Rancho Bernardo Community Presbyterian Church

Next week as we head out into the community to do service projects in Jesus’ name I am excited at ways that families are doing service projects together. The family that serves together more often stays together.

Of course that is too simplistic. Serving together doesn’t cover up the hard work of healing strained and fractured family relationships. I wonder how many apparently happy families are actually living lives of quiet desperation? They look happy to the rest of the world, but inside the home relationships are strained—even broken. If Jesus could heal physical illnesses, could he also heal family relationships?

John 9 tells us about a physical healing that impacted the rest of the family. Jesus miraculously healed a man who had been blind from birth. When the man’s parents were questioned about the healing miracle, we would expect them to be ecstatic, announcing joyfully to any who would listen that their son who was blind could now see. Instead, the parents seem uncertain whether or not to be joyful.

The parents admitted to the authorities that their son was formerly blind. But they refused to support their son’s testimony that Jesus healed him. Instead of joyful support, they did not want anything to do with the ensuing conflict. Was there a need for healing of family relationships between that son and his parents? Perhaps they only knew how to treat him when he was blind and dependent, but uncertain how to treat him now that he could see.

Let’s explore some important parallels between physical healing and healing relationships. Back in the twentieth century we treated most illnesses with a mechanical paradigm. This approach treated the body like a machine with various working parts. Just as a mechanic removes and replaces a broken part to get the machine working again, so many people assumed that physical healing involved isolating the sick body part and treating it with medication or surgery without consideration for the rest of the body. We know now that the body is an organism where the various parts are intricately woven into a working system. Treatment of one part affects other parts. For instance, a pain in the left arm may actually be symptomatic of heart problems. Rather than rush to treat the arm, it is better to see how the whole system functions together. Before prescribing a medication, it is important to determine the side effects the medication may bring to other parts of the body. Healing has multiple components including mental and emotional aspects. So also healing family relationships involves more than isolating the problem member.

In family relationships this holistic approach is known as healing the family system. Last month I touched on this idea of family systems and there was such a huge response from the congregation, I want to explore a little deeper. The family system paradigm says that instead of isolating one person as the problem, the whole family needs to learn how to get healthy together. While it sounds like a modern theory of family relationships, the Apostle Paul used this approach nearly two thousand years ago in his letter to the Corinthians.

But if any has caused sorrow, he has caused sorrow not to me, but in some degree--in order not to say too much--to all of you.

Sufficient for such a one is this punishment which was inflicted by the majority, so that on the contrary you should rather forgive and comfort him, otherwise such a one might be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.

Wherefore I urge you to reaffirm your love for him

2 COR 2:5-8

A. T. Barnum, near the beginning of his circus career, originated a popular museum display called "The Happy Family." It consisted of a lion, a tiger, a panther, and a baby lamb all in the same cage. Newspapers ran pictures of "The Happy Family," and crowds flocked to the circus to see this amazing sight.

After the display had been running for several weeks, a friend asked Barnum how it was going. He replied, "The display will become a permanent feature if the supply of lambs holds out!"

Let’s face it. Many families try to get healthy by labeling and sacrificing one of their members as the black sheep. The rest of the family blames that member for all its troubles. "If he were just nicer to his sisters then we would all be happy." "If she just quit flaring into temper tantrums we could all be a happy family." Pointing fingers at one member as the problem is the way many families try to get healthy.

I saw this dynamic in my childhood home. Through our childhood, I frequently teased my middle sister. She was often the butt of our jokes. As a result, Bonnie learned to be defensive around our family. She became our wounded, sacrificial lamb. If asked, I would have said we were a happy family except for Bonnie, the one with all the problems.

When Bonnie went away to college, she and Kate (my wife) were roommates. Kate noticed a significant change in Bonnie at college. Bonnie became outgoing and confident, happy and energetic while away at the university. Yet, whenever they came back to Tucson to visit family, Kate watched Bonnie revert to her old defensive, moody personality in our home. Why did Bonnie do this? The answer was that the rest of our family would not let Bonnie be healthy because we each knew our roles. We forced her to continue playing the role of the problem personality. Even though she was healthy in other settings, we would not allow her to be healthy since it threatened our family system.

The Apostle Paul used this approach with the Corinthian church. A member of the church family was causing troubles. While we are not sure what the specifics were, it is clear that the situation had caused Paul some personal pain. It is likely that the troublesome personality had severely criticized Paul. The Corinthian church already had isolated that troublesome person and rebuked him for his actions. Paul could have simply applauded their efforts to rebuke and correct that person. However, Paul realized that using the troubled member as the identified problem, without facing their own need to get healthy as a church family, would not work. So he does an amazing thing. He asks them to receive this man back into their fellowship so that they can become healthy together. While Paul did not know the language of modern family systems theory, he was clearly using a family systems approach to bring healing to the broken trust in that church as a family.

Family systems theory says that the identified problem person can only get healthy as the whole family chooses to get healthy together. In fact, the hurting family member can become healthy in other settings, but will return to the same unhealthy dynamics if the rest of the family does not change as well. So how do we bring healing to the entire system?

Most of us would expect that if the family went in for counseling, the counselor would fix the wounded personality. This is not how it works. Family system counseling says that the ones who can initiate healing turn out to be those healthy enough to intentionally make some changes. Instead of trying to fix the broken part of the family, the counselor targets a relatively healthy member and invites that one to change his/her interactions. Let me quote one authority on family systems. He writes that "the criterion of whom to counsel is no longer who has the symptoms, but who has the greatest capacity to bring change to the system."

Whom did Paul address when he wanted to see the Corinthian church family become healthy? Instead of addressing the troubled member and telling him to shape up, Paul spoke to the healthy church members. He believed that if they changed their behavior toward the unhealthy member by forgiving him, they could bring health not only to him but also to the whole church. So he asks them to "reaffirm your love for him" (the difficult member).

Can family systems theory really bring healing?

So many of you asked for more information about our family’s healing, that I have Kate’s permission to share another part of our family’s story of healing. About fifteen years ago our marriage was deeply wounded. We had almost lost our oldest son in a coma. His recuperation included continued suicidal depression until we finally had him properly diagnosed with a chemical imbalance of the brain. When he started his medication, I assumed everything would be instantly happy. It wasn’t.

Prior to his coma, I thought Nate was the problem one in our family. I figured if he would just change, we would all be happy. However, as Nate began to get healthier through medication and counseling, I realized that our family was still unhealthy. I spiraled into a severe depression. I realize now that I was taking over Nate’s role as the troubled family member. I grew defensive around Kate, pouty around the children. I became a workaholic because it felt better to stay at work where I got lots of positive attention as a successful pastor instead of going home where I felt like a failure as a husband and father.

Our marriage became so broken that Kate and I talked for the first time about divorce. She began working toward her Master’s degree in order to keep her options open for possible employment if we divorced. With Kate working full time plus taking extra classes, I felt more and more disconnected from her. It was an unhappy time in our lives. In the midst of it, I thought it was everybody else’s fault. I thought I would be happy and our family would be healthy again if the kids would just change. I was sure we would be a happy family if Kate could just understand me. The cycle of blame and depression was terrible. Then one day Jesus encountered me.

It happened while I was at a pastor’s conference on the East Coast. The theme of the conference was how to have a healthy long-term pastorate. The leader was giving all the statistics and information in favor of pastors remaining for lengthy pastorates. As I listened, I filtered everything through my own pain and the brokenness of our marriage. As the leader spoke about pastors remaining committed to their church, I was praying about remaining committed to my marriage. The last day of the seminar, the leader invited us to an extended time of silent, listening prayer. The leader reminded us that we had plenty of information; the real question was what the Lord wanted in each of our lives. We sat for about a half-hour in quiet prayer asking, "Lord, what do you want to say to me?" My own prayer was "Lord, what do you want to say to me regarding my hurting marriage and family?"

I had not heard about family systems healing. I would later read material on the topic and grow in my understanding of how families can heal together. That day all I had was my trust that Jesus can heal. As I sat in prayer, I heard a phrase come into my mind. The words were, "You can change." At first I didn’t get it. What did this have to do with my situation? Now, I find it amazing that I had not thought of it before. I guess I assumed that it was up to Kate or the children to change, not me. It had never occurred to me that I was the one who needed to change.

I recall praying on the flight home about how to share with Kate that I was asking the Lord’s help to heal our relationship by changing me. When I shared what had happened in that prayer time, Kate told me something similar had happened to her. Rather than waiting for me, she had determined with the Lord’s help to put her renewed efforts into making our relationship healthy again. Together we agreed to make some deposits back into our overdrawn love bank account. We recommitted prayerfully to let the Lord heal our relationship. It took us nearly two years to restore the broken pieces of our marriage.

Years ago we celebrated our twenty-second anniversary by exchanging new wedding bands and recommitting our wedding vows as a reconciled couple.

Now hear me clearly. This message is not intended as a hammer of guilt for those who are divorced. What is past is past. Not all marriages can be healed. However, I want to offer a ray of hope to any family members today who are living in quiet desperation. Jesus can heal a desperately broken family. The first step is that someone needs to be open to change.

Are you open?