"All in the Family"
A Sermon by Rev. Charles Blustein Ortman
October 16, 2011
READINGS: ANCIENT & MODERN
Our first and ancient reading is from the, Tao Te Ching, written by
Lao Tzu and translated by Derek Lin. It speaks of broad family
values.
That which is well established cannot be uprooted.
That which is strongly held cannot be taken.
The descendants will commemorate it forever.
Cultivate it in yourself; its virtue shall be true.
Cultivate it in the family; its virtue shall be abundant.
Cultivate it in the community; its virtue shall be lasting.
Cultivate it in the country; its virtue shall be prosperous.
Cultivate it in the world; its virtue shall be widespread.
Therefore observe others with yourself.
Observe other families with your family.
Observe other communities with your community.
Observe other countries with your country.
Observe the world with the world.
With what do I know the world?
With this.
Our second and modern reading is from Dr. Ben Silliman, professor
and Family Life Specialist with the University of Wyoming's
Cooperative Extension Service, who wrote:
American families have always shown remarkable resiliency, or
flexible adjustment to natural, economic, and social challenges. Their
strengths resemble the elasticity of a spider web, a gull's skillful
flow with the wind, the regenerating power of perennial grasses, the
cooperation of an ant colony, and the persistence of a stream carving
canyon rocks. These are not the strengths of fixed monuments but
living organisms. This resilience is not measured by wealth, muscle or efficiency but by creativity, unity, and hope. Cultivating these family
strengths is critical to a thriving human community
SERMON
I chose our topic for this morning when I recognized that we would be celebrating child dedications during the service, as well as this being our first of what we hope will be a new tradition of youth facilitated worship services. It seemed like today would be a good time to think about the family. What is a family? How do we think about families? How does our culture encourage us to view families? And how might we want to reconsider what family means to us?
Of course the first image that came to mind when this theme occurred to me was the Norman Lear TV sitcom about the Bunker family that ran all through the 1970’s, “All in the Family.” The bigot, Archie Bunker, headed his household with an incredibly narrow short-sightedness. Daughter Gloria was the image of the innocence and earnestness of youth. Son-in-law Michael, the “Meathead,” was the symbol of knee-jerk, intellectual liberalism. And Edith, long-suffering Edith, filled the role of a Christ-like martyr who bore the heavy burdens of the entire family. You could even see those burdens as each week they furrowed into her troubled brow.
I have to say that I didn’t then, nor have I since, ever known a family much like the Bunkers. Just the same there were, I think, many truths that were spoken through those characters. It portrayed a time I now feel somewhat nostalgic for, when, as a nation, we were better able to laugh at ourselves. But I don’t think that the Bunkers were intended to represent the Smiths, or the Joneses, or the Ortmans, or your family. They represented more than anyone family; they were America.
There were other families depicted on TV during my childhood that I think were intended to be representative of, or maybe even models for, families like our own or like families that we might encounter. They were shows like “Leave it to Beaver,” “Ozzie and Harriet,” and “Father Knows Best.” There were many, but these three come clearly to mind for me. Interestingly, if you were to average out the number of children in those particular shows, and then round off the answer, it would come to 2.5 children per household, which was the national average of that time.
The fathers in these three shows were respectively Ward Cleaver, Ozzie Nelson and Jim Anderson. They were fine, upstanding citizens. Each of them was a strong, thoughtful and compassionate family man who had found his way to a comfortable niche in the cultural flow of mainstream America. The mothers, June Cleaver, Harriet Nelson and Margaret Anderson, were each caring, even doting mothers, who were the heart of their respective families. They also just happened to be ditzes who often found themselves in over their heads when dealing with financial or worldly matters. The kids – Beaver, Wally, Ricky, David, Bud, Princess and Kitten – were the unknown variables of these programs. They provided the grist for the narratives that kept families like mine coming back, week after week, to see just what those darned kids would do next and how their parents would respond.
The thing is though, those families weren’t like mine. In our house, the less any of us had to do with our parents, the better! More contact between the generations was simply breeding grounds for more trouble. I suspect there were other dysfunctional families like mine. The truth is, then and now, all families have their own particular specialty areas of dysfunction. I’ve never met any that didn’t.
I trust that the television families were different than many of those in households, like mine, that watched them. African-American families or any ethnic minority, anyone gay or transgender, people who had no children at all, or who lived alone, were left to watch these iconic families. That must have been something of an ironic culture-warp for many of them.
The television networks must have somehow sensed those social discrepancies, and they did take steps to remedy… at least one of the discrepant aspects. To a significant extent, over the years, they reversed the roles of men and women. The formerly all-knowing, man of the house, ruler of his domain – the father – came to be something of an idiot or the family clown. And the mother rose to be the keeper of wisdom and all things worldly. I’m talking about shows that many of us may have laughed along with and enjoyed, myself included: “Married…with Children,” “Everybody Loves Raymond,” “Reba,” and even “The Simpsons.” I’m not saying that these shows weren’t or aren’t funny, and I’m not saying that they’re evil.
What I’m saying is that, like many of their predecessors in the predominant media of our culture, they fail to provide some kind of vision of the family that is worth aspiring to. Maybe that’s not their job. Maybe their role really is simply to amuse us.
Still there have been other shows that have gone well beyond the bounds of mere entertainment. I think of “The Cosby Show,” “Murphy Brown,” “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” “Will and Grace” and “M.A.S.H.” More currently, “Men of a Certain Age” “Parenthood” and other programs have attempted to portray individuals and families in the earnest struggle of building relationships and facing the demands of a difficult culture. All of these shows have used humorous and entertaining dynamics to help reshape views of families and family relationships in ways that honor the characters who are in them, as well as those of us characters who watch them.
But maybe it’s not the job of the entertainment industry to determine what the role models of our culture should be. If it’s not their responsibility, whose then ought it be? Ours, I expect.
It is we who should be defining family values – here in the laboratory, the testing ground of religious community. Each week as we light our chalice, we declare that we are a community of memory and a community of hope. Isn’t that just the thing a religious community should be about? We are a community whose intention it is to remember that life isn’t always easy for us; to remember that in fact, it’s often painful and steeped in grief. But it is our intention too, to remember that we are capable – especially with one another’s support – capable of moving through those experiences that challenge our very souls. Here we can remember that we are also called into a joy that comes when we are able to lay our burdens down. We are a community of memory and a community of hope whose intention it is to redeem all of those memories – painful and joyful – for the hope of life with love and connection, meaning and fulfillment.
We, in the liberal religious community, ought to be about defining family values that can be transformative. Heaven knows the religious right is hard at work trying to reshape us and make us all like the Cleavers or the Nelsons. Liberal religion needs to be about defining what actually does exist and what is yet possible as today’s families step into the future. I pray that children growing up in our congregation know that whoever they are, whoever their parents are, however they look, wherever they’re from, whomever they love, I pray that they know they are accepted and cherished here.
What do families really look like? We need only look around this room to see. We are families that are white, black, brown, yellow and red. We are families with a father and a mother, two fathers or two mothers, one mother or one father. We are divorced families, step-families and adoptive families. We are families of single adults and adults with no kids. We are families of multiple generations and singular generations. We are families of special friendships of people who have chosen each other and who live and work together, as family. We are families of every imaginable configuration of demographics.
Do you want to know why I think that’s so wonderful? It’s because it means that here we can celebrate that we are all children of this one human race. No family configuration here is more or less precious than any other family arrangement. In our post-modern culture of incivility and moral self-righteousness, that is cause for celebration!
Instead of being concerned with feeling like we are less or even more than what society expects of us, we can focus on growing our souls, strengthening our commitments. We can be about practicing the fine arts of loving ourselves, each other and our planet. Instead of judging each other or being judged ourselves, we can focus on supporting one another in the oft-times arduous task of putting one foot in front of the other so that we can move through our days and our weeks.
We can be about recognizing our own and each other’s needs to move from sickness to health, from weakness to strength, and from offense to forgiveness. We can be with one another as we strive to grow from pain to compassion, from fear to faith and from loneliness to love.
These are the goals, the values that are at the heart of family, that are at the heart of our religious community. Poco a poco se va lejos, (little by little one moves far). These are the steps we can take to root and establish that which has moved forward through the ages, the Way of the Spirit of Life and of Love, which is there, which is here… simply for us to draw on and pass along… from self to family, from family to community, from community to country and from country to the world.
It is an arduous journey from self all the way to world, and it must be made step by step. It is in the family, but it’s not “all” in the family. If this journey is to be real, it’s up to us, religiously, to make it real. Isn’t this just the place for naming such a journey, for celebrating it, for cheering it on, for cheering us on? Let us pray and trust that it is and that it can be. |
