Recently I came across a video recorded by someone sitting waaaaaay up high in the endzone at a University of Tennessee home football game. Neyland stadium was packed, and as the camera panned the crowd of over one hundred thousand orange-clad Vol fans, they began singing “Rocky Top”. At the bottom of the video was a caption that read, “Just a gathering of my kin singing our favorite hymn”.

“Kin” is a word you don’t hear very often. Its most basic use identifies our closest family members who are descended from a common bloodline. But it is often used in a broader sense to bind together a group of people who have something in common, good or bad.

In scripture, kin affirms the blessings and bonds of a familial relationship or household. But it can also have a negative association when it implies that the sins of one generation are passed on to the next, who could be deemed as guilty as those who committed them. Among the diversity of humankind, it is often projected via fear, judgement, or hate that people of different creeds, races, or ethnicities could never be considered “kin”.

As we continue to move through the season of Advent, I am reminded that the coming of Christ is also the coming of the One who makes us kin…beyond bloodline, beyond sin, beyond judgement, beyond division, and creates a family of brothers and sisters with Him, as children of the Most High. In Eugene Peterson’s The Message, he paraphrases Galatians 3:28-29, which proclaims that our kinship in Christ is a universal bond that no earthly label or category can deny.

In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous “descendant,” heirs according to the covenant promises. (Msg)

One worship service I always enjoyed leading the most as a local church pastor is Christmas Eve. Multiple generations of families often attend in a once-a-year family reunion. Like Neyland Stadium on the third Sunday in October in a year they play Alabama at home, the sanctuary is filled to capacity. It won’t matter what life has been like leading up to it, or the differences among all who gather in that moment. When the candles are aglow and the sweet strands of “Silent Night” begin, I will miss looking out over a sea of flame-lit faces and thinking, “Just a gathering of my kin singing our favorite hymn”.

May the unity in Christ we feel in this season extend beyond a one-night journey to Bethlehem. May we approach the manger and join our hearts with all who gather, and commit to remain in kinship when we return to our daily routines, heirs of the family of God’s Kin-dom.

In blessed kinship,