We are fambly

Mark 3: 20-35
New Ark United Church of Christ, Newark, DE
June 9, 2024

Photo of a game of Jenga in progress with several pieces removed. A child with brown hair, wearing a red t-shirt, is in the background, out of focus, with a row of Jenga blocks in the table in front of them.

To one degree or another, I think we all have mental illness or mental health challenges in our families. If we go back far enough, it’s there. I mean, it’s part of the human condition. All families either go through trauma of their own or we also inherit generational trauma. In my own family of origin, due to my father’s alcoholism, he experienced more than one temporary break with reality. His father, my grandfather, was also an alcoholic and at the end of his life still had so much unresolved anger all he could do was grip my father’s hand tightly as his face turned red, his jaw clenched in rage. His mother, my great-grandmother, had dementia and lived with her son toward the end of her life, which wreaked havoc in that home.



We didn’t use to talk about such things so openly, without shame, because we were taught to keep “that sort of thing”, what we called “our family business” private. But it’s really not any different than talking about any other kind of illness or struggle, but because it is expressed through behavior, we connect it to morality or failure of some kind, wrapped in shame and guilt.



On the other hand, when we don’t like something we will identify it with mental illness. We use mental illness to explain horrible violence or why some impoverished White people continue to vote against their interests or why anyone would vote for a convicted felon. But the last time I checked, self-interest, bigotry, and hate were not diagnosable conditions. To be sure, people can be in a vulnerable position and taken advantage of, even brainwashed, but it’s not because they contend with a mental illness.



Or in Jesus’ time, if people didn’t like what you were doing, they’d say you were out of your mind. If you were being true to yourself, actively opposing the status quo, they might say you were possessed by a demon. Because he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, forgiving sins and healing people on the sabbath, and large crowds followed him everywhere he went, Jesus’ family tried to restrain him because people were saying he was out of his mind. Scribes from Jerusalem said that he had Beelzebul or Beelzebub, “lord of the flies”, a derogatory play on the Canaanite god, Baal Zevul, “Lord of the heavenly places”. Jesus responds in his usual way with questions and parables, to not only poke holes in the arguments of those who try to silence him, but to also speak his truth and show them another way.



Jesus is accused of casting out demons with the power of demons, but he knows his work is of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, the one who liberates God’s people and gathers them into community. To call his work of liberation and healing the work of Satan, those who speak out against Jesus reveal themselves to be on the side of empire. Empire is about divide and control and maintaining order. Satan was known as the adversary and Jesus is being adversarial to the status quo by restoring people to themselves. It's harder to control people who've been restored to themselves.



A community, a church that offers an extravagant welcome to everyone, regardless of sexuality, gender or gender identity, skin color or socioeconomic class, ability or age is one that can restore people to themselves and liberate them from the control of empire. Well, not according to mychurchfinder.org. I had heard about this site from a colleague. If you want to find a biblically sound church home, just type in your zip code and you can see what churches are in your area.



Churches are rated A, B, and C: an A rating means you have found a biblically sound, culturally aware, and a non-socialistic legislatively active church. The early church in the book of Acts would not receive an A rating! A B rating means the church is biblically sound and has met one of the other criteria. A C rating means the church is biblically sound.



Or a church can be rated WNR: would not recommend. These are churches that, in their words, “have gone ‘woke’”. It’s the new way of saying we’re possessed by demons. We’ve lost our minds. We have Beelzebul. I am happy to report that the New Ark United Church of Christ has a WNR rating!



But being an Open and Affirming congregation is more than an occasion for celebration and applause. It means being uncooperative with the ways of empire, just as Jesus was uncooperative. The ways of empire seek to divide us against one another, to control that which is deemed ‘other’, which is everything that is part of our Open and Affirming statement: “We welcome into our community persons of every gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, ability, age, race, nationality, economic and social status, faith background, religious training, marital standing, and family structure.”  What empire uses to divide us is precisely what unites us.



We embrace each other as fambly. Fambly is a colloquial word that is patois for family, but it can also mean any grouping of people who have such affection for each other, such commitment to each other that they are fambly. There is the family that brought us into this world and raised us, but fambly is the people we claim, with whom we choose to make community.



Fambly is about close relationships and mutual care—it’s kin-dom talk. Our fambly is those ones for whom we would disrupt our lives, who disrupt their lives for us. Our fambly isn’t about perfection but about earnest effort. Fambly admits when it botches this extravagant welcome and tries again to meet each other where they are. Fambly is where we learn enough about forgiveness (because fambly sometimes hurts too) so that maybe we can begin to forgive our family. Fambly is messy. Fambly is where the reunion of the human race begins.



Fambly means we value each other even on our worst days. Fambly means we’re more curious rather than judgmental. Fambly are the people whose expectations aren’t informed by your birth order or your biggest failure but whose hopes are shaped by how far you’re willing to go, how big, how soft, how open your heart is.



Jesus was an oldest child who so far as we know failed to marry, whose family expected him to behave a certain way, and he was building a movement to subvert the Roman occupation of his home. He put all of his eggs into one basket and then he fed people with it: Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself. Jesus teaches us if we want to follow him, we're going to irritate empire, we're going to make fambly with the people who live in the shadow of empire’s boots. “And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my siblings! Whoever does the will of God is my fambly.”  Amen.

Poster from enfleshed.com. Forest green background. "Holy One, Your queer ways call into question all the hard lines drawn by states and supremacies. Tend, mend, repair in us that which has been violently torn asunder by forces of greed and colonization: human and earth. Human and human. Body and mind and heart. May we be people who intentionally blur, smudge, smear, abolish every rigid border that serves to tear life and lives apart."

Benediction – enfleshed.com


Go forth in the gentle wisdom of Grandparent God,
and the playfulness of Cousin Spirit,
for the Kin-dom of God looks like an expansive family
where belonging is a birthright
and at the table, there is always enough.