Sermon delivered at Billtown Baptist Church, Sunday October 26th, 2025.

Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands)— ¹² remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. ¹³ But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, ¹⁵ by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, ¹⁶ and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility. ¹⁷ He came and preached peace to you who were far away and peace to those who were near. ¹⁸ For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit.

¹⁹ Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, ²⁰ built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. ²¹ In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. ²² And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. (Ephesians 2:11-22, NRSV)

Introduction: Animals Adopting

One morning in Churchill, Manitoba—that is a small Innuit village of about a thousand people on the Hudson Bay at the top of Manitoba—Brian Ladoon woke up, made breakfast in the dark of the short winter days, and as he sipped his coffee he look out his window and saw  an unusual sight: out his backyard, which was open and stretching out into the frozen countryside, he saw his pack of sled dogs (Innuit dogs that are large dogs similar to huskies). That is not the strange part. The strange part was that his pack of powerful sled dogs were playing with a polar bear cub.

What are sled dogs, known to be powerful guard dogs, natural enemies of bears, playing with a polar bear cub?

As Ladoon investigated, he realized that this cub wondered into his backyard looking for food after its mother was killed a way away. The pack of dogs, as I said, would normally be the natural enemy of a bear, but this family of dogs saw the vulnerability of the cub, and adopted it into its pack. And so, to the befuddlement of Brian Ladoon, he watched his dog pack raise a polar bear cub. You can see a video clip of this on the internet. This was some years ago, and the polar bear grew to full size, and so you can see the strange sight of a fully grown polar bear running and rolling around playing with a pack of dogs.

The phenomenon of one animal species adopting the member of another animal species is not unheard of.

Dolphins have been known to adopt orphaned whales. Lionesses have adopted leopard cubs. Eagles have been known to adopt hawks. Ducks and loons have been known to adopt each other’s young.

Those I think are at least a bit more understandable as at least leopards and lions, hawks and eagles have some similarities.

But there are instances of orangutans adopting lion cubs in zoos or mother tigers adopting piglets. Those just don’t seem to make sense. Those two species have nothing in common. But it does happen.

These examples from the animal world illustrate a profound truth: you don’t need to be biological related to be family.

Of course, we humans know that full well. Ask any family that has ever adopted a child. Why do some folks adopt? Some are not able to have children biologically. But there can be all kinds of reasons. You commonly hear things like “Well, we just had more love to give” or “We recognized there were children in need out there and we just decided to open up our home.” Often adoption happens in foster families as the family seek to care temporarily for a child and then says, “You know what? We just can’t see ourselves being a family without this child.”

You don’t need to be biologically related to be a family. Families come in all shapes and sizes. Families can be composed of members that are all quite different from each other but have resolved to be a family.

So, what makes a family, a family? I am going to channel my inner John Lennon here and say it seems that all you need is —you know what the word is, starts with an L and rhymes with dove—love. That sounds like a platitude, but it is true.

It begins with compassion, the recognition that others are in need, a realization that love can go further, a strong bond that claims the other as one’s own, the ongoing practices of care and concern. While these things often normally happen through biological reproduction and the sense of family obligation from that biological bond, whether of parents to children, grandparents to grandchildren, children to their aging parents in turn. Not all families are biologically related. Some come together simply because individuals have chosen to love each other and to care for one another.

God’s Quest to Recover God’s Family

This is what God is trying to show with the church.  God is choosing to bring God’s family together from folks that would not normally see themselves related. Through God’s love overflowing and God’s care always going beyond, God is bringing together people that are not normally biologically related into one greater human family.

This visible display of family, these weekly practiced routines, this global reality is called the church.

When we look throughout scripture and history, we see that God has been trying to bring us together as one family ever since the beginning.

In the book of Genesis, God is described as making humanity in God’s image and likeness. What does it mean to be in the image of something? Well, if you were to look at my sons, you might say, particularly Rowan and Asher, they are spitting images of me (by the way, why spitting? Where did that adjective come from?—I don’t know). That is a clue: God looks at humanity, these creatures that are quite clearly not gods, not infinite or perfect or anything like that, but God says, I am going to make you and I will regard you as my children. You are in my image and likeness, you are my children, my family, I choose to see myself in you.

Family begins with unconditional love, seeing the other as having worth, needing care.

If you can remember the first moment you held your child or a niece or nephew or a grandchild—that feeling of delight in this little one being related to you. It’s mixed with a sense of obligation: I need to care for this little one. This little one depends on me. This is my family.

Well, the church is God prompting us to take that feeling, extend it further: see the person sitting in the pew next to you as someone you are responsible to. If they are hurting, do you feel sad with them the way you would with your own family? If they are in need to do, try to care from them the way you just would want anything bad happening to your family. That bond of care is what God wants for his church.

We are not all biologically related. Some of us are (it is the Annapolis valley after all), but the ways of growing more and more into a family of love and care for each other is what the church is. The church is the family of God.  

We know that the human family did not stay a family. Cain killed his own brother out of resentment and jealousy. God asks him where Abel is and Cain answers, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (well the answer to that question is yes: families keep each other safe). But Cain’s answer was, in other words, I don’t care. He is not my problem. I don’t care that we are family.

As long as there have been humans, we have been turning from God and turning on each other, and we have been tragically prone to showing the next generation how to do those things as well.

When we stop seeing God as our source, we stop seeing our fellow humans as are siblings.

How many of the world’s troubles today come down to our refusal to see other human being as having dignity we need to uphold, deserving of our care? Instead, we say things like sorry you’re not my problem. You’re not a member of my tribe, whether that my family, my ethnic group, nation, or local sports team. I’ll say it again: When we stop seeing God as our source, we stop seeing our fellow humans as are siblings.

Of course, God was not content to just let this be the case. God attempted to restart and rebuild. The Biblical narrative shows the calls of God to individuals to recover this ideal of the family of God as a way of being a light and example to others.

God takes a man named Abraham and says, I am going to bless you and your descendants and through you all the families of the world are going to be blessed. Through this family, I am going to bring all families back together.

Abraham had sons, father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham. I am one of them and so are you, so let’s all praise the lord. (That was a Sunday school song we used to sing growing up, never mind).

Abraham’s grandson Jacob had 12 sons and from them came the nation of Israel, and that was the next step in try to restore the family of God. Hundreds of years later, this nation, Israel, was enslaved in Egypt, and God led Moses to ransom them out of Egypt to be their own nation, bringing them into the promise land. This small, insignificant nation of former slaves, he tells Israel, “I regard you as my first born. You are going to be a kingdom of priests.” That’s interesting language. It gives you a clue to what the church is.

In this recovery mission of the family of God, who does God choose to model this new family with? God chooses the insignificant, the powerless, the marginalized, the family-less, the screw-ups. If God treats these folks like family, we know God is on the side of everyone.

Any firstborn children in the room? Do you feel you parents were stricter with you or less strict with you? So, you were the rule to set the example then? Okay. Any ignored middle children in the room? Ya, I know how you feel. Any youngest’s in the room that know deep down they you could have gotten away with murder? Ya.

Israel was declared the firstborn (even though it has none of the qualities of being the first born, whether power, size, etc.) of the restored family of the nations, the other nations as siblings. How God treated Israel, how Israel related to God, would set a witness to all the other nations. So much so, God calls them priests. A priest is someone consecrated so that others can encounter God through that person. God is going to restore his human family, and he is going to use this one family, Israel, as the example. Other peoples are going to look at Israel and encounter who God is through them. That is what God’s people is intended to do. That is what God intends to do with people.

Sadly, Israel was not particularly faithful to this calling. More often than not, Israel has interpreted their call as divine entitlement (and we Christians can do the same): God obviously loves us more than others; we are obviously better; we will obviously be blessed regardless of whether or not we do what is just and merciful.

Just like any family, family can go wrong. We can turn this gift of love and care into places where we compete with one another, put each other down, manipulated and control one another, be dishonest and even cruel. And so, you have the prophets come and keep telling them, “No this is not what God had in mind. God envisions his family encompassing all nations.”

Paul in Ephesians: Jews and Gentiles, One Family

So, what does God do about it? Well, here is one way to put it: Do you have someone that is the “glue” of the family, the person that keeps people together? When we come to what Paul has written to the congregation in Ephesus, Paul describes how God has acted decisively to bring his family back together: God has sent Jesus Christ. Jesus is God’s unique son, perfectly one with God and one with us to bring the human family back together.

And Jesus has come and he has, it says, “destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”What is this dividing wall? What is causing the hostility? Well, it seems that for this congregation and several others that Paul has to deal with, Jewish Christians are insisting to Gentile or non-Jewish Christians that if you want to be a part of God’s family, the people of God, the nation of Israel, what you need to do is basically become Jewish: You need to get circumcised, you need to commit to obeying all 613 laws of the Torah, you need to adopt the dietary restrictions, and so on and so forth.

In some way you might say, they are saying something that goes against what true and good families are: true families allow you to be yourself. Toxic families are built on expectations of perfectionism, uniformity, and conditional acceptance. And if anyone has had a parent or sibling treat them that way—the feeling that you are just never good enough, the feeling like you are just not allowed to be you—you know who hurtful that is.

And so, this faction of folks is saying to the others, “Sorry, you don’t belong. You’re not good enough to be in this family.” And the really sad thing is that they are using God’s law, religion, to separate, to divide. They are using God’s laws that were intended to help us become humbler and more merciful, to be an example to other, they use it to be self-righteous and judgmental.

Well, Paul turns to them and says, that is not what God’s family is about. Why because that is not what Jesus is about.

Jesus, the one who was perfect and sinless, the very fulfillment of the law, died as one punished by the law, cursed by the law.  

Jesus, the Messiah, died as one executed by the law, the law you folks love so much. If you know Jesus saves you, your whole way of using the law to exclude others does not work.

If that is the case, your whole way of saying who is in and who is out no longer makes sense. Because the one who by his very nature should have been included, died as one excluded. And if he is the one who fulfills the law, that says something about who belongs in God’s family: God includes the excluded.

You see Jesus doing that all through the Gospels: The Samaritan woman, the Syrophoenician woman, the Roman centurion, the tax collectors like Zaccheus, folks with diseases—folks that God’s people at the time kept saying, sorry you don’t belong—Jesus turns to them and says, “Actually, yes, you do belong. God’s family is for you. You are a true son or daughter of Abraham, even those you are not a biologically descendant of Abraham.”

Jesus has destroyed the thing that keeps us from being a family together. The division we have, the hate, the hostility, God has said, I want my children to be together and the only way this can be the case is if I take that hostility and bear it myself.

This whole way of saying who is in and who is out is done. Paul says God has taken that and nailed it to the cross. It is no more. There is nothing you can do that will stop God from looking at you as God’s child. Because Jesus died on a cross, no one is excluded.

This is what God’s family is about. That is what the church is all about.

God is bringing people who would normally be unrelated, maybe even at odds with each other, and he is teaching them how to be one family, a family through Jesus Christ.

Living as the Family of God

I had this illustrated to me one time pastoring in Sudbury. One guy, new to the area, called me up, wanting to come to church. They guy faced a lot of problems, mental health and poverty. But he had a strong sense of commitment to faith, and so, I would pick him up on my way in to prepare for church service.

People were not quite sure what to do with him for a bit, but then two of the older women took it upon themselves to start to get to know him.

I distinctly remember one Sunday, he was walking in to sit down and they were walking behind him. These two older women turned to him and said, “Young man pull your pants up.”

I was at the church computer. I heard this and thought, “That’s not appropriate. That’s how you offend someone.” I need to say that the one lady was like 90 years old and did not have much of a filter.

Sure enough, the guy fired back, “Don’t tell me how to dress. You do you think you are, my mother?”

To which the one ladysaid, “I sure am. Don’t you know I think everyone in this church is my child? And I try to look after every one of them.” The other piped up, “I am your mother too. You know I am going to tell you what’s best.”

Now, before I tell you that this story has a happy ending, I need you to understand that just because it does have a happy ending that this does not mean we should go around tell people what we think of their fashion choices. Good families have boundaries—I’m just saying.

Nevertheless, these women had taken upon themselves to cook food for this guy and help him out on several occasion. They were bantering but they really did mean that.

The person stopped, and then brightened up: “Wow, this is great. I don’t even know who my mother is, and now in this church I have two mothers.”

I remember just sitting there realizing I had just witnessed something of a holy moment. God was making God’s family here, this unlikely family.  

This is what the church is: people who would not normally have anything in common. People who are not biologically related. Yet through what Jesus has done, have begun to regard each other as family.

Now, it needs to be said: If the church is like a family, it is important to say that it is not going to be perfect.

We are not going to think all the same, whether it is politics, theology, or what colour the church carpet should be. Families will argue. Good families will argue passionately, but also, hopefully, respectfully.

I say this with full disclosure: It seems that God has a sense of humour or at least a twisted sense of irony: of all Sundays, one the Sunday I have to preach on family, my older kids go to the Challenge youth rally this week. They came back tired, and they woke up super grumpy. We did some arguing this morning.

Anyways, some of the most difficult challenges Paul faced was people in the church, members of God’s family were not treating other people truly as family.

Some are tempted to say family is just not worth the headache. I was talking to one person that said, “I don’t want to be a part of a church. I just can’t stand dealing with people. My religion is found in watching a sunset or taking a nature walk.”

Perhaps you have heard similar sentiments: I so badly want to say to them that it is really easy to encounter God in a sunset. If you did not encounter God in the beauty of nature, I would be concerned for you. If you can’t deal with people, you need to realize, however, you are one of those people too.

The church exists because we fundamentally cannot encounter God fully on our own.

Why? I don’t know the full sense of how I am forgiven of sin until I forgive others.

I don’t know the full sense of how God has cared for me until I care for another.

I don’t know the full sense of how God has refused to give up hope on me until I refuse to give up hope on another.

I don’t know the full sense of how God has claimed me as God’s family until I am ready to extend that to another.

That is what the church is. Not all families are biologically related. Some come together simply because individuals have chosen to love each other and to care for one another. That is what God is doing for us. That is what God wants us to do for each other.

Church like family is not easy, but when we try to live this out, with love, albeit imperfectly, hat is how we encounter God in a deeper way.   

Paul says at the end of this passage: “in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives.”

Brothers and sisters, does God live here? Are we allowing God to dwell in this space? Are we allowing God to dwell in us? We know this when we love each other.

Let’s pray…