Articles by Paul Scanlon

The Family of the Unsandalled was a name that spoke of shame, selfishness and disgrace. Despite these not being words that God would want said of anyone, it was God himself who gave this name to certain family lines and here’s why:

‘If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfil the duty of a brother-in-law to her.  The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel. However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, “My husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not fulfil the duty of a brother-in-law to me.”

Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, “I do not want to marry her,” his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, “This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother’s family line.”

That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandalled.’ 1

Here we see that from the beginning, it was God’s intention for the processes of restoration and recovery to be built into the community of his people. At the heart of this brother-in-law’s duty to marry his brother’s widow was not charity, welfare or pity but the opportunity for restoration and recovery from what would become a life dominating problem. To be widowed without children was to have your family line cut short and your husband’s name erased from history. As we read, ‘The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother, so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel’. 2

God made helping this widow an issue of duty and obligation; he didn’t leave it to chance, choice or convenience. God built this principle of recovery for widows into the spiritual and moral DNA of his people. This distinguished them from widows in other societies that lacked this value, who would never recover from their family’s loss. This duty to restore the broken amongst his people was the envy of every other nation. To know that if life dealt you the crushing blow of bereavement without progeny, those closest to you would make it their responsibility to step in and guarantee your recovery, was to remove the fear that widowhood could become a life dominating condition.

God’s heart for people meant that the possibility of recovery was in place before the need for it ever arose. So, in the years following this young woman’s bereavement, no one would ever know of her huge loss because her restoration within the community had protected both her identity and that of her future children, who would never be perceived as being different from any others.

God thinks and acts generationally

When God instituted this principle of recovery, his primary concern was for the preservation and future prosperity of the dead man’s family line.

God established that the consequences for the brother-in-law who refused to help would be so serious, they would carry generational consequences. This brother-in-law was not just refusing to help his brother’s widow but refusing to preserve and continue his brother’s name and lineage. His sin was not just against the living widow and his dead brother but also against those who would never be born without his intervention. Dealing with the drama and public disgrace associated with his refusal to help was one thing, but the generational stigma of being forever after known as the Family of the Unsandalled, the family that refused to help, was meant to be unbearable. To be so named was to be identified as a family who cared neither for the hurting today or for those who would suffer tomorrow.

So, to be willing to be publicly named, shamed, spat on and unsandalled was in effect admitting that you had no real understanding of God’s covenant community or God’s heart for his people. It made you a misfit. This deterrent was huge - as huge as God’s heart for the hurting and the broken.

The Church of the Unsandalled

Overcoming the disasters and set-backs we sometimes face in life, is not always our personal and exclusive responsibility. God has placed us in a covenant community too – the Church – and without the help of the church around us we too may potentially never recover.

Our church family here in Bradford contains hundreds of stories of recovery. Whether recovering from divorce, bereavement, addictions, bankruptcy or abuse, these people have somehow found a way back to living a full and happy life with the help of a church who have refused to be known as the Church of the Unsandalled. As a leadership we have committed to build restoration and recovery into the DNA of our House and that is why so many lives have recovered from things that became no more than a temporary set-back, when they had the potential to destroy them completely. 

Our joy is that many of those we have helped restore, by fulfilling as it were the duty of the brother-in-law, have now gone on to live extraordinarily generous lives. From their once broken lives have come ideas, initiatives and ministries that are now reaching thousands. Those to whom we refused to become the Family of the Unsandalled have themselves refused to become the unsandalled to others.

I believe that thousands of churches across the world could potentially be named as the Family of the Unsandalled by God. As long as the church continues to shoot her own wounded, rather than help them to recover, we can’t even begin to help the plight of the millions outside the church who, without our help to recover, simply won’t. To a hurting world much of the church is no better than the man in whose face the widow spat. In fact, the world has every right to, as it were, spit in the face of any church which, despite seeing its community ravaged by sin, does nothing. May it never be said of our church or yours that to our community we have become the Family of the Unsandalled.

Tsunami Orphans

Tens of thousands of families lost loved ones in the Tsunami of 26 December 2004. Thousands of children were orphaned overnight and faced life without parents, a life worse than death in some cultures of the world.

I was very moved while watching TV footage in the hours and days following the disaster. What moved me was seeing many of the surviving parents simply collecting orphaned children from their village. It didn’t matter to them that they weren’t their own children, what mattered was that they would not face life without a mum and dad. The Tsunami had been devastating but it would not be allowed to dominate the life of the next generation. These non-believers shamed much of the church by what they did; they refused, as did the Good Samaritan, to walk by those who were hurting and instead chose to get involved in their world. Despite the agony of their own loss of loved ones, they reached out and began to love others back to recovery.

Like many churches, we sent money to the Tsunami appeal, as we did to the victims of Hurricane Katrina and the Pakistan Earthquake. However, none of that must ever become a substitute for outworking our responsibility to the hurting, poor and oppressed on our own doorstep. It’s much easier to send aid across the world than to become aid where we live. The ‘Tsunami’ of sin and all it’s consequences, is destroying our communities, one life at a time. The bereaved, empty and desperate single parent who will cry herself to sleep again tonight while contemplating ending it all, needs to know about you, your church and the Family of God. What the devil meant for evil, God can turn to good through the love of a ‘search and rescue’ church, committed to the restoration and recovery of all within their immediate sphere of influence. The duty of the brother-in-law has now fallen to us.

It is often reported back to us by people who visit our church from out of town, that when they stop to ask strangers for directions, not only do people know who we are but they also often say, ‘that is the place that helps people’. If that was the only thing our city ever said about our church, I would consider it the greatest compliment that they could ever give us. What do they say about your church?

The Kinsman redeemer

The kinsman-redeemer was the closest living male relative to a widowed family member. We are introduced to the concept in the book of Ruth. 3

Again the idea was that anyone experiencing the loss of a husband, and who perhaps had no brother-in-law, could still be rescued by the intervention of a kinsman-redeemer. Boaz became kinsman-redeemer to Ruth, a widowed Moabite woman, who herself had chosen to stay with her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi, when she returned to Bethlehem after the death of her husband and sons.

What you make happen for others, God will make happen for you. So, what Ruth did for Naomi, God made sure that Boaz did for Ruth. Never forget that God not only wants to bless the one being helped but also the one helping, who God will bless with more than enough to provide for those he has chosen to ‘redeem’. Economics was never a valid reason for refusing to help ‘redeem’ another person and it’s still not a valid reason for any church to not help its community today. The decision to help the poor, the hurting and the broken is the best economic decision any church can ever make.

‘May you be blessed like Perez'

After his redeeming of Ruth, the elders of Bethlehem proclaimed the following blessing over Boaz. ‘Through the offspring the Lord gives you by this young woman, may your family be like that of Perez, whom Tamar bore to Judah’ .4 

Perez was one of the twin boys born to a woman called Tamar, whose husband had died leaving her childless, and whose brother-in-law, a man named Onan, refused to help. However, instead of being open and honest about his refusal to help Tamar for fear of becoming the Family of the Unsandalled, Onan married her. But the Bible says that whenever he lay with her, he spilled his semen on the ground to avoid producing offspring for his brother.5  The story goes on to say that this was so wicked in God’s sight, that he killed Onan – let me emphasise again that this is a big deal to God.

However, Tamar did go on to have children through Judah and one of

them she named Perez, which means ‘I have broken out’. Perez became the father of a family dynasty that reached straight into Christ’s own genealogy. 6  

Ruth, a widowed outsider and Perez the son of a woman who no one would help, both ended up in Christ’s genealogy. Those who had no family line found one through others who stepped in to help them recover. Such is the heart of God! He refused to become the Family of the Unsandalled to either Tamar or Ruth and included them in his own family line.

Without our help multiplied millions of lost people will never make it into Christ’s family line of faith. With our help, as their spiritual brothers-in-law or kinsman-redeemers, they can recover not only from the blows life has dealt them but also go on to become the restorers of others. To every believer, pastor and church who will take this message to heart I want to say on behalf of every Tamar, Perez, Ruth and Naomi living in your community, which many of you once were, ‘Thank you for refusing to be the Family of the Unsandalled. Thank you for building a life and a church of restoration, recovery and second chances’.

1 Deuteronomy 25:5-10
2 Deuteronomy 25:6
3 Ruth 4:3-12
4 Ruth 4:12
5 Genesis 38:9
6 Matthew 1:3