I was given the opportunity to preach at
Rockville United Church on Sunday, June 12, 2022 for their Pride service. Here is the text for that sermon. If you'd like to see the video, please
click here. Do note, it's about 23 minutes long, so longer than anything I've done in the past.
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Welcome and well come to Rockville United Church on this Trinity Sunday. Before I begin, I wanted to thank Pastors Scott and Jennifer for allowing me to preach today, Janine for reaching out to invite me, and to everyone present here whether you are physically in the sanctuary or online. I appreciate you taking the time to listen to what I have to say.
Since I’m sure some of you may wonder about my greeting, allow me to explain it. “Welcome” (1 word) means just what it says: You are welcome here in this place. “Well come” (2 words) means that it is well; or good; that you have come here. It is a greeting meaning “You are welcome in this place, and it is good that you are here with us.”
To start, I want to tell you a story. After I talked with Pastor Scott about preaching here today, I sent him a list with three readings that we might use today. Each reading had a theme and hymn suggestion along with it. When I visited here a couple of weeks ago, Pastor Scott told me that no one had done that before and I responded that I am that person. You know, the person who will really prepare for everything and do so as far in advance as possible. When I was telling some members of my church family this story, each of them had virtually the same response. They were all something along the lines of “Yeah, that sounds like you.” And that is part of what makes us a family. People who know you well enough that they can predict what you will or will not do.
It is a truism that humans are, by nature, social animals. We tend to seek out other people so that we can maintain a connection outside of ourselves, to find someone to help us when we are in trouble, or to find someone that we can help. For much of history, the family has been the most basic social group that has existed. Whether it be parents and their children or whole generations living together, the family has been an important part of various societies.
Depending on where you live, a family name may very well completely influence the life you lead. Think about America today. We have families whose members are famous for no other reason than their family name. The Kennedy’s, the Bush’s, the Kardashians,’ and other families have a national importance that has outlasted the people who made the name famous in the first place. If you look on a local level, I am sure you can think of other families in your area whose name carries a weight that maybe it shouldn’t because the family did something great in the past.
In Biblical times, the family name was more important than it is now. Think of the genealogies in Matthew and Luke tracing Jesus’ lineage back to Abraham (Matthew) or Adam (Luke). Think of the division of Israel into tribes based on which son of Israel they were descended from. Your lineage could determine your position in life, what types of jobs you could have, where you lived, and many other facets of your life.
In today’s reading, we see the family of Jesus wanting to take him into their custody because they believed that he "had lost his mind” (Mark 3:21) and the religious leaders said that “He is possessed by Beelzebul,” and, “He casts out demons through the ruler of demons.” (Mark 3:22). So, when his family came to take possession of him and he was told that they were waiting outside, Jesus’ response was to ask the rhetorical question: “Who is my mother? Who is my family?” He then responded to the question with “This is my family! Anyone who does the will of God, that person is my sister, my brother, my mother.” (Mark 3:33-35)
In this passage, Jesus is laying out the idea of what we now call “the chosen family.” It is a family, not of blood or a legality such as adoption (hereafter termed “biological family” for convenience’s sake), but of a bond that exists due to common beliefs or characteristics. If you think about it, most people form chosen families. Some arise from necessity because people have been rejected by their biological families. Others arise because people have beliefs that cause them to drift from their biological family, so they seek out a family that shares these beliefs. Or a chosen family may form because people are far away from home and need a support system around them.
For those of us in the queer community, the chosen family is all too often formed because of the first reason given above: rejection by the biological family. All too often, our families reject us because they see us as “making a choice” that they disagree with. Or maybe they don’t understand or respect our gender identity, name, or some other aspect of our lives that is not “normal”. So we seek out others like us, people who can understand the particular struggles we face, the issues that society presents us with, or can commiserate with us when we face the prejudices that all too often face us when we exist in the world as who we truly are rather than as the world wishes us to be.
As we see in this passage, Jesus is explicitly embracing the idea that there exists the idea of a familial bond that goes beyond the bond of blood. He embraces the idea that working together to fulfill the will of God can be a bond that forms a family. These bonds of love and belief need to be understood through the lens of the special love Jesus had for those who were marginalized or outcast. Throughout the Gospels, we see Jesus taking special care for people who the society of the time had rejected: lepers, Samaritans, prostitutes, and tax collectors to name a few. Jesus was explicit in claiming these people as a part of the Kindom of God: a kindom not of power, but of Love.
God’s Love is a notion that is central to the Bible. In the Gospels, Jesus talks of how God’s love is meant to encompass all people, regardless of their societal status. They embrace and protect those who were cast out of society. This call for a love that embraces all people regardless of what society says was, quite probably, one of Jesus’ most radical teachings.
In many ways, this sort of love asks us to go against our nature as human beings. If you think about it, because we are social animals, we form groups and tend to see the world as “us vs. them.” We see those outside our group as a threat to us, which may or may not be true. The more deeply we hold to the beliefs that bind our group together, the more threatened we will feel by other groups. But if we take Jesus’ call for an all-embracing love into account, we will embrace all people, even those we disagree with or feel threatened by. This doesn’t mean that we have to like them or what they do, but we are called to see them as fellow children of God and to love and respect them as such.
Years ago, I read a book called Catholic & Christian by Peter Kreeft. In it, he talks about how there are three Greek words for love in the Bible: eros, philea, and agape. (I have since discovered there is a fourth: storge.) I want to focus on agape. Peter Kreeft defined agape as a perfect, self-giving love. Agape does not depend on sentiment or how we feel at the time. It is a love that seeks to help others, that sees that others have worth simply because they are, that does not depend on how we are feeling at the moment. It is not a warm blanket that we can wrap ourselves in. It is not that fuzzy feeling you get when you see someone attractive. It is love in action. It is love that gives because it can, not because a reward is being sought. It can be small and seemingly insignificant, or it can be large and world changing.
Agape is often the cement that holds a chosen family together. We love and support each other, not because we have to, but because we choose to love and support each other. We have all been through similar experiences of having to reconcile who we are with who the world tells us we should be. We have all experienced the rejection (or fear of rejection) that comes along with the journey of self-discovery that we embark on so that we can live our lives as our authentic selves. While the particulars of our situations are different, the broad strokes are similar enough for all of us to be bound together in bonds of love and support.
The bonds that form a chosen family go beyond just similar beliefs and experiences. They can also include a shared interest. In the show Pose and the documentary Paris is Burning, we see how important chosen family could be to people who were not only not only gay/lesbian and/or transgender, but also Black or Latinx. In the ballroom culture, Houses had a parent who would serve as protectors of and mentors for young members of the House who had no other family. These families were born of necessity due to society rejecting people who transgressed societal norms. Within both these Houses and the underground ball culture, people were free to be themselves in a place of safety and support.
While the chosen family is of particular importance to the queer community, it has spread to the wider world. One example is “Friends-giving,” when people celebrate Thanksgiving, not with their biological family, but with friends who they feel particularly close to. In other words, this is another form of a chosen family. If you look at many teen dramas, they also have some form of chosen family taken place. For example, in Dawson’s Creek, not only is there the wider chosen family of the entire group of friends, but Jen, Grams, and Jack form their own chosen family after Jack is rejected by his father after coming out. Even though Jack and his father eventually reconcile, the bonds he forms with Jen and Grams are the strongest and most durable in his life, to the point where he calls Jen his “soulmate” in the series finale.
The most important part about a chosen family is that it is “chosen” rather than being assigned to us. It is not a family we have out of obligation, but one we pick for ourselves and is based on bonds of love and affection. With our biological families, we often feel obligated to support each other because that is what we are “supposed to do” rather than because we want to. With a chosen family, on the other hand, we have people around us who we have made the explicit choice to make a part of our lives. These sorts of chosen bonds can be some of the strongest bonds that exist because they are based on a conscious decision rather than being forced on us.
When I was growing up, I was part of a cult called the Mother of God Community. Being a part of this Community was an integral part of who I was, and my entire identity was centered around it. Any other aspect of my life, including being a part of the Catholic Church, was subordinated to my identity as a member of the Community. When the Community came crashing down in the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, it caused me to have an identity crisis because I had never developed a sense of self that did not depend on the Community. Subsequently, I latched onto a couple of other groups to substitute for the Community as a part of my identity. Eventually, I realized that these groups were no better for me than the Community had been.
After college, when I realized that I was queer, I was thrown into another identity crisis. The religious beliefs I had grown up with conflicted with this part of me that I had tried to deny or get rid of, but eventually had to accept lest I risk causing myself more damage than I had already done. In the end, I ended up leaving the Catholic Church because I needed to find out who I was apart from any group. A few years later, after I had discovered an identity that did not depend on someone else (I was 36 at this point), I decided to find a church that was affirming. And so, I found my current church, Christ the Servant Lutheran Church in Gaithersburg, MD.
In this church, I found a chosen family that was truly healthy and good for all. We are bound together by the bonds of love for each other and the community around us, “regardless of sex, race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, physical and mental ability, age, or anything else that too often divides us.” (
http://www.ctslutheranelca.org/about/) Because the church accepted me and allowed me to be who I am without judgment, I was, for the first time, able to connect with the local queer community and meet more people to be a part of my chosen family.
I say this not to boost myself or my church, but to illustrate the complete and utter necessity of familial bonds, even if they are not bonds of blood or legality. Over the last several years, there have been numerous young members of the queer community who have been rejected by their family and then committed suicide because they felt alone and isolated. When someone does not have other strong bonds and their biological family rejects them, they are much more likely to commit suicide. With the advent of social media and the greater interconnectedness that accompanies it, the percentage of queer teens who commit suicide has trended slightly downward because there has been more acceptance, but the rate of queer youth committing suicide (or contemplating it) is still well above that of non-queer youth. (
https://www.webmd.com/sex-relationships/news/20200210/fewer-lgbt-teens-plagued-by-suicidal-thoughts-but-rates-still-high#1)
As a church, we are called to meet and embrace those who are in the margins because that is where God is in a special way. There’s a song from the Broadway play Dear Evan Hansen which says “There’s a place where you don’t have to feel unknown and every time you call out, you’re a little less alone. If you only say the word, from across the silence, your voice is heard.” And that, my dearest siblings, describes a church like nothing else does, or rather, a church as it should be. The form of the church, if you will. It is a place where you don’t have to feel alone because you are in community with people. A place where you don’t have to feel unknown, because you are known by God and by the people of your church. A place where you can cry out and be heard. A place where you can ask for help and it will be given or ask for support and know it is there without question. A church should be a shelter for those who need rest and protection. A place where we can come and bask in the glorious love and support of those around us. A place where we can simply be. That is what the church is called to be. A church is another form of a chosen family.
In the Bible, Jesus calls us to love each other and to care for each other, regardless of whether or not we are related by blood (see the Parable of the Good Samaritan). Having a chosen family is just one way we can do that. Through this family, we can support each other, cheer each other on, uplift those who need to be uplifted, and have a connection outside ourselves that is based on love, not obligation.