Who is My Family?

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.