You know, I took a post-Easter vacation a few weeks ago, and I spent
some of it back in Spokane, Washington, celebrating the 20th
anniversary of the first congregation I pastored—it was good seeing so
many of those folks, both people connected with the congregation, as
well as others that I had come to know in the general Spokane
community. It was like coming home again, in a way—it was familiar and
good to be with people that you know and love, much like it is good to be
here—it felt good to be back in the family that was and is Emmanuel. But
the earlier part of my vacation I also spent with family, though it was my
family connected to me by blood, by history, by biology. And it was good
to be there as well, seeing my sister and my mother—and for the first
time, really being able to spend some time with my 3-year old nephew,
Drake, whom I hadn’t really spent any real amount of time with. First of
all, many of you already know that I don’t have a very close-knit family
beyond my immediate family, so it was odd that as I spent the day with
him, with Drake, trying to catch my breath between running after him,
that I kept thinking that a little bit of me runs in and through him, in this
little boy, that through his blood, our blood his genes, my genes, we are
connected to a long line of people, some whom I have known and loved,
but most of whom lived hundreds of years ago, people that I wouldn’t
recognize if I passed them in the street. In Drake’s blood, this little boy
carries the genetic story of my family, the story of my deceased father,
my mother, my sister, aunts and uncles—you know, they are within us,
our families, in more ways than just as memories: they are us—we are
the accumulation of all their love-making, oddly enough, tracing back
hundreds of years ago.
And it was a surprise to me that I was so moved by this—maybe you’ve
had that kind of experience already but I never had, at least not until a
few weeks ago. Years and years ago, like some 13 years ago, when I
came out to my mother, I remember her being fairly distraught, and one
of the first things she said to me, amidst the tears, was that I was that last
of male McLemore’s—that there would be no more male McLemore’s
because I was gay! Now, I remember just rolling my eyes, and just
thinking, “whatever” but I think I understand it more, as I have grown a
little older—I’m a little less dismissive of feelings now, I think. I’ve actually
been exploring the possibility of co-parenting with a lesbian couple in
Dallas, and I’ve been surprised by my own desire for this child to have
my genes, that this child have some sort of biological relationship to me.
That surprised me—a lot, actually—and when this couple that I’ve been
talking to said that they wanted the child we might be co-parenting to
have my last name—I just lost it—and then when my mom called a few
days later, out of the blue, whom I told about my discussions with this
couple, when she called asking what my child’s last name would be—and
when I told her, well, you would have thought I had handed her a million
dollars—in the end, Mom always gets her way.
The ironic part of being back here on Family Day, and sharing these
stories with you is that I preached on this passage a few years ago on
Family Day, though from a different Gospel, and I remember saying to
many of you that the great thing about following this Jesus of Nazareth is
that Jesus keeps expanding the family—I mean, if you look at this
passage, you see Jesus opening up the boundaries of family beyond
blood, beyond the family that we grew up in or that we came from,
beyond genetics or history. In this passage, the disciples tell Jesus that
his family wants his attention, that his brothers and sisters want have
come to see him—this version omits the sisters, but the Gospels clearly
indicate that Jesus had brothers and sisters. Now, just as an aside, can
you imagine having the Savior of the world as a brother? Talk about
living in the shadow of your oldest brother. I can just see some jealous
sister or brother saying, “Mom, you just think Jesus walks on water!” OK,
bad joke, but back to that old sermon I preached a few years ago: In that
sermon, I also pointed out that Jesus was not rejecting his biological
family in this moment—he wasn’t trying to be the distancing son, there
was no Freudian drama going on here. No, I think he was just reminding
the people around him that the realm of God, the kingdom of God
expands the notion of family beyond biology—all of sudden, choice
comes into the mix. The choice is whether to be obedient to this Christ in
living out the life of love that he has asked us to live. It is true: love
makes a family, not biology, at least according to this passage.
I actually saw that reality lived out awhile back, at a funeral I did. A fairly
young man had died at his family’s home in a different city than Dallas,
and yet his family wanted the funeral to be in Dallas where he had lived
for 20 years before he had to come home to die. This family had always
embraced him as a gay man and over the years they had come to
embrace his many friends, men and women alike. When his friends and I
did the funeral planning, which the family had authorized his friends to
do, 10 folks showed up to plan it—my first “funeral by committee!” And
when the day of the funeral came, I was so struck by how his biological
family had really come to see his friends as their own family, because
they knew how much they loved their son, their brother, their nephew. I
introduced myself to the family for the first time on the day of the
funeral—and the mother said to me, surrounded by these gay men and
straight women—“these are all my family too!” her hands open to the
people surrounding her. As people came up to speak about his life in
the memorial service during the time of remembrance, they thanked the
biological family for welcoming them as family, and allowing them to take
care of their loved one, this man who was loved dearly by those
connected to him blood and those connected to him by choice. I kept
thinking that this is the way family should be—that the whole point of
family is that you keep including more and more people into it and the
only real criteria for admission into any kind of family should be love.
That’s real family—that the kind of family Christ was talking about.
And yet the pull of biology has haunted me in a way that it didn’t a few
years ago. I think it I was a little cavalier in the way I preached that
sermon—and though I wouldn’t take back anything I preached a few
years because, well, I still believe its true—I still think Jesus is opening up
the boundaries of family and the story I just told showed that to me once
again. But now, but now, I think I understand the connection people
share through blood in a way I didn’t before. I understand own my
mother’s loyalty to her brothers and sisters, though she is only really
close to one of them—the others barely speak to her or to each other. I
mean, I have friends I would die for, but I would probably barely
recognize a few of my uncles at this point. But I understand it more, after
being with my nephew Drake, of how blood can connect us with people
we’re not sure we even really care about, in odd and surprising ways.
So, if the new family that Jesus is continuing to create is a mixture of
blood and choice, of genes and preference, then what it is that Christ
wants this new type of family to be? I mean, if you have the pull of
biology and the reality of choice competing in this new vision of family
that Jesus seems to be hinting at, what can we really learn about family
that’s gonna to work in both our biological families and in our families of
choice? A couple of things seem to be apparent in our text for this
evening. One thing for sure is that unlike a lot of the families we grew up
in, the family that Jesus is creating in and with us, we know that this new
type of family doesn’t do secrets—there aren’t any family secrets
everyone is spending painful amounts of time covering up. Jesus says
this right before his confrontation with his biological family, “For nothing
is hidden that will not become known and come to light” and before that
he reminds his ancient listeners that no one turns on a lamp, and then
covers it up with a black cloth, or turns on a lamp and then puts it into a
closet. If someone turns on a lamp, its meant to light up the room, not
the closet. Likewise, the light we have been given as disciples of Christ
is meant to throw open the secret doors—we can’t live our lives in
secrets if we’re going to be disciples of Jesus. To be a part of the family
that Christ is building in this world means that if you’ve been given light, if
you’ve been given the light of God’s presence in your life, you can’t
suffer through the secrets for too long! The Gospel lights up a room, it
lights up our hearts and it won’t stand for us living lives of secrecy. You
know, its like the moment you fall in love—you don’t want to keep it a
secret! You want to yell it out from the rooftops!
And so this commitment to living our lives in the light, in a place where
there are no secrets, this is a challenge for both our biological families
and our families of choice. In our biological families it means that we can’
t stomach living in the lies anymore and that the culture of secrecy that
has encased many of our families will not work for us, not as disciples of
Jesus. It means telling the truth, if not in our words, then at least in the
way we live our lives. What will be hidden be uncovered, so says Jesus.
And we know that and it means that the Gospels requires more of us
than a capitulation, a resignation to the family lies—about ourselves,
about our other family members, all of it. Now, I don’t mean we need to
do Jerry Springer to bring out the family secrets, but I do mean that
being a disciple of Jesus means that we won’t pretend to live in a world
where our families are perfect, because we know that’s not true about
ourselves or the people that we love. And in our families of choice, it
means that we live in the light as well, that we know that our friends who
are our family deserve the truth from us, all of the truths that we know we
owe our friends. There can even be family secrets amongst friends, if
they are indeed are our family of choice, but if we are disciples of Jesus,
we must live in the light with them as well, and tell them the truth about
ourselves, truths that are even hard for us to utter.
And yet another part of being part of Christ’s expanding family is that we
know that truth that real families aren’t accidental, not really. I think of
my own extended biological family—we have the same blood running
through us, and yet we really don’t know each other—they’re almost
strangers to me. And that is simply because we both did not work on
being family to each other. I mean, anyone who has ever raised a family
knows that a family, a real, connected, strong family is no accident—
actually, its hard work. And Jesus seems to hint at something like this
when he tells his 1st century listeners to pay attention to how we listen,
to attend to all that worth attending around you—“being my disciple is
not easy, being a part of my family means hard work,“ he seems to be
saying. And the reward of paying attention is more of a good thing,
more family, more life—to those how have, more will be given. Family is
hard work, biological or otherwise, and that goes for the eternal family
that Christ is building in our midst. I think I got that truth, when I had a
chance to see my sister taking care of Drake a few weeks ago—you
could see how tired she was, because being a mother really is hard
work, and yet, still, it is worth the effort, this time she is spending on
being a good mother, and it is worth our effort to work hard at being a
good family member to our families of biology and choice. And certainly it
worth the effort to keep of including and including more people into our
families because we then know our families are becoming more and
more like’s Christ’s own ever expanding family thousands of years ago.
Families matter, that is what our fundamentalists brothers and sisters are
always telling us, and yet in many ways that haven’t a clue of what they
are really talking about. I mean, they are right—families really do matter,
but not just families connected to us by biology. No, in Jesus eyes our
biological families matter because in their better moments, they are like
the realm of God that is in-breaking into the world, which is like that ever
expanding family that I witnessed at that funeral the other day. And once
more, our biological families matter because they are a starting point, a
place of beginning, not an ending point, for the families we create in our
lives, biological and otherwise. But the kinds of families Christ asks us to
build in our lives really are about the truth, about the truth we must tell
each other, even the difficult truths, and they are hard work because
these families are no accident, they are no simple accident of biology.
Real families, biological and otherwise, demand our attention, and that
means we must pay attention to our 3 year nephews as well as our dear
friends. The poet Marge Piercy, in her poem, The Art of Blessing the
Day, says “attention is love, what we must give children, mothers,
fathers, pets, our friends, the news, the woes of others.” And if we want
to resurrect our families, it means that we must attend to them, to do the
hard work of sharing our truth with our families, and to pay attention to all
of our families, in ways that we perhaps have never done. And the
amazing thing is that if we do this, if we lives full of light and truth, with no
hidden secrets, and we pay attention to our families, both to our families
of choice and to our families of origin, we will find ourselves closer and
closer to the ever expanding realm of God. Amen.
