I want us to talk a little bit this morning about families. This is a Christian church, and in our American society, we are the ones most stereotypically associated with family values, right? Now, it doesn’t matter what family you come from or what your current family makeup might be, this is a message for all of us to unpack this morning. First of all, let’s ask a question: Who is your brother? Who do you consider to be your sister? How about your mother; who is she? Who is your father?

I have two younger brothers, and I love them very much. But there is a guy, not related to me by blood or marriage, who is only a couple of years younger than me, and he has been calling me by the name ‘brother’ since the day we met in July of 2003. Ricardo Brambila is the pastor of First Baptist Church in San Isidro, Texas. It’s a town with about 80 residents, and it’s located about 45 minutes from the border at Roma, Texas.

I want you to know up front why I’m sharing this illustration with you. I’m a strong believer in the fact that if it weren’t for Jesus Christ, most of us in this room, if not all of us, would not know each other. If it weren’t for Christ I would not know you. This place called Friends would not exist without Jesus.

That’s a tremendous testimony and a great comfort, but it can also be a big challenge at times. Case-in-point: my relationship with Ricardo Brambila, pastor of FBC, San Isidro. I initially connected with Ricardo over the phone. He had sent out a request for Vacation Bible School to be offered at his church, and our church in Austin answered the request. We would travel there in our two church vans and stay for a week, providing songs, and stories, and arts and crafts, and games for the kids at Ricardo’s church.

So, when I got out of the van I was driving and walked up to the door of FBC, San Isidro four years ago, that was the first time I ever saw Ricardo Brambila face to face. Our differences were apparent from the word ‘go.’ He introduced me to his wife, whose name was Jeaneth, but he introduced her by saying, “This is my wife,” and that’s it. That rubbed me wrong. But it didn’t irk me nearly as much as the American Flag and the Christian Flag that adorned either side of the altar in the tiny sanctuary of Ricardo’s church. I’ve never felt comfortable with flags in the sanctuary.

I also disagreed with the way that Ricardo would preach. At one point during that week, our teenagers were gathered in that tiny sanctuary and Ricardo preached a sermon about how Christian adolescents needed to get strong in their faith and then get into government, because it’s the most influential office in our land. And his style was completely different than mine, because he would ask for an ‘amen’ at the end of every other sentence. I tried that on the congregation in Austin when we got back from that trip, and someone told me later that they thought I was finished preaching when I said ‘amen,’ so they tuned me out for the next 15 minutes.

Ricardo also had a banner posted in his sanctuary that asserted that Christians in his church do not let alcohol pass their lips. I doubt that banner would go over well in our sanctuary here at Friends. I’m more akin to the theology of Jesus’ first miracle recorded in the Bible being when he changed water to wine at a wedding, and Benjamin Franklin’s assertion that “beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.”

But what was obvious was that Ricardo loved his God. He loved Jesus Christ. And he loved me. When I got out of that van and saw Ricardo for the first time, he greeted me by extending his hand to me, and saying, “Brother Dan.” Were it not for Jesus, I would never have met Ricardo. He knew that, and he called me his brother.

Ricardo calling me brother was a gift. It was a gift I’ve spent these past four years trying to embrace and understand and reciprocate. I hope we can be reminded this morning of the many gifts that Jesus Christ gives each and every one of us. Christ gives us the gifts of salvation, eternal life, and even our faith itself. But something that we often forget is that Christ freely offers us the gift of peace.

In John’s gospel, Jesus says to the disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.” Jesus doesn’t just preach an ethic of peace. He doesn’t just teach us about peace. Jesus gives us peace, and look what we’ve done with it.

Look at the many gifts that have been given to the Church since its conception and what we’ve done with those gifts. Let’s focus on the observance of Holy Communion for a moment, another gift that Jesus freely offers to us. I asked the confirmands in our confirmation classes recently how they define communion. One of the youth said that communion is Jesus’ offering of his body and blood, symbolized by the bread and wine of communion, and it’s supposed to help us remember Christ. And another confirmand said that communion is Jesus’ invitation to everyone.

Sounds good, right? Well, somewhere along the way in church history, folks like John Calvin got us all thinking about the details of communion. We started thinking that some people could come to the table and others could not. We started thinking that if we weren’t pure, or if we didn’t get right with God before coming to the table, then we were eating the bread and drinking the cup to our own damnation.

The gift of communion. Christ’s invitation to everyone. What makes us in the church feel so compelled to put restrictions on this gift? What makes us so tempted to tweak this invitation? If Jesus could offer the gift of what we now understand as communion to a man who was going to betray him to death, Judas Iscariot, then how can we justify splitting hairs over the details of this sacrament?

Jesus says, “If anyone loves me, he will obey my teaching. My Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.” And here is what Jesus teaches us. Jesus says, “A new command I give you: love one another. Just as I have loved you, so you must love one another.” Are you starting to see it? If you love, then God in Christ makes a home with you. If you love, God’s home is with you. And God’s home is empty without the family of God’s children living and thriving in it.

Sisters and brothers, hear this Good News: We are gathered here this morning as the household of Christ. The home of God is here. And we are a family of faith that lives and thrives together in this loving home. This is our shared gift.

So, when did we turn this gift into something with parameters? When did we let love take a backseat to judgment? This is what I’m talking about: In this country, the assumption is that a Christian family is a man and a woman who are married with some kids. That’s the stereotypical blueprint for the Christian family. And that assumption, that blueprint is the fountainhead for this thing we call family values. (And the last time I checked, family values was one of the most divisive wedges in our country.)

I often wonder what God would really have to say about our definition of family values. Obviously, one size doesn’t fit all, and there are many different kinds of families in our shared household of God. Donna Berman, the Rabbi Emerita of Port Jewish Center in New York says, “Family is the laboratory in which we learn how to live with, work with, care for and be responsible for others.”

I like that analogy: Our family is a laboratory. But we need to share the proclamation that anyone’s part in this rich, ongoing experiment of faith is not contingent upon biological connection, heterosexuality or marriage, or any of the proponents of the so-called “family values.” Our part in the laboratory is contingent upon the quality of life experienced by the members of this family.

Someone came to visit me here a good while back because he had some questions about our church. He said, “You are a Christian church that preaches on the Word of God in scripture and proclaims the Gospel and all that stuff.” I said, “Yes.” He said, “So, you guys accept anyone, even people who are gay?” And I said, “Yeah, that’s what the term ‘open and affirming’ means.” So, he scratched his head and said, “Well, I can understand the whole welcome thing, but why you try and change them?” I said, “Excuse me?” He said, “You know, why don’t you try and engage them in the teachings of Christ and the Bible and convince them that they need to change? Seems like that’s part of your responsibility.”

Well, you can throw all the Leviticus quotes at me you want, and I’ll remind you of the social connotations of those laws, and how they are contextual and separate from the love of God. And you can bark out all the Romans scripture you want, and I’ll remind you that even Paul, the author of Romans, who we revere as the most knowledgeable human being about Jesus, admitted to only knowing a fraction of what Jesus meant in his teachings (none of which say anything about homosexuality). Bottom line: I don’t believe that homosexuality is a sin.

But that’s really not what was at issue in our conversation about why the church did not try to change the gay and lesbian community in our congregation. Here’s the issue: I’m a sinner, but no one tries to change me. This church has been nothing but accepting of me and my family since the moment we met, and you had no reason to accept me other than the fact that Jesus says, “If you love me, you will obey my teachings.” From the start I’ve been accepted warts and all, with partial exception to my burnt orange wart. I was on a church retreat once and I hadn’t packed for the cold weather, so Ana Deter gave me a maroon A&M sweatshirt to wear. Her smile was particularly bright in that moment of selfless generosity, but I just told her that it wasn’t cold enough.

A healthy family doesn’t try to change a child. A healthy family accepts and fully embraces the child. A healthy family encourages that child to live her life fully, courageously and honestly. And sisters and brothers, God loves you exactly the way you are, warts and all, the true you. The sin would be if we ever behaved in ways that were untrue to who we really are.

If we don’t accept each other, then we do not love each other. And if we do not love each other, then we do not know God. If we do not love one another in the family of God, then that home God promises to make with us will just be an unused foundation for something God really wants to build in us but never can.

Christ left us a gift of peace. Especially in these times that are practically defined by war, don’t we want to establish a home for that gift of peace? Don’t we want to live together as a human family that accepts and embraces one another?

Ricardo Brambila, the Baptist pastor in a small rural town in deep Southwest Texas who had very little in common with me; he accepted me and loved me from the word ‘go.’ One afternoon during our week together, Ricardo and I got to talking and we decided we should get his congregation and my group of teenagers together to do some work across the border. So, we gathered in that little sanctuary with the American flag and the Christian flag on either side of the altar, and we prayed together, and we sang together and Ricardo and I swapped sermons together. And in that hour we were potently reminded that we are children of God, and we are a family, and our only charge is to love each other and share Christ’s gift of peace with the world. We took up an offering in that little service and emptied our pockets of all we had. Then we hopped in a caravan of vans and trucks, and Ricardo jumped in the passenger seat of the van I was driving. He slapped his hand on the dashboard and said to me, “Brother Dan, in the name of Jesus we go!”

So, we headed to the HEB in Roma at the border, where we went on a shopping spree for all kinds of personal hygiene items and food staples. You can have fun shopping for new shoes, but it’s so much more fun to shop for things that someone else needs to live and thrive.

Ricardo knew of a landfill just over the border in Miguel Aleman, Mexico where impoverished families lived and worked, picking out recyclable items to resell for money. Our caravan pulled into the landfill with smoke, flies and wild dogs and horses all around, and then the families started coming out of their cardboard homes: men, women, children, grandmothers, grandfathers; all of them wearing the clothes we threw away. And we shared the grocery bags of hope with these families and walked from the caravan of trucks and vans over to their homes with them for a moment. Then we got in a circle and held hands and prayed our prayers of thanksgiving to God in Spanish and English, with smoke, flies and wild dogs and horses all around.

Were it not for Jesus Christ, that family would not have met. Were it not for Jesus Christ, that peace would not have been shared. So, I thanked God that day that Ricardo accepted me as a brother, despite our differences, so that I could learn to love him and call him Brother Ricardo.

Family values can be dangerous if we use them against each other, or if we use them to try and change each other. So when we contemplate what family is in our Christianity, let us remember Jesus Christ who looked down from a cross as he was slowly dying, looked at his own mother and motioned to one of his disciples and said, “Mom, that’s your son now.” And then Jesus looked at his disciple and motioned to his own mother and said, “She is your mother now.”

In this country, we tend to funnel the real opportunities and resources to those who already possess affluence and power. That’s an unfair, unhealthy family dynamic. Our family values have to be about creating strong community and a just society that gives everyone, regardless of race, religion class, gender, or sexual orientation a chance to cultivate, celebrate and contribute their own unique God-given gifts to the building of that community. That’s healthy family values. And that’s our charge.

So, sisters and brothers, in the name of Jesus we go.