We are still in the season of Christmas—my friends around the world who celebrate Three Kings’ Day will remind us that the Twelve Days of Christmas are actually all after December 25. And in this season many of us are spending time with families that are formed in a variety of ways, not always by biology. The holidays are a really good time to think about adoption, step-parenting and blended families.
John 1: 10-13 gives a different version of the Nativity story than we hear in the Synoptic gospels. “He came into the very world he created, but the world didn’t recognize him. He came to his own people, and even they rejected him. But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son.”
In this account we have an inclusive salvation—not just for “his people”, but for everyone who is in the world. The language here is really interesting—contradicting the traditional way of biological belonging and patriarchy where men/husbands got to decide whether children were kept in the family or not. Instead, Jesus brings in a new way of being children where we are chosen by God, if we will recognize it.
I belong to a family formed through adoption. And the adoptions in our family were frequently of children who are older, not babies. In these cases, as in all adoption cases ultimately—the choice to be family is a two-way street. My older brother came to our family through the foster care system. My parents were what was called emergency foster parents—if a child was taken from a dangerous situation in the middle of the night or had to leave some place immediately and there wasn’t a regular foster home for them, they came and stayed with us for up to 30 days till they had a more permanent placement. (At least that’s what they did the 70s and 80s—maybe there’s a more humane way to do things now). So during that season of life we had dozens of kids through our house, most of them for short periods of time.But three of my siblings were different—they started in the same way as the others, but then they chose us. They wanted to be a permanent part of our family. And two of my siblings also formed their own families through adoption. So now my parents have ten grandchildren but are only connected through DNA to three of them.
Think about this—we are the family that God chose. Jesus chose to become human. He became like us. And the choice is mutual. When we choose God, when we choose to be Jesus’ disciples, we become the adopted children of God, just as Jesus became an adopted human. In fact, as Christians we are multiple generation of adopted children into the family of God.
This becomes really clear at Christmas, when we notice the way that Jesus came from a blended family, with confusing biological connections—or maybe no biological connections at all. Jesus was not only adopted into humanity, but he was also adopted by Joseph. And Joseph is also possibly himself from a family formed through stepparents, as so many in the pre-modern world were. In the genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke, Joseph is listed as having two separate fathers. Scholars think this is because he was a representative of the principle of the Levitical law where if a brother died, his brother would take over his family and have children in his name. Joseph may have had a stepparent who was also an uncle. In the Christmas story, we have constant reminders that family is chosen—that we belong not through biology and the tyranny of DNA, but because we show up to care for each other. We move into the neighborhood. We choose love.
Step-parenting, adoption, and chosen/blended families remind us that we are not our own, we are not inevitable. I’m deeply shaped by an article in Christianity Today by Sarah Hinkley Wilson called “Blessed are the barren.” In exploring her own pain with infertility, she argues that not being able to birth the children you want challenges creation. When Jesus on the road to the cross blesses the wombs that have never borne children, he is casting away the curse that so many women experienced. The very thing the ancient world saw as a social scourge, and which has always been a source of sorrow to those who experience, the lack of something that seems like it should be natural from happening, is turned into a blessing. That’s the upside-down kingdom.
Hinkley Wilson points out that there were no more “promised” children (always boys) after John the Baptist. Mary wasn’t barren and asking for a child. She got a son that she hadn’t expected, as did Joseph. Jesus changes things up, refocuses the story of “chosen” people away from ethnicity and bloodlines to one of discipleship and the Church. Hinkley Wilson argues that adoptive families in many ways more closely reflect the church than families formed through biology. They can be a blessing and an example to the church. And any blended family can be this—another metaphor for what it means to the beloved community.
Stepfamilies, foster families, adoptive families, in-law families all have to keep choosing each other. Parents of children they don’t share genetics with, “know “in a way that many other parents don’t, that their children are not their “own.” They are individuals who have to form a family without the predetermination or heavy expectation of biological relations. When we choose the family of God in maturity it has more meaning. I was raised a Christian, and my testimony isn’t how I was radically changed one day in a Big Choice to be converted. My testimony is that I keep showing up with the Church. My story is about being transformed by constantly working to be in community with people who I might differ from and who I have to forgive and who have to forgive me as we work toward the kingdom made new. It’s the same method by which I’m a member of my own family of origin, the Clarks.
Hinkley’s essay argues that one of the great truths of adoption is that adoptive families know that their great joy comes from someone else’s great tragedy. This is true of almost all blended families. If things had gone perfectly for folks in the past, their family might not exist. And this is true of the Incarnation as well. If there had been no sin, there would be no “God with us.” The beauty of the plan of salvation, of the expectation of the New Earth, is only there because of the tragedy of brokenness in the world. Grace and forgiveness are wonderful, and they exist because of pain.
As we find our ways to and with our families this year—whether they are our parents who raised us or our maddening but beloved siblings or our new in-laws or the local chosen family who substitute for our family of origin—we can all recognize ourselves in the story of Jesus.
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