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The Extended Family: Humanity’s Shared Journey

The Extended Family: Humanity’s Shared Journey

Last updated on: December 22, 2024 at 3:22 am by Henry Karlson

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The Extended Family: Humanity’s Shared Journey 2024-12-22T03:22:45-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Bjoertvedt: :Sri Lanka c 1600 – Family Tree Of Jesus / Wikimedia Commons

Family is important. Even when we are raised up in and by a bad family, it is in and through our family situation we first find our place in the world. We should hope and pray that everyone would have good, loving, parents and siblings, making sure everyone has a good foundation for their life. Sadly, this is often not the case. We should also wish everyone was raised in a well-off family, one which is not struggling to survive. Again, sadly, that is not often the case. Too many people are raised with bad families, or they are orphaned early in their lives, not knowing their parents or siblings. Others are raised in extreme poverty, so that, though their family is loving, they still suffer greatly due to the context in which they are born, though, in such a situation, their family is not to blame. Then, there are other issues which can affect children, such as whether or not their family has to daily face undue prejudices, such as racism, so that many are raised in conditions that affect who and what they are or even what society says they are allowed to do (while others are born and raised with privilege). Our family situation helps give us our initial place in the world, and though many can and will try to transcend that context, it will always influence them throughout their lives.

Our family situation not only serves as the initial context to our lives, it is also what connects us to the rest of humanity because humanity is one large, extended, and quite dysfunctional, family. Our own “nuclear” families are branches coming from that larger family tree. We should understand how we are related in many ways to everyone else, and when we do so, we should treat everyone as if they are a part of our extended family, because they are.

By being born of the Virgin Mary, the God-Man, Jesus, finds himself as a part of our extended human family. He is one of us, and so, he shares with us our destiny. This is one of the reasons why Scripture gives us genealogies for Jesus, for it helps us understand his place in the extended human family. Luke does this theologically by showing how he can be said to be a descendant of Adam, while Matthew is focused on showing us how Jesus can fulfill messianic prophecies by being of the line of David, and through David, Abraham:

So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations (Matt. 1:17 RSV).

Matthew explicitly connected David to Abraham, and Jesus to David, so that Jesus can be seen as the seed of Abraham who would fulfill God’s promises to Abraham, but also, that in and through him, all other promises that emerged, such as those promises connected to David and the way the messianic king would be his heir, would also be achieved.

The Byzantine tradition commemorates all the ancestors of Christ the Sunday before the Nativity as a way to remind us of Christ’s human legacy, and the way God worked in and through each generation, using the good and the bad, to slowly bring forth to fruition the divine plan, the plan to unite heaven and earth together through the incarnation. We are reminded, especially, of the good which was done by Christ’s ancestors, and the faith they had in God, so that we can be inspired by their witness, live holy lives, and find what we do with such faith will be taken in by Christ. Then, we will find, we are brought into a new family, the family of God, with Christ as the source and foundation of that family, making him the new Adam:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, of David and Samuel and the prophets — who through faith conquered kingdoms, enforced justice, received promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection. Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and scourging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated — of whom the world was not worthy — wandering over deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect (Heb. 11:32-40 RSV).

Those who came before us, including the ancestors of Christ, were not perfect in and of themselves; their perfection, as with the perfection of all humanity, is found in unity with each other, a unity which is possible because of Christ, as everyone is comes together and forms his mystical body.

Humanity is one large extended family. Sin makes it dysfunctional, having family members fighting against, hurting, and killing each other. It makes people try to separate from each other and their common unity. The more such discord and division continues, the less we all become, because we need each other, we need to be one with each other. Christ, being born into that dysfunctional family, Christ, having ancestors who did amazing things, but also many wicked things as well, took up all that came before him and used it to establish his place in the world. Then, he took on sin and the way it destroyed the human family (and creation as a whole). He brings sin to an end in himself through his death, so that he and all of us can transcend it in the resurrection from the dead. That resurrection will not be individualistic, but communal. We cannot be perfect, we cannot by holy, all by ourselves; we will find our perfection in and with the perfection of others. Just as our ancestors needed us, so we need them, and we also need those who will come after us. We need each other. Jesus gives us the foundation, the root, which allows us to come together, to be one, as God intended us to be one. He transformed the old, fallen human family in himself so that we can find ourselves reconciled in him, and through that reconciliation, fulfill the promise God gave to humanity, the promise that we can share in and participate in the divine life of love.

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N.B.: While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

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