He Is Not Ashamed Of The Word

The seating chart is on an easel by the door of a rented hall, printed in a curly font somebody's niece picked out. Table three. FAMILY, it says at the top, in capitals, and underneath the capitals is her name. She reads it four times on the way past. There has to be a mistake. Somebody was making a list late at night and put her in the wrong column, and now she is going to have to sit in the wrong column all evening and pretend she did not notice.

She sits down and keeps her coat on. That is the whole story, really, and everything else is decoration. The rest of the table hung their coats by the door twenty minutes ago. She keeps hers across her shoulders, one arm out of the sleeve so she can eat, because a coat means a person could go. And somebody who could go at any moment has not really sat down.

The groom comes around the tables the way grooms do, thanking people, forgetting names, laughing too loudly. He stops at hers. He puts a hand on the back of her chair. And he says to the whole table, without lowering his voice at all, this one is family. Then he moves on to table four. She smiles and says something modest about the flowers, and she does not take the coat off.

You know that coat. You have sat at a table you were named to and kept one arm out of the sleeve the entire night. Family is a word other people get to use naturally, and every time it comes near you there is a small hesitation, a half second where you check whether you are entitled to it. And meanwhile there is Someone who uses that word about you out loud, in company, without any hesitation whatsoever.

The word He does not lower His voice to say

There is a sentence in Hebrews that reads oddly until you notice what it is answering.

For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.Hebrews 2:11

Not ashamed. Think about how strange that is to write down. Nobody says a man is not ashamed of his own hand. You only say a thing like that when somebody, somewhere, suspected the opposite, and the writer decided to close the question before it could be asked out loud. That half second of hesitation you feel at the word family, the small internal check for whether you qualify: the Bible got there first and settled it in the negative, in writing, in a letter that has outlived every hall it was ever read in.

You are covered by the family word Christ uses out loud, and He does not glance around the room before He says it. Hebrews 2:11 sets down the not ashamed part deliberately, and the Spirit is what puts the same word into your own mouth without the wobble.

And notice the reason the verse gives, because it is not the reason we would give. It does not say He is not ashamed because they turned out well, or because they served faithfully, or because they had good years. It says all of one. One origin. The one who makes holy and the ones being made holy came out of the same place, and family language in Scripture is a statement about where a person came from rather than a compliment paid to somebody who is doing nicely.

You have relatives you never grew up with, and the relation is a fact of origin rather than a matter of affection. Scripture puts the sanctifier and the sanctified on the same side of one word, and the same Spirit did the paperwork on that birth long before anybody felt it.

Where the family word is issued from

A guest cannot promote herself. That is what makes the whole thing bearable. In any household on earth, the word family is not available to be claimed from the floor by somebody hopeful; it is issued from the head of the table, and only the head of the table can issue it. Which means the hesitation was never really modesty. It was a person waiting for authorization that had already been granted, in public, by the only voice with the standing to grant it.

You were given kin you did not choose, and the giving was done over your head by the head of the house. Jesus said in Mark 3:35 that whoever does the will of God is brother and sister and mother to Him, and it is the Spirit who carries that word into a heart, never the family resemblance.

Now hear this carefully, because I am not going to make your house into a villain. The people you live with are good to you. They pass the salt and remember your birthday and drive you to appointments, and they look at you a little sideways when any of this comes up, and every one of those things is true at the same time. None of it is a verdict on your kinship. A household is a wonderful thing and it was never designed to be the whole of anyone's family, and yours is not being weighed here at all.

The hesitation has no right to stay, and the house you eat dinner in is not the boundary of the house you are in. Ephesians 2:19 says fellowcitizens and of the household of God, in writing, and the Spirit moved the address without waiting for anybody at the table to vote on it.