For six weeks our worship services have referenced a marketing survey about top-ranked values that Americans hold dear. During this season of Epiphany we’ve reflected from a faith perspective about stable relationships, justice, friendship, health and fitness and freedom. Next week we’ll look at the top ranked value of honesty and today we focus on the theme of family including input submitted from a number of you about the topic. Family is often in the public eye. Like the family of Lisa Marie Nowak – talented aeronautical engineer, Navy pilot, space shuttle astronaut, loving daughter, mother and wife who recently assaulted a woman who was vying for the affections of another astronaut whom Nowak coveted as her boyfriend. Family is often in the pubic eye. Like the family of Kang Sam Choi who left his four-year-old son unattended in the car at 11:00 pm in the subzero parking lot of Mystic Lake Casino Wednesday night. Ninety minutes later, the disoriented boy was found by a stranger, wandering around the parking lot suffering from life threatening hypothermia, while his dad obliviously played blackjack inside. Family is often in the public eye. Like the family of Anna Nicole Smith that has aired its laundry through the media for more than a decade. But just in the last few months there was the body of her 20-year-old son held in a morgue while she vacationed in the Bahamas, the paternity suit over her newborn daughter, her own death at age 39 this past week, and now the third and most recent contender as father of her 5-month-old baby. Frederick vonAnhalt boasts publicly of a decade long affair with Smith which spanned the time she was married to a multi-millionaire 60 years her senior and he was married to Zsa Zsa Gabor 30 years his senior. During their affair, Frederick tried to get Zsa Zsa to adopt Anna Nicole Smith as their daughter to make his affair more convenient. In an Associated Press article released yesterday Frederick vonAnhalt comments that although they are still married, he never admitted the affair directly to Zsa Zsa, but he thinks she knows. Well if she can read, or hear the radio or watch TV, I think she might know now! vonAnhalt adds, “[Smith] was a very sexy woman, to have an affair with her is the top, you know.” If this really is “the top you know” of relationships then the family totters precariously on a very edge of doom. Family is often in the public eye, but it’s usually the dysfunctional side of family that most readily gets the attention. So where can we turn for a healthier perspective on family? The blessings and woes listed by Jesus in Luke’s version of the beatitudes is a good start. The woes that Jesus lists are curiously countercultural and certainly counter to prosperity gospel preaching featured on the front page of the paper this morning! “Woe to you who are rich, woe to you who are consoled, woe to you who are full, woe to you who are laughing, woe to you who are well spoken of.” (vs. 24-26) Jesus warns that the quest for wealth and comfort and satisfaction and frivolity and popularity; all the things the world tends to value as success, can actually be detrimental to healthy, lasting relationships. As of last weekend, the Super Bowl is history and some players have played their last game now that the 2006 football season is over. In January 2004, Richard Justice wrote an article in the Houston Chronicle entitled, “Life after football: Hello real world”. He explored the frightening statistics regarding the difficult transition that these cultural heroes experience when they retire from the game. • 65% of NFL players leave the game with permanent injuries • One in four players report financial difficulties in the first year after they retire. • Of the NFL marriages that fail, 50% fail in the first year after the player leaves the game. • The suicide rate for active and retired football players is six times greater than the national average. • 78% of NFL players are unemployed, bankrupt or divorced within two years after their last game. We don’t have to be NFL stars to have our families fall prey to the woes of fame and money. This past Wednesday our Edina Ministerial Association met for our monthly luncheon and our guest was Edina’s new Superintendent of Schools, Ric Dressen. We talked about a variety of issues impinging on families in our privileged southwest suburbs where “all the children are above average”. While phenomenal material resources can be a family asset, they also can tear families apart by making chemical abuse more accessible, escalating stress for grades, extra-curricular competition and college admission and pushing families to their wits end by over-scheduling time and commitments. Dr. Dressen shared the results of one study that indicated that the single most important thing families can do to foster health is not counseling, or medication or vacation, but simply sitting down at a table and eating three meals/week together. Then he went on to observe, “Isn’t it ironic that the second annual ‘Edina Unplugged’ night scheduled for Monday March 12th requires so much negotiation and promotion and fundraising and even training so parents and kids can know what to do together for an evening without TV, stereo, phone, computers and outside commitments to hide behind?” Roger Acton from our congregation offers his reflections on this theme. “Like freedom and good health, most of us just grew up with family and sort of take it as a given. Then with all three, one day they are gone, our eyes are opened and our hearts are broken. Then we say, ‘If only I had known then what I know now, I would have done things differently.’ Those of us that have traveled this road should do all we can to post warning signs for those who follow!” So those are the warnings and woes. What are the blessings Jesus lists in Luke chapter 6? Essentially things most families would ordinarily try and avoid. Jesus says there is blessing in being poor, hungry, weeping, hated, excluded, reviled and defamed (vs. 20-22). Now he’s not calling us to unhappily suffer on purpose, but rather to relinquish ourselves to a state of simplicity where less is more; where reducing the material trappings and busy work of life set us up to more fully invest ourselves in relationships that truly matter. Mary Seaborne from our congregation writes, “I have a wonderful extended family, all of whom live out of state. But we’ve remained close to each other; and like the stars, I know they are there even when I can’t see them. We also help stabilize each other, if the need is there we offer each other an emotional foundation; I need it sometimes and they need it sometimes.” Joanie Goehl from our congregation writes, “We are a very close family and try to gather for Sunday dinners whenever Riney and I are in town. This has gotten to be a shuffling procedure now, with the grandkids’ sporting events, but we try to work around it somehow to pull it off. Our crew genuinely enjoys each other, and when Riney and I are out of town, the families still get together without us. Whenever one of the grandkids has a sporting event, it is common to see other family members in the stands cheering them on. Our cabin has been a tremendous magnet for family time, as have our timeshares in Sanibel. It’s such a privilege having places to gather for a longer period of time and just kick back and enjoy each other. Jayne gave me a Christmas gift this year, a calligraphy china plate with words that she thought rather summarized our family.” Joanie brought it for this morning. The words read, “As a family, we understand each other as only family can. We share the same memories, values and daily lives. We’ve laughed and cried, listened, talked and dreamed. As the years go by, we grow closer. A family is forever and there is no family like ours.” Family life like this is a wonderful gift, but it’s not the reality for some. Many also share stories of families breaking into factions of not speaking or caring. In fact, according to Time magazine a few years back (12/18/2000) 10% of all American siblings claim to have no relationship with each other at all. As years progress, alienation becomes the norm and we fail to see the value of making the effort for any kind of connection. Good riddance! We think… Writing within family systems theory, Trisha Taylor makes an insightful observation about how such family alienation if allowed to continue, hinders our maturing as self-differentiated persons. From her book, The Leader’s Journey: “The person seeking transformation…faces the challenge of maintaining an emotional connection with each generation of the family while learning to disengage from some of the family’s anxious patterns. By learning to define ourselves in our family, we increase our ability to define ourselves in our other relationships. This is why we must go home again. The first step toward going home again as a more differentiated self is the commitment to stay in touch with the extended family without being absorbed by the considerable anxiety attached to those relationships. If anxiety compels us to distance ourselves from certain people, differentiation requires that we connect with those same people. Since connecting with people who do not create anxiety in our lives does little to move us up the scale of differentiation of self, the relationships we run from may be the very ones we should run toward.” Jesus is equally adamant about the urgency and importance of family connectedness. In our scripture passage from Luke, he was surrounded by crowds, but we read in verse 20 that he looked directly at the disciples, and addressed his teaching to his intimate family of faith. The word “now” appears four times in this brief passage, lending a sense of immediacy to addressing the concerns raised. And finally, it’s important to note how our passage begins in the 17th verse, “Jesus came down with them and stood on a level place.” That’s where we need to stand for creating and sustaining healthy families; on a level place – a level place without volatility, without division, without baggage, without envy – a level place where we intentionally come down to stand beside each other.