Your Queer People Will Be My Queer People

MCCNY
June 9, 2024

Then he went home; and the crowd came together again, so that they could not even eat. When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’ And the scribes who came down from Jerusalem said, ‘He has Beelzebul, and by the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.’ And he called them to him, and spoke to them in parables, ‘How can Satan cast out Satan? If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand. And if Satan has risen up against himself and is divided, he cannot stand, but his end has come. But no one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered. ‘Truly I tell you, people will be forgiven for their sins and whatever blasphemies they utter; but whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin’— for they had said, ‘He has an unclean spirit.’Then his mother and his brothers came; and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. A crowd was sitting around him; and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers and sisters* are outside, asking for you.’ And he replied, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’

I’m thinking about all the time stamps today for these texts, about Easter which just ended and is on some basic level about what is eternal, and Pentecost which just happened and which is how most of Christendom will count the next 20 or so weeks until Advent and is maybe essentially about what drives us. I’m thinking about Pride, of course, in the dozens of ways it’s relevant to Jesus’ queerness generally and especially maybe to a story of Jesus determining who his family is and is not. Also, Mother’s Day just happened, I think, and I think Father’s Day is coming right up, and these can be awful for some of us because our folks have died, or because we aren’t sure they love us or are proud of us, or both.

I’m thinking about this gospel passage being, as many gospel passage are, a kind of summary, a haiku of all the gospels, a gospel fractal that includes rejection and compulsory social norms that reify dominance, and Jesus interrupting that and inverting it and calling us to do the same. I think this passage contains the questions folks keep asking here, Who was Jesus? Why did he die? What should I do? Rev. Pat says, What’s the good news? I usually translate that as something like, What does any of this have to do with me?

What does it have to do with us, with our community, whether that’s New York City or south central Pennsylvania, whether it’s queer or otherwise? I’m thinking about MCCNY and some of our other churches, where we’re pretty good about making space for political and moral and spiritual differences. What does a gospel haiku mean for a space where we come together as people influenced by Buddhism and Wicca, as traditional Christians and atheists and humanists and Jews, across the partisan spectrum, across social norms? Family figures prominently this morning, and I’m thinking about what family means here, certainly – good grief, it’s such a core question for so many of us – but what does the will of God mean in a place like us? Is there some fundamental meaning that endures for all of us (and what is it?), or does God’s will become relative and meaningless without the unwavering, uncompromising details?

I’m thinking about how we queer-police and trans-police ourselves internally. How we look at each other and impose our own definitions and put bouncers at our doors. This is a super old example, but I still think sometimes about Maria Maggenti, who directed The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls In Love a hundred years ago, about the uproar over whether she could call herself a lesbian since she was in a relationship with a man, or whether she had to say she was straight or bi. We’re not going to vote, by the way, so put your hands down. There is an old old ongoing slow boil about who can identify as trans – whether hormone treatment and surgery is necessary – and this beautiful, big-umbrella word is being declined by tons of young non-binary and genderqueer folks. I think about the tension over words like dyke and queer and how folks who have been hurt by them sometimes want to keep any of us from using them for ourselves. That’s a tricky thing. How do I respect the pain of folks who were stabbed when I love to play with those knives?

Of course all of this keeps shifting and sliding. Really, all of it. Pretending that Pentecost or salvation or family or queer or knife always means the same thing is like acting as if marriage means one thing, as though there is a biblical model for marriage, as if it is between one man and one woman. As if, say, Jacob and Solomon were monogamous, for example, just off the top of my head. We’ll get to David and Jonathan in a minute. We’ll get to Ruth and Naomi in a minute.

Part of this is about whether things have to mean the same thing to everyone. About how words and principles, like “lesbian” or “resurrection,” that mean something very important, very dear, to some of us can mean something completely different and irreconcilable to someone else without feeling like we’ve lost an argument we’re trying to win. And part of it is about when do we need to win? Why do we? When and why is it truly imperative to argue and vanquish: what can we live and let live with, agree to disagree about, and what we need to proselytize on, convert, persuade, hold others accountable to? What can we just reject with a shrug, a laugh, a raised eyebrow, and what do we call Satan and try to lock up?

Everything, in my opinion, all of it is subject to these questions, including what folks call scripture. We know the canon isn’t consistent. I know you know this, in part because I go on about it every time I’m here or anywhere talking about the bible ever. Exodus says free your slaves in the seventh year, and send them out as they came to you: with nothing if they had nothing. Deuteronomy says do not send them away empty like a jerk; give them liberally from your flock and your threshing floor and your winepress, for pete’s sake. Give them a chance to succeed and not be forced to return to servitude; give them the means to get started; remember that you were once slaves in Egypt. Compare Isaiah and Joel on whether we should have plows or swords. Read how God said kill your kid and then said I never any such thing told you to kill your kid or even thought it. Look at the differences between what Ruth, Psalms, Proverbs, Ezekiel, Isaiah, or Jeremiah say about how to treat foreigners.

Queers didn’t invent infighting, contrary to, I don’t know, everyone. Christianity didn’t invent religious inflexibility, though it has probably taken it to a new level. Jesus was part of an existing long rich history of counter-hegemonic reading and interpreting. He knew the law and prophets, and of course we know he tended to interpret them more or less what we call progressively, he was maybe a hard left, maybe he was a left bottom soft dom. We’re pretty sure he legit broke rules about fasting, ritual washing, plucking and other sabbath healing. We know for real he befriended tax collectors and sexual suspects and poor and sick people and also dead people and touched them. I like to think of him as a rule-breaker, a rabble rouser, a social activist, though not everyone does. Just as importantly, I think of him as a loser, a nobody. Not a king. Not a god. (Here I feel like I should add that the views and opinions expressed in this program are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of any entities I represent. Grin.) I don’t mean to upset anyone; I know this isn’t the typical picture, and it’s important to think about how we tend to align with empire. We tend to side with power, which is very much under scrutiny in today’s passage. I think of him as a literal peasant whose mother got pregnant with him outside of marriage, maybe raped, maybe raped by a soldier. I think of him like Matthew describes his lineage: through Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba although Matthew can’t bring itself to say her name. I think of Jesus as a product, literally and metaphorically, of women who were foreigners, outsiders, women associated with sexual deviance: incest, prostitution, adultery, arguably at least one lesbian.

I don’t know if Ruth was queer; I don’t think I care. I’m with Nancy Wilson, though, why not? Why do we have to do all the work all the time? Prove she wasn’t. Ruth probably didn’t exist outside of this book-length parable, anyway. I do know the words attributed to her have been described as “one of the greatest pledges of love that has ever been made by one human being to another,” and one of the most popular biblical quotes to be read at straight weddings. Hahahahaha. One of Rev. Pat’s favorite Pride month jokes is about how many straight couples are promising to love each other like lesbians.

As much as I’m thinking, pleasantly, about her intimate relationships with other women, though, I’m thinking about her other queer status as an outsider. Moabites were detested and despised people by ancient Israelite, who called them idol worshippers and made up incest stories about them. The book of Ruth might be a kind of Hatfield/McCoy story, or Montague/Capulet, which I’m very up for. It’s definitely probably an extended Good Samaritan parable about chesed, unfailing love. About, “but who is my neighbor?” The only time “love” is mentioned in the book of Ruth it refers to Ruth’s love for Naomi. Ruth had no responsibility or obligation to Naomi and, in many ways, lots of reasons for resentment and bitterness, and yet she leaves her home for Naomi, not unlike what wives do in the bible; and she obeys Naomi’s instructions, like good wives in Proverbs do; and she gives Naomi a son, you know, like women give their husbands sons. Look how I’m doing the work after all! Ruth and Naomi were dykes; prove me wrong.

I’m thinking about another layer to this, whether or not they were ancient Israelite-Moabite enemies, and whether or not Ruth and Naomi were “touching tofu,” as our Singaporean friend, Mun, used to euphemistically call lesbian sex, I think with distaste. (He was the kind of gay man who didn’t like to even imagine vulvas, bless his heart.) This other layer is one of my favorite things about most of the homo bible characters: and it’s about how so many of them, maybe all of them? were family to each other, and often in deep and traditional and social-religious ways. Jonathan and David didn’t just choose each other to the shame of his mother’s nakedness, as magnificent as that is, they also covenanted to care for and raise one another’s children after death. Ruth left her own home and her so-called own people to follow Naomi and assume all of hers; to go and lodge and die and be buried where Naomi does. The Roman centurian begs for the life of his, what, manservant in the way that only fathers and sons-in-law and other family in the bibles ask for healing for their kin. I think maybe the first healing story in the gospels is of Peter’s mother-in-law.

Whether or not they were queer, they were queer, you know? Whether or not it was a sexual thing, which I assume that it was in all cases unless demonstrated otherwise with footnotes, who they were and what they did was regardless a thing that queerness and other sexual inversion brings to the table: which is re-creating and inverting and counter-forging things that are assigned and patrolled: marriage, love, household, kin, community. Justness. Fairness. Whether we’re talking about topping and bottoming or about division of household and emotional labor. Whether we’re talking about legal marriage access or about nursing a generation of our brothers through the early AIDS epidemic. Whether we’re discovering the delightful sexual side effects of VHS head cleaner or deciding who will be our emergency contact – based less on who was at grandma’s funeral and more on who has our 6 again and again, even when they think we maybe could have made better choices. Hypothetically speaking, asking for a friend.

Jesus is so queer, in so many ways, whether or not he was bedding disciples. (Happy Pride, though.) He counter-interpreted so much, so often, and in the favor of social and political nobodies, that it left him estranged from most or all pre-existing social and other structures of support. It left him with no established home to call home. He is coming “home” literally and metaphorically from a ministry on the edges and the border regions. And when he comes “home,” his family calls him insane and tries to take hold of him, the same verb used for his later arrest and John the Baptizer’s. No wonder he says, “Mother sisters brothers? I don’t know her.” No wonder he says he’s here to set kids against parents and in-laws against each other. No wonder he thinks disciples should leave behind their dad’s businesses and funerals. One of the things I love about Mark is how it’s free of most embellishments. This is the first time we are meeting the Fockers, since this gospel has no hagiographic nativity or supernatural infancy, and we can only assume that Mary is leading the pack of family jackals here, ready to lock him up for his own good.

When the authorities call him evil and demonic, in league with satan, you probably recognize that as a page from the modern playbook, too, for isolating and discrediting people across the social and political spectrum. At Lambda Legal, attorney David Buckle (rest in power; may his memory be for a blessing) David was the one who summarized to me the hegemonic framework against us that rested on law, traditional church, and the American Psychological Association’s DSM as “immoral, illegal, insane.”

And I’m thinking about all of these questions we come together around in harmony and dissonance to various scale. Pride committees that make rules about chaps and body paint, and using words like “family-friendly” instead of kid-friendly, and subtly but still maybe deliberately and narrowly defining what a family is, and what is friendly for other people’s kids. Questions in MCC about who can be baptized, distinctions between members and friends based on what answers give about who was Jesus, why did he die, what should I do? Massive, infrastructural, Sanhedrin- and Rome-sized questions about racism and misogy and other poisonous values sewn so deeply into our social and political fabrics that the loom itself is rotten. Questions about Israel and Hamas and Palestinians, about rape and genocide, about asylum-seekers at the Mexican border.

In the end, these questions and so many questions boil down for this Jesus to who is my mother and sister and brothers, which I’ll come back to in a minute.

First, though, I think they come down a little bit to Who is my God. What is doing the will of God? What do I have to do to be called insane by family and called satanic by the church and state, but the way Jesus is in the passage this morning. I mean, what is queer as opposed to just selfish? What’s righteous and not self-righteous? What really is complicated and not a dodge? I think we’re supposed to ask ourselves these questions. What is the side of the angels? What is satan, or insanity, or both?

And I think the answer is probably another question, and not a perfect, static question. I think finding the side of Right is something along the lines of asking, Who is being starved to death? Who is being denied humanitarian aid? What is an acceptable number of dead children? Finding God’s will is somewhere in the neighborhood of asking, Who has the least power and nothing to offer in return? Whose Will will leave you with no established home to call home? And I think maybe, maybe every time, the will of God is less about winning and more about who we choose to lose with.

Because the questions of God’s will boil down to who is my mother and sister and brothers. Mark’s Jesus doesn’t say just, Do the will of God. Mark’s Jesus says, My mother and brother and sisters do God’s will. Mark’s queer Jesus is saying that family is a political construct. Family is a political construct, then and now. Queer righteous Jesus reclaims family, declares that family is not in any way part of the system of empire, that family is solely who you align yourself with. In every case both then and now. And Jesus’s family puts its collective and mortal bodies in the path of empire and breaks the cogs of the military machine.

I say stuff like this every time I’m here as much for myself as anyone else. I worry that I don’t but my bones in the cogs of the machine enough. I worry that I don’t risk enough. I worry that, as much as I’m alienating everyone, I’m not alienating enough of the empire and its systems. I worry that I’m not endangering my home the way I should. I think Jesus said this with his history mouth, and I think he meant it. And I think its true and righteous. And if we’re very comfortable and very safe, we may not be doing it right.

We need to ask who is being starved to death. We need to ask what are and how do we leverage Biden to use “every nonmilitary tool at [our] disposal to pressure both Hamas and Israel to pursue an immediate ceasefire, the full release of all hostages, and whatever humanitarian assistance is now needed”? (Liz Theoharis, Kairos Center at Union). We need to ask, I think, who will I lose with today? How shall I take up my cross, come and die?

It’s never really a feel-good message from Jesus about what to do. If who he is and why he died feels good, we might be doing it wrong. But if it helps, and I think it does, who he is and why he died feels queer. Happy Pride! Peace.