The Church is a Family

Beyond biology

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post on the growing need for robust, demanding religious communities. Jonathan Pageau’s recent interview with Father Josiah Trenham speaks to many of the same issues. It’s a lengthy interview, but intriguing on several levels. I listened to it twice as a podcast.

In the interview, they speak of a topic on which I wish they’d spent more time: spiritual family. Fr. Trenham makes a few remarks on this topic beginning at about 42:00, including this little atomic bomb: “We actually believe in the reality of spiritual relationships that are constituted in baptism and by sharing a common chalice that are just as real, sometimes more real, than our biological relations.”

Read that sentence a few times.

Fr. Trenham is talking about the Orthodox Church, but his words apply to all the body of Christ. Last month I wrote a piece in Firebrand on spiritual mothers and fathers. Spiritual parenting is part of the equation, but there is still more. We often refer to those in the church with us as brothers and sisters in Christ, though often without reflecting on the implications of that language. Through our baptism and our sharing of the Lord’s body and blood at his table, we are tethered to one another in the Spirit in ways that even supersede the bond of blood relations.

In Mark 3, a crowd surrounds Jesus, and his mother and brothers cannot reach him. When those around inform him that his family is asking for him, he responds, “‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around with him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:33-35). In this passage, obedience to God becomes a criterion of familial membership even more important than biological relationships. When Peter reminds Jesus that “we have left everything and followed you,” Jesus replies, “Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:28-31). Life in Jesus’ family will not always be easy, and yet it is greater than all we can ask or imagine.

Paul provides helpful teaching on the matter as well. In Romans 8 he writes, “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (Rom 8:15-17). In 1 Corinthians 4:17, he refers to Timothy as “my beloved and faithful child in the Lord.” In the first chapter of Ephesians 1:5, he writes, “[God] destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will,” and in 2:19 he refers to believers as “members of the household of God.”

One passage that doesn’t get as much airtime as it should on the matter of spiritual family is Galatians 3:26-29:

[F]or in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized in Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

Paul’s point here is similar to that of Ephesians 2:15, in which he writes of the “one new humanity” that God has created of both Jews and Gentiles. Through faith in Christ we enter into a new ontological reality—one in which we are changed in our very being. We are a new creation and a new humanity.

The kingdom of God involves not just a new way of living, or even of viewing the world, though it does involve both of these. It also establishes a new kind of family, one defined not by biological blood relations, but by the blood of Christ by which we are made new.

And our world needs this kind of family—desperately.

In 2023 the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office issued a report called Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation. According to this report,

Across many measures, Americans appear to be becoming less socially connected over time….Changes in key indicators, including individual social participation, demographics, community involvement, and use of technology over time, suggest both overall societal declines in social connection and that, currently, a significant portion of Americans lack adequate social connection.

The HHS defines social connection according to three criteria:

Structure

The number of relationships, variety of relationships (e.g., co-worker, friend, family, neighbor), and the frequency of interactions with others.

Function

The degree to which others can be relied upon for various needs.

Quality

The degree to which relationships and interactions with others are positive, helpful, or satisfying (vs. negative, unhelpful, or unsatisfying).

The report provides examples of factors affecting these criteria. Structure, for example, is affected by household size, the size of one’s friend circle, and marital status. Function is affected by practices such as mentorship, as well as emotional support and support in a crisis. Quality is affected by relationship satisfaction, relationship strain, and social inclusion or exclusion.

A strong sense of social connection, then, will involve frequent interactions with others, a sense in which others in one’s group can be relied upon, and feelings such as satisfaction and affirmation as a result of these relationships. Among many Americans—and, I suspect, many throughout the Western world—social connection is feeble and muted. Social media has given us the form of relationships without the power, and thus it has weakened the social fabric in societies where it was already eroding. We are lonely.

Among younger Christians with whom I engage, I often perceive deep wounds caused by parental distance, abandonment, or abuse. The biological family can be beautiful and life-giving, but for many people it is not. In fact it can be a source of great pain. It can feed into, rather than mitigate, our sense of isolation and loneliness.

The church, however, is called to be something better—a family of faith, rooted in Christ, bound together in the Holy Spirit, with God as our Father. The love of the Trinity overflows into the mutual love among members of Christ’s body. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children adopted into the household of God, and those also adopted into the same home are brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, grandparents and grandchildren.

Andrei Rublev, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

What does this look like in practical terms? It looks like opening our homes to others, sitting down to meals with them, sharing and receiving wisdom, and expressions of love and support. It can mean sharing our resources, visiting the sick, sitting by the side of the dying, babysitting, and holding one another accountable to lives of holiness and virtue. It can mean helping to clean up after a flood or the ministry of presence in times of grief. To live as a spiritual family is an exercise in self-giving love, the same love that God has shown us through the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.

We Americans are lonely people, but we don’t have to be. The Bible teaches us about a different kind of life in which we are never truly on our own, never simply left to our own devices. Rather, we are part of a new family rooted in Christ, the community of the baptized, the household of God.