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| Detail from the "Two Brothers" sarcophagus in the Vatican Museum. Are they two brothers, Peter and Paul, or a couple? Inquiring minds want to know? |
Since I haven't posted in awhile, I thought I would post the sermon I preached at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in Winston-Salem earlier this summer. It was their Pride Sunday service:
I
want to thank you for inviting me to speak on Pride Sunday. I’m honored to mark this day with a
congregation that stands in support of LGBTQ equality and justice. I am, as I’m sure many of you are, still
processing and trying to understand the implications of the vote on May 8. Given this I want to frame my comments in
relation to this vote, an event that signals that we still have a long way to
go to winning over the hearts and minds of our neighbors. Many of these neighbors, folks who supported
the Amendment, identify as Christian and they claim the Bible as justification
for their perspective, a perspective that is often described as
“pro-family.” Given the importance of
this “family” language, the campaign against Amendment One was cast in similar
terms, protecting all North Carolina
families. In some sense, the fight for
LGBTQ equality here in North Carolina was cast in terms that tried to make
LGBTQ individuals and families seem less threatening and, perhaps, even more
“Christian.” Gay and lesbians may seem
scary, but surely families aren’t threatening . . . or are they?
As
someone who studies and teaches the New Testament, I resist the notion that the writings of the New Testament
unequivocally and primarily support the vision of family espoused by the Right
in our country. I also resist the
suggestion that “family,” understood in terms of the heterosexual, nuclear
family unit, is a superior value within the New Testament. In contrast, the texts that we will explore
today suggest early Christian ambivalence about traditional notions of family
and prioritize love of God and neighbor before family and marriage. Hopefully, thinking about these texts
together can inform our conversations with our Christian neighbors, but also
help us find pride in the variety of ways we configure our closest
relationships.
Who is my family?
The
Gospel of Mark is my favorite Gospel.
This is primarily because Mark’s depiction of Jesus is so different than
the saccharine portraits of Jesus we’re used to seeing around us. Unlike Luke and Matthew, Mark doesn’t dwell
on the birth and infancy of Jesus, instead introducing us to an adult male who
seeks baptism from a radical religious leader in the wilderness before preaching
his own message about the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God (1:15). Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is a man of few
words and when he does speak, nobody quite understands him for he speaks in
parables and riddles (Mark 4:12). Mark’s
Jesus is more interested in faith, than understanding. Early on in the story of Mark, Jesus is noted
for challenging social mores, eating alongside of tax collectors and sinners
and even taking it upon himself to pronounce people forgiven of their
wrongdoings. That is, Jesus flaunts
social expectations and acts in ways that seem . . . perhaps . . . a little
queer.
In
Mark 3, after healing a man’s withered hand on the Sabbath (another action that
resists social convention), Jesus returns to his family home only to have a
crowd begin to gather around him. The
crowd is so large, in fact, that Jesus and his followers can’t even eat,
according to the text. The scene is one
of chaos. Given this, those “around
him,” which English translations often render as “his family,” try to restrain
Jesus because he is “beside himself” or “out of his mind” (3:21). In other words, those who should be close to
him, namely his family, have been made so uncomfortable by Jesus’ actions that
they think he’s crazy. Perhaps they are
embarrassed by the company he keeps. Or,
perhaps, they are offended by his failure to follow social rules and
expectations. Whatever the motivation of
those around him, the idea that Jesus’ family might have tried to restrain
because of his odd and inappropriate behavior is a striking image, as we think
about all the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, and trans children, teens, and even
adults who are rejected by their families because their behavior is deemed
strange, abnormal, or sinful. Families,
for many of us, can be threatening.
In
the first century world of Roman occupied Judea, the land in which the Jesus
movement emerged, family was the most important social unit. According to historian Ross Kraemer, “much
ordinary social life was family life”
(p. 539). You ate with your family,
cooked with your family, worked with your family, worshipped with your
family. Your family determined who you
would marry and what type of role you played in the wider community. It was through the nexus of the family that
you interacted with the rest of the world.
Families were so important in this context that an individual’s actions
necessarily shaped how the entire family was understood and treated by the rest
of the community. The last thing anyone
would want to do would be to bring shame upon his or her entire family in some
way.
Eventually,
after contending with some local officials who accuse him of being an agent of
Satan, an evil person in other words, Jesus’ mother and brothers begin asking
for Jesus. At this point maybe they are
trying to do some damage control. If
they could just get ahold of him and get him inside the house, maybe, perhaps,
the family could still save face. Jesus,
however, resists their attempts at bringing him back into the household. He rejects those who would have him
restrained, turning to the crowd of people who had followed him there and
asking the crowd, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” In one question, Jesus challenges the
importance of the biological and socially determined family. And then, answering his own question, Jesus
explains, “"Here are my mother and my brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." Risking
social shame by rejecting his biological family, Jesus proclaims that true family is defined by a shared
commitment. In these few lines, Jesus
replaces his biological family with an intentional and alternative a
family.
The
commitment that binds the alternative family affirmed by Jesus is a commitment
to God’s will, which in this ancient tradition is associated with loving God with
all one’s heart, soul, and mind and loving one’s neighbor as oneself (12:28-31). This is described in Mark as “the greatest
commandment.” In fact, this
understanding of God’s will as love of God and neighbor is not unique to Jesus,
but was a part of the Jewish tradition of Jesus’ day. This is important for a number of
reasons. First, Jesus does not define
his true family by whether or not they do what he wants. This radical new family structure is not built out of
narcissism, it is not a cult of personality.
Rather, it is a family based upon acting in love toward God and
neighbor. Second, given the history of
Christian oppression of Jews and Judaism, it is important to recognize that in
this moment Jesus isn’t rejecting his tradition, but building an alternative
family based upon the heart of this tradition.
From
my perspective, I find in this text a bit of good news, which is what “gospel”
literally means. For those of us who
have been rejected by our families, we see that experience being acknowledged
here. The Gospel story is our
story. We also see that the option of
creating an alternative family through intentional community is honored. Moreover, we are offered a precedent for
challenging the norm of what’s socially acceptable in terms of our family
configurations. Here, family, as
traditionally understood and socially sanctioned, is not the ultimate good;
instead, the love of neighbor that binds us to one another is essential.
The
ambivalent attitude exhibited by Mark’s Jesus toward his biological family is
not unique in early Christian tradition.
Historically, the Christian tradition has challenged the societal
tendency to lift the family relationship, including the marriage relationship,
above all others.
The
apostle Paul, the Christian tradition’s earliest witness and one of its most
controversial, offers the most detailed discussion of marriage in the New
Testament in a letter sent to the Corinthian Church. This is a congregation in turmoil. It is a congregation divided, as different
groups compete for status, trying to one up each other in terms of piety,
faithfulness, and wisdom. They are
apparently arguing about who offers the most important gifts to the
congregation, who has the best or most “faithful” diet, and who is the best
leader to be baptized by. The
congregation seems a mess. In fact, the
congregation also is trying to out-do one another in terms of their familial
arrangements, arguing that one type of familial arrangement is better than
another—some apparently advocating marriage, while others advocating
celibacy. You can imagine that each
group brings to the argument an absolute sense of being right. “Surely, God wants us to be married!” “Surely, God wants us to be celibate!”
During the first century Roman Empire, the setting
for Paul’s ministry, marriage was understood in terms of being a good
citizen. Marriage supposedly ensured the
strength and longevity of the Empire, by promoting childbirth. There were legal incentives, as there are today,
for citizens who married. While marriage
was highly valued in the Empire, only Roman citizens could legally or
officially marry one another. Soldiers,
even if there were citizens, were not allowed to marry. In other words, only some within Paul’s communities,
only a portion of early Christians, would have been able to legally marry; most
would have lived in common-law, unofficial, marriages. In light of this, when Paul talks about
marriage he might actually not be talking about legal unions since marriage was
limited to only an exclusive group.
But
back to the Corinthians, Paul responds to the issue of whether marriage or
celibacy is the best way, by explaining that while his personal preference is that
people are unmarried, as he himself is unmarried, both positions are fine: marriage is fine and being unmarried is
fine. If you can’t keep yourself from
having sex, get married. If you can
exercise self-control, stay unmarried as marriage leads to anxieties. The reason for Paul’s ambivalence here has to
do with two things. First, he believes
Jesus is coming back any minute . . . so, it doesn’t much matter if people are
married or not. Second, and more
important for our purposes, is that these social relationships are secondary to
the primary relationship the community should embrace. That is, the community should be focused upon
living as a single body, in spite of their differences. Arguing over what to eat, proclaiming
superiority because of one’s gifts, debating over whether it is better to marry
or not marry creates division. Instead
of division, Paul advocates unity through love.
It is in light of this that Paul writes one of his most famous passages. Talking about the Christian community and not about couples, Paul proclaims, “4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not
envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It
is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily
angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love
does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always
hopes, always perseveres. 8 Love never fails.
“
In this way, the members
of the community are called to love one another; they are to put aside
differences, hierarchies, and status markers to be united in love. For
Paul, the greatest virtue within the community is not marriage, but love within
community.
While we would be hard pressed to say that Paul
offers a positive perspective on homosexuality, as a product of his day “gay”
and “lesbian” identities are a completely foreign concept to him. However, Paul does go against the norm of his
day by suggesting that marriage is an option that is no better than not being
married. In other words, he challenges
the perception that a heterosexual pairing is the best and most desirable relationship
to have. He refuses to mimic imperial
rhetoric that values marriages as a means of strengthening the state. Rather, Paul downgrades the importance of
marriage in favor of the love shared within Christian community. Again, love of God, love of neighbor, love of
community is valued over the socially dominant vision of the family.
I share these two New Testament traditions with you
today, Pride Sunday, because, first of all, they complicate the dominant
assumption that the Bible is “pro-family,” meaning that the Bible values
heterosexual families as an ultimate value. And, as we saw in Mark, there are instances
when the traditional vision of family is challenged or rejected. There is the recognition that families
sometimes can be threatening and that there are times when there is a need for
redefining family and for creating intentional families. There is a precedent for creating families
outside of the strictures of what the broader family finds acceptable. This, for me, is a powerful witness to the
importance of non-traditional families.
Second, in both of these traditions we see the
valuing of love. This does not preclude
love within traditional families, but it includes love of family within the
context of something bigger—love of God, love of neighbor, love of
community. This is an expansive notion
of love, which calls us to put aside differences and loves none-the-less. We can and should love those within traditional
families and we can and should love those within non-traditional families and
we can and should love those who would understand themselves as
family-less. This is a picture of love
that I hope we all can embrace. A
picture of love in which we can find our pride.
