Thicker Than Blood--September 5, 2022

Thicker Than Blood--September 5, 2022

"If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his fiancee, if his passions are strong, and so it has to be, let him marry as he wishes; it is no sin. Let them marry.  But if someone stands firm in his resolve, being under no necessity but having his own desire under control, and has determined in his own mind to keep her as his fiancee, he will do well. So then, he who marries his fiancee does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better. A wife is bound as long as her husband lives. But if the husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, only in the lord. But in my judgment she is more blessed if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God." [1 Corinthians 7:36-40]

Here's another way the Christian message was--and remains--revolutionary: the followers of Jesus don't need to worry any longer about "keeping the family line going." We dare to believe that there is a different kind of family to which we belong, one that is not defined by DNA or a traceable bloodline, but rather by the claim of Christ on us.  Conventional wisdom says that "blood is thicker than water"--that is, that our biological family ties are stronger and more essential than any adversity or obstacle, or even the distance across oceans.  But the followers of Jesus have staked their lives on the subversive idea that, at least in the sense of baptismal promises, water is thicker than blood.

That idea is just below the surface of these concluding thoughts from Paul here in First Corinthians.  And even though we've danced around them before, it's worth naming that idea more clearly here.  At root, the reason Paul is less concerned with getting his church members all married up and having babies is that the Christian community is no longer bound to perpetuate itself through DNA.  We don't have to worry about "passing along the family name," or "helping our line carry on."  We are not constrained to the limits of a biological family, clan, tribe, or nation of people.  And that means our worth as human beings is not bound to our capacity to reproduce and pass along our genes.

Just think about how truly radical an idea that is, and certainly how provocative it was in the first century.  Nearly everything in Greco-Roman culture was built on the idea that the biological family was the essential core building block of society, and it had to be preserved at all costs.  A family had to ensure that its line continued, that an heir was born to carry on the legacy, name, and place in the community, and that its reputation was maintained by having the next generation marry well to produce both more children and more prosperity.  And of course, the implication of that whole way of thinking was that if you didn't carry on the family line--or if it died out due to war, poverty, or disease--you were less valuable as a person.  Women who did not have children of their own were seen as "barren," and men who did not pass along their family name and lineage were letting down their ancestors.  And even ancient Israel carried with it in its collective memory a whole set of laws, rules, and practices to keep family lines and legacies going, all in the name of "being fruitful and multiplying." The conventional wisdom, then, when Paul wrote, was that to be a truly successful human being, you had to keep your family line going [and often that was assumed to mean male offspring, of course], and that if you didn't pass along your name and your genes, you had somehow failed in some fundamental sense at being human.

So for Paul to kind of shrug at the idea of marrying and having children, and even to suggest that it might even be better sometimes if people didn't marry and have kids, was a dramatic, almost absurd-sounding, notion.  It really was an overturning of some pretty foundational assumptions that the Empire and the whole culture made about how to be be human.  Paul didn't just toss out the imagery of being a "family in Christ" as a neat but empty metaphor--he actually thought, taught, and acted like our identity in Christ was more essential and important than biology and family lineage.  He didn't talk in lofty language about our worth being found in Christ, but then backpedal into fear by warning his congregations, "But you have to have more babies or else we'll be outnumbered by the pagans, and you have to keep your family line going or else you're a nobody!"  And he didn't preach about being "adopted" into God's family like it was just a rhetorical flourish that had no real grounding in life.  Paul actually believed--and taught his congregations to act in light of that belief--that in Christ, God has done a new thing in which our worth and belonging as people is tied to God's gracious welcome rather than our capacity to pass along our genes or family name.  And in doing that, Paul is tapping into that deep and ancient strand of ancient Israel's memory where the ones without children, or family name, or legacy, are shown favor--from Sarah waiting for a son to Hagar given a legacy to Hannah praying for Samuel to the prophets' word of inclusion to the childless and hopeless who had been told they were "just a dry tree" [see Isaiah 58].  Paul sees that in the Christian community, God has begun nothing short of a new way of being human, where national, tribal, and biological boundaries no longer define us, and we do not have to pin our worth on passing along our genes or carrying on the family name.

That also means that for the Christian community today, there is wide room for welcome for people whose families will not produce more biological offspring.  The couple who marries in their sixties for companionship but who will never have children together is just as much worthy and valued as the husband and wife who have five or six kids in rapid succession. The single people who do not marry and never have kids are honored and valued rather than often being treated like a third wheel or somehow defective until they meet and marry someone.  The family that adopts children is seen as just as authentically a "family" as those whose children carry the DNA of their parents.  And if we take Paul's thinking seriously, then there will be a genuine welcome, too, for gay and lesbian couples as well who have found love and companionship in one another and want to be held to the same accountability of faithfulness and devotion as all those other couples and families, whether they do or do not have children, too.  I know that can sound radical to some ears, like it is knocking down a whole chain of dominoes once you start going down this path--and in a sense, it is. But it's worth recognizing that it's Paul himself who is flicking the first domino and shaking the whole old order of things, because Paul actually takes seriously the idea that our worth and our humanity does not depend on passing along our family names or our genes.  The Christian community really is founded on something that overturns the old importance of passing on the family heritage or keeping a tribe alive.  It is founded on the claim that the grace of God, marked on us from our baptism onward, is what gives us our identity and worth, not our ability to produce biological descendants.  And it is staked on the Gospel promise that the waters of the font are indeed thicker than blood.

Could we dare to believe that, today?  Could we provide a genuine welcome to people who have been made to feel like they don't really belong because they haven't had children of their own?  Could we really be a new kind of family--and a new kind of humanity?  That's the challenge for today.

Lord God, give us the courageous vision to see our worth coming from you rather than our family names or biological lineage.  Let us trust your promise that we belong in Christ.