To listen to this sermon on Family and Home, click here.
When it comes to birthdays, the first 6 months of the year is a busy time in the Martin household. We have at least one birthday a month, which makes it seem like we are eating some sort of birthday dessert every time you turn around.
There is an ongoing joke amongst the adults of the family, which started with my dad. When asked what we want for our birthday, the response is, “All I need is just the love of my family.”
We say it, and then we chuckle. But in reality, nothing is closer to the truth. If I had the choice between a) any gift and b) the love of my family, there would be no pause, not hesitation, no request for clarification on “any gift.”
I will take option b every time.
My family is what gives my life meaning and they make me a better person everyday. Not to get too sappy or overly sentimental, but there is no one that I would rather go see a movie with than my wife, no one I would rather sit and talk with than my mom, no one I would rather work on some project around the house with than my dad, no one I would rather go for a hike or bike ride with than my siblings, and there is especially, especially, no one I would rather spend a lazy day playing games with than my three kids.
Last weekend I had the rare opportunity to have a date night with Elias. Being the third child he has not had many opportunities to be one on one with either Kristina or I. His date consisted of dinner at his favorite sushi place, root beer floats for dessert, and finally the Movie Epic (which, by the way he give a solid thumb sideways).
When the movie was over he turned to me and said, “I wish this could last longer… Not the movie, but the time with you…”
I couldn’t have said it better myself.
As I mentioned before, I am required to provide reflections before all of my meetings at work. Which means I am now in the habit of saving poems, sayings, essays, anything that might be good material for a reflection.
The inspiration for today’s sermon comes from one such clipping. It is an essay titled Pioneer: A View of Home by Nikki Giovanni. She starts by saying:
They say Home . . . is where when you go . . . they have to take you in. I rather prefer Home . . . when you could go anywhere . . . is the place you prefer to be. I don’t think of a home as a house, which is another thing I don’t own. Certainly, though, I do live in a house that I have made my home. I won’t even pretend living on the streets, sleeping in public parks, washing up at the bus or train station, eating out of garbage cans is a valid alternative to bedrooms, bathrooms, and kitchens whiffing good smells every time the furnace blows. But I also readily concede if there is no love a building will not compensate.
One of Isaac’s last writing assignments for the year is to write a memoire. To get started the teacher gave the students a worksheet. On the worksheet was a grid, across the top the columns were titled, good events and bad event, and down the left were rows for each grade. His assignment was to fill in each box with a good and bad thing that has happened to him in each grade. Eventually they will turn this into a written paper.
Isaac was struggling with this assignment. He told us that one of his classmates is in the foster care system and her sister was just killed in a car accident. He said, “After that, the bad things in my life seems pretty good.”
I too, remember having a very similar experience on nearly an identical assignment at about his age.
Growing up we were the perfect Rockwell painting. My parents were happily married, we lived in nice houses, and there was always a hot meal on the table every night.
We celebrated, not just Christmas, but a Martin family Christmas. A time of year where we would paint ceramic figures, decorate the tree while hanging ornaments from our ears and dancing to Christmas carols.
We were full of inside jokes and words and phrases that made no sense to anyone outside of our immediate family. We were truly the Rockwell family come to life.
Over time, as any family must do, we changed. We moved apart and then we moved back together.
My two sister’s and I started our own families with our own traditions and sayings.
- There’s a Turkey on the floor
- I love your shirt, and
- A single pinky finger pointed into the air
Have been added to our family lexicon that no one else finds quite as funny as we do.
Five years ago I started creating Christmas music videos with my kids. Each year the production has become a bit more complex with costumes, sets, and special effects – recreating the Martin family Christmas in our own image.
As our family has changed and evolved I have come to notice the areas of that Rockwell painting of my youth, the areas that have been painted over or touched up. I have uncovered the cracks in the frame. I have experienced the paint becoming not quit so bright when we gather together for just a bit too long.
But those cracks and blemishes have not diminished the quality of the painting. In fact, it is just the opposite, it has given it depth and perspective that makes it all that much more interesting and enjoyable. It is the combination of the bright and beautiful paint and the cracks and blemishes that have made me who I am today.
Continuing Ms. Giovanni’s essay, she states:
The true joy, perhaps, of being a Black American is that we really have no home. Europeans bought us; but the Africans sold. If we are to be human we must forgive both . . . or neither. It has become acceptable, in the last decade or so, for intellectuals to concede Black Americans did not come here of our own volition; yet, I submit that just as slavery took away our choice so also did the overcrowded, disease-ridden cities of Europe; so also did religious persecution; so also did the abject and all but unspeakable Inquisition of the Spanish; so also did starvation in Italy; so also did the black, rotten potatoes lying in the fields of Ireland. No one came to the New World in a cruise ship. They all came because they had to. They were poor, hungry, criminal, persecuted individuals who would rather chance dropping off the ends of the earth than stay inert knowing both their body and spirit were slowly having the life squeezed from them. Whether it was a European booking passage on a boat, a slave chained to a ship, a wagon covered with sailcloth, they all headed toward the unknown with all nonessentials stripped away.
My family does not stop at the four walls of my house or the four walls of my parent’s house. You are my family as well.
Much like the early pioneers in Nikki’s essay we all come here today, to this congregation, for a variety of reasons. Some grew up in the UCC and come because it feels right; others come because they grew up in a different church that felt wrong. Some come because their spouse, parents, or children come. Some come for the social action and some come for the social activities.
But no matter the reason, we come here to be together in community to be united as a family. Of all the things out there that you could be doing on this sunny Sunday. You chose to be here and to listen to me.
As in the Corinthian passage;
We come to this church with virtues of love, which binds us all together in perfect unity. Let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, since as members of one body we were called to peace. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in us richly as we teach and admonish one another with all wisdom, and as we sing psalms, hymns and spiritual songs with gratitude in our hearts to God.
This congregation’s Rockwell family picture has been patched, repainted, glued, repainted again, and maybe even duct taped back together a few times. But it is those experiences we share with each other that make us strong and make us a family.
But the gift that you have given me above all the others is that, each of you in your own way, have opened your hearts to my three children. Yes, it is the baby showers, and the teaching church school, and the raising money for camp. But it is more than that, it is the little things like the high fives, the how-are-you-todays, and the what-a-pretty-dresses (to Amelia of course). It is those little things that show that you really care, that lets them know that they are loved.
That has truly been a gift, a gift that I will cherish forever.
I welcome you into my family just as you have welcomed my family into yours. I wish that this could last just a bit longer, not the service, but the time with each of you.
Nikki Giovani finishes her essay with:
A pioneer has only two things: a deep desire to survive and an equally strong will to live. Home is not the place where our possessions and accomplishments are deposited and displayed. It is this earth that we have explored, the heaven we view with awe, these humans who, despite the flaws, we try to love and those who try to love us. It is the willingness to pioneer the one trek we all can make . . . no matter what our station or location in life . . . the existential reality that wherever there is life . . . we are at home.
Amen