Know Your Family History
Keeping Faith In-Between Times
God's covenant with us is the ground upon which our faith stands during the "in-between" times of our calendars and lives. Our God provides many reminders of His covenant for us: in our adoption as daughters and sons through baptism, in the rhythm and rest that Sabbath provides, and also through our family history. Reflecting on the lives of our ancestors reminds us that the same Triune God who faithfully guided the lives of our forebears will also keep us in His covenant-love.
Scripture spends a great deal of time on genealogies, because knowing our spiritual lineage is essential to understanding our relationship with God. We can look back to our history and find great heroes (see Jesus' line in Matthew 1:1-17) and know that we can rise to the same heights as our ancestors; we can look back and find great sinners (Matthew 1:1-17 again) and know that we are capable of the same great evils as those who went before us. Moreover, in Scripture we find that we can be held accountable for the sins of our distant relatives, and also that we receive blessings because of the faithfulness of those who went before us (see Exodus 20:4-6).
Dust of the Rabbi: Covenant Reminder - Know Your Family History
Who do we come from? Who are your parent's parents; where did they come from and what did they do? In our modern world, we have often missed the distinction between learning history and family history. As a result, we can speak volumes about major figures in Western Civilization, but (for many of us) only a few words about our own family histories. Yet in Scripture there are clear connections between generations; knowing where we come from is part of knowing ourselves.
Now broaden that perspective and consider our Covenant Community family history. If you have time, look on Sunday at the Charter Document outside the Old Sanctuary. What does our history tell us about our future?
Now step back once more, and look at the history of our ancestors in Scripture. If God's covenant is sufficient to bring adulterers and murderers like King David and the apostle Paul to Himself, how can we fail to be caught up in and overwhelmed by God's grace and promises? And, as we see time and again in Scripture, when God confronts us with the evil of our present, we can invoke our ancestor's faithfulness to our credit (see Exodus 32:7-14). Who are the family members in your life, in our church's life, and in the life of God's covenant people, whose faithfulness encourages you in your relationship with Christ?
Extras:
The concept of punishment for an ancestor's sins is a complex one in Scripture: earlier passages such as Exodus 20:4-6 and Numbers 14:18 suggest that descendants are punished for a predecessor's sins; but the prophets who come much later in Israel's history teach quite differently, namely that only "the soul who sins is the one who will die." In Jeremiah 31:29-30 and Ezekiel 18, this is made abundantly clear. When Moses and the prophets are read together, they actually compliment one another. God through Moses asserts that we will be punished in this life for the sins of our ancestors; God through the prophets asserts that we will not be punished in the next life for sins that we did not commit. In other words, only my sins affect my relationship with God, but sins of my ancestors have repercussions that clearly echo beyond their own lives. A child born with a chemical addiction received from his mother is not guilty of sin, yet he experiences the results of his mother's disobedience to God.
The radical individualism of our modern American culture is very much at odds with any understanding of family history. Our false assumption of our own independence leads us to ignore both our responsibility for the actions of those who have gone before us, as well as the implications of our lives on those who follow us.