal contact. He reads and learns. He loves to teach and to maintain a connection with his people. He values communicating and being present to people in need. We experience St. Francis as a family because of that. We have a learning, caring, worshiping, fellowshipping, serving, and praying community. When I read the epistle above, I feel a connection to our parish family. At St. Francis I feel the God of peace sanctifying us entirely, making us holy, through and through. I feel we are committed to God’s sound keeping—pneuma, psyche, and soma—that is, spirit, soul, and body. (1 Thess. 5:23) In this family, we are given to the One who has called us, the utterly faithful One who will finish in us what God set out to do.