2004-07-25 All In the Family.doc
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Growing up Dutch in North Haledon, Wyckoff, and Midland Park, NJ (and surrounding
communities), as first and second generation children and grandchildren of Dutch immigrants,
your family’s name, your church, and your school said everything as far as who you were and
how you could be expected to behave.
And so, in the Dutch and Christian Reformed tradition, when my brother and I, at the
ages of 7 and 11, were taken out of public schools and sent to Christian schools my father sat us
down and gave us a talk on how we should behave as members of the Kamp familyand how our
behavior was a reflection on the family.
He was absolutely correct as I learned when I got to Junior High on North Eighth
Street—just across the street from Grandpa Zeedyk’s Dutch version of today’s bodega, a few
blocks from my father’s family’s bakery on North Eleventh, and the house on North Fourth
Street where my mother grew up. And when I came home at night and talked about my new
friends, the first question my parents would ask was, “What’s Maria’s last name?”—the answer
to which would tell them pretty much what kind of person Maria was.
More than anything, family said a lot.
So did church. Primarily, we were New Jersey Christian Reformed —from Third, or
Wyckoff, or Midland Park. Dutch Reformed was OK, although slightly suspicious; and when we
moved to New York State in my senior year of high school, I can remember my father talking
about the Christian Reformed minister telling him “he had crossed over to the other side.”
Well, that was Dutch, but it’s the same no matter what part of the world and what ethnic
group you’re from. There are ways—not all of them good—of claiming how you belong and of
explaining how you act by just saying where you’re from and who your family is.
Well, does that have any connection with today’s Gospel?
If we only look at it literally, not much because it would appear that the reading gives us
two things: 1) the exact words of a prayer to say and 2) that all we have to do is pray hard
enough and long enough and then we can get God to give us what we want.
But if that’s all we got from the reading, then we would be in for a frustrating and
heartbreaking time when we come up against the realities of life. “I asked, but I didn’t receive
what I wanted; I knocked but that door wasn’t opened. There’s must be something wrong here—
with me, with God, with both.”
So let’s look at these verses in the context of this whole section of Luke’s gospel that
we’ve been reading. Let’s see if we can find more than a “how-too” recipe for prayer that we can
call on whenever we need or want something.
And when we do that, we see that these few verses are part of a bigger picture that tells us
something very important about what it meansto be a part of a family—God’s family.
Think about what we’ve read over the last couple of weeks—and if you’ve been away,
don’t worry because they’re old favorites. Both are really about discipleship and what it means to
follow Jesus.
First we heard the story of the Good Samaritan which told us that it’s how we live—what
we do, how we treat other people—that shows we understand we’re living in God’s kingdom.
Then last week we heard the story of Martha and Mary. We heard Jesus affirm both
sisters and his reminder of how important it is to support what we do by spending time with God,
listening to the Word and sharing together in prayer.
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