On 'Festive Kinship', the Title of My Website

The wedding at Cana, Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen, c. 1530

I came up with the phrase ‘Festive Kinship’, the title for my new website, in trying to capture the sort of community that I see projected in the book of Deuteronomy.

Deuteronomy invited God’s ancient people to seasonal harvest festivals, where the community feasted on the abundance of the produce (16:9-17). The household went on a pilgrimage, beginning at the family farm, traversing the hilly roads to the temple in Jerusalem. Everyone came: the blood-family, slaves (servants), the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. Everyone in the community shared in the aching walk, the winding conversations, the cooking, the aroma of boiling meat, the music, the dance, the ritual, the song, the worship, the feasting, all before the face of Yahweh.

At the time, I was writing an academic article that explores kinship in this book and I needed a short phrase captures Deuteronomy’s vision. So, I wandered the streets staring at the ground until the penny dropped: ‘festive kindred!’ . . . almost there. I ran this phrase by my friends at Kinbrace, an organisation that provides support for asylum claimants that was birthed 19 years go out of our church. Anika and Emily changed the phrase to ‘festive kinship’.

Deuteronomy’s vision was for the ancient Israelite household and the clan to enfold vulnerable people as kindred. Together as family they came before God, who provided the abundance of the harvest (See my book, Adopting the Stranger as Kindred in Deuteronomy—admittedly it’s pretty academic and dense).

What a thick ethic of welcome and embrace Deuteronomy holds out for Christ followers and for society today! We are invited not only into welcome or hospitality, but into kinship: the mutual transformation of shared vulnerability and connection. How can worshipping communities reflect the diversity of the Kingdom of God? We need to get-going in kinship-creativity.

And, what a rich invitation for nations to embrace people who are seeking a home! Scripture invites nations to embrace the risk and the opportunity that enfolding displaced people as kindred brings to our communities. 

Anyways, that explains the title of the website. I hope and pray that you find scriptural treasures here to nourish kinship-creativity both in your own household and in your own worshipping community. 

(The article that prompted the musings that birthed this phrase ‘festive kinship’ will be published in 2019 with the Journal for the Study of the Old Testament: “’Festive Kinship’: Solidarity, Responsibility, and Identity Formation in Deuteronomy.”)