On Sunday June 1, 2025, the Christ First congregation voted to become an Affirming Church with 99% saying "Yes!". We are excited to begin a new leg of this journey with all of you.
June marks PRIDE month, a month dedicated to the celebration and commemoration of the LGBTQIA+ community. Throughout this Pride Month, you are invited to check your email each Monday for a weekly devotion and reflection from “Queers the Word” a devotional by Brian G Murphy and Fr. Shannon TL Kearns. Click here to sign-up for our emails. Each email will also include a listening piece which has been inspired by our musical resource, “Songs for the Holy Other.” To read a statement on Pride Month from the United Church of Canada, please click here. To watch UCC Moderator’s Pride message, click here.
In case you missed the Pride email on Monday June 2, 2025
Reflect
There are very few mentions of Jesus’s family of origin in the Gospels. The Gospel of Mark, especially, since it has no birth narrative, is short on details. In this passage we see that people are starting to grumble about Jesus. They’re saying that he’s possessed, they are watching him closely, and into this mix comes his mother and brothers and sisters. We don’t know why Jesus’s family comes to see him. Maybe they had heard the stories circulating and came to warn him, maybe they wanted to tell him to stop all of this nonsense and come home, maybe they wanted to join in the movement. The text doesn’t really tell us because Jesus refuses to see them. We also don’t know why Jesus refused to see them. Maybe they had already had fraught conversations about his work and ministry, and he knew this was going to be more of the same. Maybe he was feeling particularly fragile that day and knew if they asked him to go home he would. Maybe he was simply trying to make a point to the people around him. No matter the reason, as queer and trans folks, I think we feel this passage intimately. Even if our families are affirming, they’ve often done hurtful things on their journey toward that affirmation, or said something unintentionally hurtful. Or maybe they are not affirming at all. In this passage we see Jesus giving us two wonderful examples: the ability to set boundaries, even with our own families, in order to protect ourselves, and the gathering around of a chosen family who understands and supports you unconditionally.