We are Family

A few Sundays ago, Reverend Joy and I discovered that we are distant cousins.  Her seventh great-grandfather, a man by the name of John Solomon Pippin, is my eighth great-grandfather.

And it got me thinking, what are the odds that someone in your social circle is a distant relative?  I’m thinking fairly high, actually.

But what are the odds that you and that person will ever find out that you are related?  I think that is where the odds drop.

Think about all that it took, all that had to happen, for Reverend Joy and me to find out we were cousins.

First of all, it took Reverend Joy being an amateur genealogist, someone who truly loved exploring her family tree, and someone who thought others might enjoy hearing about her family tree.  She figured that friends and family might be interested so she started sharing that information on Facebook.

And it was there, on Facebook, where she posted about John Solomon Pippin, a man shipped over to America in the early 1700s because he was a convict.

But then how did that information get to me?

Well, Reverend Joy and I needed to be friends on Facebook and we needed to engage enough with each other’s posts that the Facebook algorithm would routinely show us posts by each other on our walls.

But even then, I would still have to see the post on John Solomon Pippin.  I would have to look at that name and remember that when I named my cat, Pippin, that my dad and uncle joked about me using a family name.

So I would have to see Reverend Joy’s post on her relative named Pippin and say to myself, “I think I have a relative named Pippin.”

But then I would need both my dad and uncle to be amateur genealogists themselves so that when I texted them asking if we were related to John Solomon Pippin, my uncle could reply to the text a short time later with a detailed family tree, showing our line through to John Solomon Pippin.

So, again, a lot had to come together.

The Bible is filled with family trees.

Think of Genesis 4-5 and all those King James Version “begats.” 

And Enoch begat Methuselah and Methuselah begat Lamech and Lamech begat a son, named Noah.  This was the point in the church service or in Sunday school when your eyes began to glaze over.

The genealogies in the Bible are very thorough … sometimes confusing, but always thorough. 

Both the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke offer the genealogy of Jesus.  Matthew begins with Abraham.  Luke begins with Adam.  There are other differences between the two which would take someone much more learned than me to elaborate on.

Instead I want to look at what the two genealogies have in common.  In both genealogies, Jesus’ line goes through Abraham.

Now this is important for a variety of reasons and again, you’re going to want someone a lot more educated than me to explain it to you.

But I can tell you why it’s important to me that Abraham is listed in Jesus’ genealogy.

You remember Abraham, right?

Remember what God said to him in Genesis 15:5?

Look to the heavens, God says, and number the stars.  So shall your descendants be.

This is God’s promise to Abraham.

And just as John Solomon Pippin couldn’t possibly know, or even imagine, that one day his eighth great-granddaughter would meet his seventh great-granddaughter, Abraham had simply God’s word that his family tree would continue and spread across all the earth.

And Abraham had no idea that Jesus would be a part of that all.

All he had was God’s word.

In today’s reading from Luke, we hear Zechariah’s prophecy to his son John … and you know, sometimes the poetry of the Bible is just so beautiful.

But before we get to that, let’s do a brief recap on just who Zechariah was.

Zechariah was the father of John and the husband to Elizabeth.  Remember that Mary visits Elizabeth shortly after her own visit from the angel and confirms that Elizabeth is indeed pregnant.

Like Abraham and Sarah, Zechariah and Elizabeth were old and childless, so when the angel Gabriel speaks to Zechariah and tells him that Elizabeth will give birth to a son, Zechariah does not believe him and for his disbelief is rendered mute.

The words we hear in today’s reading are collectively known as the Benedictus and they are among the first words that Zechariah speaks when he regains his voice after naming John.

Let’s listen again to verses 76-79 where Zechariah says this to his son, “And you, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.  By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us, to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.”

Let those words sink in for a moment.  Let them marinate in your heart.  Because those aren’t just words for John, they are words for all of us, for all of us who occupy now the farthest branches of God’s family tree.

Remember we are all children of God.

And what does Zechariah tell John to do?  Give knowledge of salvation to his people.  For what it is that God is planning to do?  He plans to give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadows of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

This is the message we are tasked with spreading.  This is the good news.

God brings light to all those who sit in darkness.  He guides our feet into the way of peace.

What amazing hope, God brings us.

What joy.

Why wouldn’t we want to share that news with everyone?

Reverend Joy and I are distant cousins who share one common ancestor many generations ago.

But more importantly she and I are sisters in Christ, as we are all sisters and brothers in Christ, as we are all children of God.

We are family.

Some of us don’t know it yet.  It’s our job to let everyone know.

We’re family.

Amen.