Gen 29: 14-35 Lilo and Stitch: Who Is My Family?

In 1979 Sister Sledge recorded the dance sensation, “We are Family” proclaiming that “We are family. I got all my sisters and me. We are family. Get up everybody and sing. Everyone can see we’re together, as we walk on by.” Similarly, we hear churches proclaim that they are a “family church” or all are treated like family when they come through the door. But what does that really mean? How are the family of God and how should we treat our brothers and sisters?

We are now in the last week of our Disney movie sermon series where we have looked at themes about who we are and who God is in popular animated movies. Next week we will begin our next sermon series on the Genesis of Relationships, thus this last movie teaching us about family bridges the gap between the two series.

Lilo and Stitch is one of my top three favorite Disney movies. It is relatively new, being released in 2002. The story tells of a mad scientist who creates a creature whom he calls experiment 626. The creatures sole purpose is to cause mayhem. However, due to some quick thinking the creature escapes inprisionment and ends up on an island in Hawaii, where he is adopted as a pet by a little girl named Lilo. 

Lilo is going through a lot in her life. Her parents recently died in an accident and she is now living with her older sister, Nani, who has to transition from being a sibling to a parent. She doesn’t seem to have any friends - none of the other girls her age will play with her. After a large fight one evening, Nani over hears her sister praying for friends and decided to allow her to have a pet. Lilo instantly becomes attached to an animal she believes to be a dog, but is actually experiment 626, whom she names Stitch.

Lilo and Nani are a family in transition. A family that isn’t composed of a mom and dad and two kids. And they are a family with a lot of drama. At one point in the movie Lilo asks Nani, “we are a broken family, aren’t we?”. But isn’t that the dirty little secret about families that we like to sweep under the rug or dismiss. Families have drama. We only need to look to this morning’s scripture to see that family drama precedes us back to ancient times. 

Jacob ran away to a different part in the land after deceiving his father into giving him his brother Esau’s birthright, but that is another story of family drama for a different day. He ran to the land of his uncle Laban where he fell in love with Laban’s daughter Rachel. Where we pick up in the narrative today, Laban is asking Jacob what he would like his wage to be for working for him on his land. Jacob pledges to work seven years for Rachel’s hand in marriage. But while Laban agreed at first he later schemed and gave Jacob his other daughter Leah to marry instead. Eventually Jacob takes both women and their maid’s as his wives. The result was twelve sons and a daughter who got into a lot of fights and trouble, along with their mothers fighting as well. Jacob understood family drama. 

But family isn’t just drama, it is also a bond of unconditional love. Something that Jacob seemed to be missing with any of his wives other than Rachel. In fact Leah declares that she is bearing so many children because the Lord has opened her womb because he has heard that she is hated. When we declare that we are family, we aren’t just saying that we know about all of the drama, but that we accept each other in the deepest form of love anyway. In one scene in the movie after Stitch has been acting up and destroying everything in his path, Nani declares that they have to return him, he is just too unmanageable. But Lilo cries out that she can’t because of Ohana the Hawaiian word for family, which means that no one gets left behind or forgotten. Ohana at its very core is unconditional love, the type of love that embodies God’s grace. Nani sighs in exhaustion and states that Stitch hasn’t been around long enough to qualify as family, but Lilo corrects her saying that is just not true.

What does make someone family? One could declare that Jacob, Rachel, Leah, and their children were all family. And in the biological scene this is very true. But Jacob loved Rachel best. And he loved the two sons she bore, Joseph and Benjamin, more than the others. Leah knew that she wasn’t loved. She saw how Jacob treated her. Maybe she even heard her husband declaring to Laban that he had deceived him, as if he wanted to exchange Leah in for her sister. She was so despised that the Lord could see that she was unloved. Is this really family? Is this Ohana? Or do Leah and her children constantly feel like they are left behind and forgotten?

Family isn’t just genetics, its a choice to show and live into unconditional love. The type of love that God showed us in that popular verse that some of us memorized as children, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son...” This type of love is inviting and embraces all of us, faults and all. This is the type of love that forms lasting bonds and reconciles us even when we are going through drama or difficult times. One evening, after Stitch has misbehaved again, Lilo tells him that he can be part of their family if he wants to. 

I find so much joy in this particular scene in the movie. In contrast to the scripture lesson, where Jacob acts in a way that is contrary to the deep love of family and pushes some of his family members away, prioritizing others, Lilo with the humble heart of a child invites Stitch to be part of her family. Yes, it may be broken. Yes, it may be small. Yes, there may be hard times. But he is welcome to be part of them fully if he so wishes.

Brothers and sisters, this is what it means to be the church. Not to say that we are a family centered church. Or a welcoming church. But a church where people are invited and feel the unconditional love of the family of God. That’s what I hope you feel when you are with each other and every Sunday when you walk through these doors. If not, we need to ask ourselves how we can get to the place where no one feels left behind or forgotten. 

In the following scene in the movie Stitch ends up being captured by those who had been looking for him. When asked what he was doing he said that he was looking for his family, to which the scientist who created him stated that he had no family and that he could never belong anywhere. Oh Church, how many people there are today who feel like that. Who feel as if they aren’t good enough or worthy enough to belong. Those who have never felt unconditional love. Those who are desperately searching for a place to belong. Are we going to wait for them to come inside this building to know the love of the family of God or are we going to invite them, intentionally, to be a part of this family. Right here. 

And when they come will they feel that love? Will we go out of our way to welcome them. Or will they leave, feeling mistreated like Leah, even if we do so unintentionally?

Brothers and Sisters, what today’s scripture passage and this movie remind us of is that family is so much more then a name or biology. Its the feeling of being embraced by love. It communities that come together to serve one another. My hope and prayer is that we embrace being a loving family of God, not just with those who are in our presence currently, but for all of those in this area who God yearns for us to invite. Yearns for us to show unconditional love to, maybe for the first time in their lives. Years for us to see family through the eyes of a child so that people can come to know the love of Jesus Christ. May we be a place, where those who are invited can declare along with Stitch, “This is my family! I found it all on my own. It is little, and it is broken, but it is still good!” Oh Church arise and be the family of God in this hurting world. Amen.