In today's Gospel the family hears that Jesus, now grown, is preaching like a crazy man, casting out demons and hanging out with riff-raff. The religious authorities tell them that Jesus is “teched” (as we would say in Alabama), or as polite Episcopalians in New Jersey might put it, 'he has had a momentary lapse of reality.” Mary and his brothers come to restrain him; and once outside the place where he is preaching they send someone to tell him to come home to bring some peace to their family. Jesus replies to their messenger, “My mother!? My brothers!? Who are my mother and my brothers?” My mother and my brothers – my family – are not family by blood, but by intention. (Take that, Mama!)
Many LGBTQ folks have experienced very bad treatment from our biological parents. We can readily understand Jesus' sternness. LGBTQ folks own all trademarks and copyrights on the concept “Families of Intention.” For many years one of the most popular songs in gay social venues was “We are family!” We know full well that we did not choose our biological families, but we can and must choose as family those who whom we respect and those who treat us with respect.
That's why St. George's has been a special place for several decades. People have come here not to be battered but to be blessed. And we can never bless others without also blessing ourselves. I rejoice in your pioneering spirit of the Gospel. This place is holy.
What you have been doing for decades is now central to the policy of The Episcopal Church. I hope you experience joy in that, pride in that. If we can make the Episcopal Church safe for sinners, we'll pack all our congregations.
Who would have imagined 30 years ago that the staid, traditional Episcopal Church would take to the cutting edge in bringing news genuinely good for absolutely everybody, even with most of the rest of the Anglican Communion furious and hatching all sorts of plots to punish us and mock us. Their rebuke is often ludicrous.
The Archbishop of Canterbury would not allow our primate, Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori, to wear her miter when she preached at Southwark Cathedral during the last Lambeth Conference. She honored his request -- by walking behind her miter toted on a lovely Episcopal cushion by one of the servers in the procession.
Once the Archbishop of Uganda lost his cool and threw down his manuscript when he excoriated me from the porch of his palace in front of all the bishops of the Sudan and Uganda. I fantasized walking in the dark the several miles back to the hotel alone knowing how desperate they would be to find me. “That's too much fun to be of God,” I reasoned, and thus stood calmly through his fulminations.
The Primate of Nigeria, Archbishop Peter Akinola, reacted with similar disdain after his enthronement at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York. I had been a reader. Ernest and I entered the luncheon at the same time as the Archbishop and his wife, so I introduced Ernest as my husband to them. He visibly jumped back and fled. He later bragged about his rejection of us to a reporter from the New York Times.
Jesus advises us on such occasions to “Rejoice and be exceedingly glad, for so that rejected those who were before you.”
Many close observers of Episcopal politics predict, whatever their own point of view, that one month from now the General Convention of the Episcopal Church will pass trial rites of blessings (and where secular jurisdiction permits, marriages) of same-gendered persons. Hundreds of persons, recruited from friends and foes alike, in all 113 Episcopal dioceses have contributed to the materials being brought to Convention for action. People all over the world are watching. Many in other denominations, indeed in other religions, hope that this near the finish line, The Episcopal Church will boldly step across into God's welcoming embrace.
As you may have noticed, I am a church politician. I am not a priest. The first 20 of my 40 years of lay ministry would have been impossible had I sworn to obey a bishop. I do not see “church politician” as dirty term, though to tell the truth, sometimes it's a bit like being a “flasher for Jesus.”
Yet our political goals in the church do not and should not define everything we are as people of faith. In today's lesson from Hebrew scriptures, the Israelites are anxious to have a king and go Establishment. They are tired of being tribal. (Some of us can understand that quite well.) They are tired of being looked down upon by the high and mighty. Samuel warns the Israelites that even though God will grant their requests to have a king, they will be in for some great disappointment. He describes in detail how their sons and their daughters will forfeit much individual freedom to become the king's minions.
St. Teresa of Avila said, “Answered prayers cause more tears than those that remain unanswered.” Be careful what you ask for....
Let me give a personal example. Ernest and I married on February 2, 1974. Only three were present, the two of us and the Holy Spirit. We used the old Prayer Book, 1928 because that was the only Prayer Book available 38 years ago. As are many of you here, we are still nourished and disciplined by the fierce pledges that we made, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health....
So I am all for Marriage Equality, but I have discovered that marriage is not, and should not be, the be-all and end-all of my relationship with Ernest. I'm a slow learner and it took me a long time to understand that:
More than 25 years into our marriage someone asked Ernest and me who Kim Byham is, and I explained, "Kim Byham is my best friend." Later when we were alone, Ernest said, "I know you are close to Kim and I rejoice in that. But I am surprised that I have never heard you name me as your best friend. You are my best friend."
There was no meanness, no 'gotcha' in his countenance, just gentle, loving vulnerability.
I could say nothing for a long time, and when I did, I acknowledged that I had never thought of him as my best friend, that it was not just a mistake in my choice of words.
Over the next few months I concluded that I was valuing marriage too much if I let being a husband so absorb me that I could not even recognized Ernest as my best friend. He had indeed always treated me as his best friend without stopping for a moment in being my husband.
I'm still working on the challenge, and have been much blessed by it. One minor example. Ernest loves Japanese food. It's never been at the top of my list, yet for several years now, it has been a great pleasure to me to be the one to choose a fine Japanese restaurant when it is my turn to choose where we will eat out. Again and again with joy I watch him attack trays of raw fish with a twinkle in his eyes, especially the double portion of eels, his favorite. And he beams when I insist that he eat a huge chunk of my crab cake. And lo and behold, I rarely order tempura anymore, because I have actually grown to like some sushi – well some of it. Most important, I have the great joy of taking my best friend to a place that he will enjoy the most.
Likewise, I don't always find myself siding with Jesus in his sharp dismissal of biological families. (Nor does Jesus always make the point that he does in today's Gospel.) As important as families of intent are, so are families of birth.
The Blessed Virgin Mary is a good friend of mine, and as a good Anglo-Catholic I hang out with her a lot, especially when I have the blues. In preparing for this sermon, I have asked her several times what it felt like to experience her son's dismissal of her in today's gospel story. He completely ignored all she had been for him. She became pregnant out of wedlock for him, and fat chance of persuading any of the religious zealots of her day by saying, “The Holy Spirit did it!” Mary was the first person ever to share the blood of Christ! She loved him dearly.
“Mary,” I have asked her, “what did it feel like to have him go into a snit and seemingly deny that your motherhood counted for anything. “Who are my mothers and my brothers!?”
Mary hasn't answered me yet. The closest I get is her gentle, enigmatic smile and a Beatles' song coming from an apartment down the hall, “Let it be, let it be.”
When I met Ernest, we courted for five months, and after we married, I wrote my parents. They replied with the hardest letter that I have ever received. They knew I was gay. That was not their problem. Ernest's being black was the hard part for them. In their letter they wished us all happiness but asked me not to bring Ernest home with me. They hoped that I would continue to visit, but they did not want to put their friends to the test. They knew that most would continue to love them, but “We're retired and we don't want to find out who won't.”
I showed Ernest the letter. He responded with his own enigmatic smile.
“Well, come on. Let's pack. We can be there in five hours,” I said.
Didn't you read the letter?” he asked.
“Yes, but they won't say that once they meet you. Once Dad sees that you are very gentle and kind like Mother....”
“No, Louie. I am not going, but you are. They have every right to be who they are. You could not love me had they not taught you how, and something in you that is very important to both of us will die if you cut yourself off from them. Besides, I have the best of both worlds: I have nice in-laws and I don't have to spend any time with them.”
I visited them regularly as before. Each time I would tell them the loving things he had said about them. Each time they would send me back with the car loaded with mother's best cakes and various baubles, such as pieces from her silver collection.... At one point she sent her engagement ring for him to make into a pendant.
Even to this day, both of us answer the phone in the same manner. Most friends can't tell which one has answered. Nor could either set of our parents while they were still alive. It often led to light humor.
Six years into our marriage, I picked up the phone. “I'd like to speak to my son, please.”
“But Dad, this is your son.”
“No, Louie. I want to speak to my other son.”
“This one's for you,” I whispered as I handed Ernest the phone.
“We're Christians,” Dad told Ernest, “but we have not behaved like Christians towards you, and we desperately need your forgiveness.”
“That's easy,” Ernest said. “You have it.”
“We want you and Louie to spend the weekend with us.” They arranged for 50 or more of their closest friends to drop by at intervals long enough for each to have a good conversation with us. Later we learned that other friends were disappointed to find they were not part of the inner circle. They wanted to meet Ernest too.
I not only believe in the Holy Spirit: I have seen the Holy Spirit happen.
Three years later mother and dad died, he seven months after she did. Knowing that I might not be with him when the end came, I said to him – forgive me, LGBTQ friends, this is not politically correct, it sounds like apologizing for who I am – I am trying to be honest with you the way I try to be honest with God, “Dad, I know that I have not been the son that you wanted, but I love you very much.”
He was down to 90 pounds He struggled to sit up and would not let me help him. He got eyeball to eyeball and said, “Louie, you have never been more wrong. You are the son that I wanted, and I love you very much.”
I realize that some of you may not have had a father that loved you like that. But let me tell you about my other father, because he's your father too. The God who made heaven and earth made you. You are the daughter God wants. You are the son God wants. Let your pride be in God's absolute love of you. Amen.
© 2012 Dr. Louie Crew
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