I struggled more than usual with today’s sermon, in part because I had preached Maundy Thursday on that portion of John 13, and I didn’t want to repeat myself more than usual. In addition, I had a lot going on this week, so I wasn’t able to focus on the texts to the extent I usually do. That led to two thoughts that could have been included in the sermon. In the first place, when I heard the lesson from Acts read at the early service, I knew immediately that I could have made the connection between the diversity of the city about which I was speaking and the diversity in that text, the Gospel being extended to Gentiles (I could also have made another joke about shrimp, because they are among the unclean foods).

But secondly, I realized as I preached that in the back of my mind as I was preparing was the PBS program on Mormonism that aired this week. One of the themes of that program was the idea of celestial marriage and that families exist in eternity. In fact, that idea competes within Mormonism with a strong impulse to create the New Jerusalem. Mormonism began in apocalyptic fervor, eagerly awaiting Jesus’ second coming. That theme was downplayed, even ignored in the program. But what is interesting to me is that in its current form, Mormonism seeks to inscribe the family as an eternal institution. That is a radical departure from the New Testament. Jesus said in reply to the Sadducees “In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven” (Mt. 22:30), and Paul in I Corinthians expresses a clear preference against marriage.

My point is not that marriage and the family are wrong or un-Christian. Rather, early Christianity saw itself as creating a new kind of community, one based not primarily on kinship, but on connection to Christ and to one another. Given the realities of family life in the world today, we do well to remember that most people do not live in traditional families any more, given the rates of divorce, and changing marriage patterns. That’s partly why I see the image of the city, or indeed an image like the body of Christ to be much more powerful for creating the bonds of community in the church.