The Fiction of Boundaries
A sermon preached for the Presbytery of Grand Canyon on
Saturday, November 8, 2008, by the Rev. Trina Zelle. She has
recently finished a term as Co-Moderator of the Witherspoon Society, and
staffs Interfaith Worker Justice of
Arizona, in Phoenix.
[11-11-08]
His mother
and his brothers arrived. Standing outside they sent word to him and called
him. A crowd seated around him told him, "Your mother and your brothers (and
your sisters) are outside asking for you." But he said to them in reply,
"Who are my mother and (my) brothers?" And looking around at those seated in
the circle he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers. (For) whoever does
the will of God is my brother and sister and mother." Mark 3:31-35
It was one of those moments of grace. I actually listened
to the tiny voice in my head telling me to keep my mouth shut. It was late
afternoon and I was getting ready to go home after a long day at Christ
Presbyterian Church in East Longmeadow, Mass., where I served as part time
interim – a perfect job situation for a recent seminary graduate and new
mom.
As I gathered my things, the choir director arrived to set
up for that night’s choir practice. He and I had developed a cordial
relationship and as we chatted about the upcoming Christmas concert, I was
suddenly struck with the urge to make a snarky remark about Barbara Smith, a
choir member who sang soprano with more volume than talent. That’s when my
still small voice delivered a sharp elbow jab to my impulse control center.
“Tell me about Barbara Smith,” I asked instead.
“Oh, Barbara.” he answered. “Barbara’s my daughter.”
Seldom has “Thank you Jesus” been uttered so fervently.
It was perhaps the most profound lesson I have ever
learned about church: everyone is related. Everyone.
And as many of you already know, it doesn’t matter if
we’re talking about large or small churches. Big churches just have bigger
family webs to untangle. Surnames provide no reliable clue. Cousins, second
cousins, ex-wives, wives who kept their maiden names, step-children – you
name it – the relationships are intricate and, for the most part, invisible.
And I’m not even going to try to address the resulting unseen power dynamics
that have defeated more than one idealistic pastor.
Actually the rule, “everyone is related,” isn’t limited to
churches. Business, government – you name it – wherever there are people,
everyone is related.
“Politics is local?” Everything is local.
Which is one reason I sometimes wince a little when I
encounter that oft repeated phrase church people use when talking about the
immigration issue from a faith perspective: “We must ‘welcome the
stranger.’” Yes, I know, that’s what it says in Leviticus and Deuteronomy
among other places. Yes, I know it’s important. Yes, I’ve even used the
phrase myself and will probably use it again. Still, it’s also somewhat
misleading. Because, as with most issues that involve human beings, when it
comes to immigration, we’re not really talking about strangers, we’re
talking about family. And not metaphorically either, although we’ll get to
metaphor eventually too. We are all, literally. Family.
Amidst the many horrors of slavery, perhaps one of the
most profound was the reality that, after those first waves of kidnapped
Africans hit these shores, slaves were home-grown, often fathered by owners
who then proceeded to enslave or sell them.
Think about that for a minute. Let it sink in. The notion
of selling one’s own children. When we study this history, the cruel
destruction of families is cited but we don’t often talk about the fact
that, in many instances, the family we’re talking about is one large family
– with one part selling off the other part – kind of like Joseph and his
brothers.
We’re all related. Really. People with a view from the
bottom have always known this in a way that those of us viewing the world
from the perch of privilege have not. We are blood relatives. When it was
revealed after Strom Thurmond’s death, that he had fathered the child of his
family’s African American housekeeper, dominant culture America was shocked.
The African American community in his area was not. They knew his daughter –
personally. Many had grown up with her.
Have you ever heard of six degrees separation? According
to Wikipedia (and my own understanding ), six degrees of separation refers
to the idea that, assuming a person is one step away from each person they
know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people
they know, then everyone is an average of six “steps” away from each person
on earth. So, for example, while I may not share DNA with a particular
individual from the nation of Chad, according to the six degree principle,
it would take no more than six people – from my friend, who has this friend,
who has that friend, and so on, to make a connection with him or her. That’s
on a global scale. Live together for any length of time on a common land
mass and the likelihood of blood kinship skyrockets – including and
especially those places where relationships between peoples are considered
taboo and so remain hidden. But the hidden nature of the relationship
doesn’t change its reality.
To paraphrase comedian Chris Rock, “Whoever you don’t
allow your kids to date will end up in your family.” This is certainly true
in this part of the United States where an indigenous population has been
migrating back and forth for thousands of years from what we call Mexico to
here and beyond. Where a new population eventually arrived – actually two
waves of Europeans – that first sought help from and then supremacy over
these original dwellers. While much history has been written about this,
even more remains unwritten. Perhaps John Sayles’ movie, “Lone Star,”
expresses it best when his Anglo protagonist discovers that the Latina woman
he loves is his half sister.
But why talk about how we’re all related if the point of
Jesus’ words in Mark is to tell us that spiritual kinship trumps blood
kinship every time. The same way he tells us that whoever is not willing to
leave father and mother for his sake will have no part of the kingdom.
Because, when Jesus issues the new commandment that we are
to love others as he first loved us; when Jesus proclaims a kingdom in which
the last will be first, I don’t think he means it as a way for us to dodge
our fundamental family obligations. After all, Jesus himself makes the
responsibility of family clear when, from the cross, he tells the Beloved
Disciple to take care of his mother as if she were his own.
So how do we reconcile these outwardly competing
understandings of family and what do either of them have to do with this
present conversation about strangers and family. How we do it is not
entirely clear to me, but I do know that until we acknowledge and honor our
blood connections and relational tangles in their entirety, we cannot truly
become that Beloved Community that is united by Christ’s blood rather than
our own. We cannot leave people in the dust to whom we owe a measure of
care; we cannot view them as strangers while calling ourselves part of God’s
family.
Because you see, when we welcome the stranger, we are
still calling him or her a stranger; we are not embracing them as family.
Help for “the stranger” tends to be that of the arm’s length variety, to be
done competently and with compassion, but without the heart connection that
keeps us from contentment until we know our loved one is safe.
In addition, when we make a point of “welcoming the
stranger,” we run the risk of keeping the focus on ourselves and our efforts
to be hospitable rather than the needs and hopes of the person whose eyes
look into ours. To get beyond stranger and to that place of family, we need
to stop being self-conscious heroes of our own dramas with its supporting
cast of characters and realize that our true call is to be participants in
God’s drama, the same God from whom every family on earth gets its name.
Because, while the words of Leviticus and Deuteronomy are critical to the
leading of an ethical life – which includes such details as making sure that
the lawn people and pool lady are paid immediately rather than making them
ask for it – Leviticus and Deuteronomy are not the gospel. Their words tell
us to do the right thing. The gospel moves us into deeper kinship with each
other even as it moves us beyond kinship.
Now, as we all know, family can be, and often is, a major
pain in the neck. Thanksgiving dinner at my house, with all of its
conversational landmines, comes to mind. But if loudmouth Cousin Joe or
crazy Aunt Josephine were to show up at your door in dire straits, wouldn’t
you heave a sigh, maybe briefly turn aside and roll your eyes to yourself,
and then do whatever you could to help them in their situation? Now, what if
it wasn’t one of your difficult relatives who came to you, but the ones who
had never asked for anything before; who always brought a delicious dish to
Thanksgiving dinner; who spoke with quiet pride about the accomplishments of
their children even as they praised yours. What if they came to your door,
pale with fear, eyes brimming with tears at the prospect of having to choose
between leaving their children behind or taking them to a strange country
with no possibilities. What would you do if they came to you? You would do
what my mother did years ago, on a freezing November day when Jimmy Heath,
our paper boy, came to our front door, no jacket, shivering and crying from
the cold. Jimmy was from a poor family who lived in my small Illinois town –
literally on the other side of the railroad tracks.
What would you do if they came to you? Like my mother, in
tears yourself, you would yank them inside, embrace them, sit them at the
kitchen table, bring them a hot drink, and call them by name. And do
whatever it took to help them. Because you were family.
Robert Frost said, “home is where they have to take you
in.” But family is so much more than home. Family is as much a verb as a
noun. It is that recognition of connection and obligation and the
willingness to act on it. Family doesn’t need a book or lectures on how to
welcome each other. Family opens the front door and makes sure that there
are seats for everyone at the table. Then they sit down together to eat.
Family doesn’t make other parts of the family wait outside, to be given the
leftovers only after everyone else has eaten their fill. In families, there
are no strangers. Amen.
