"We Belong To Each Other" (Pride Sunday)
Matthew 9:9-12, 18-26
Rev. Emily Labrecque, Westmoreland UCC
June 7, 2026
When I was in seminary, I was privileged to learn from and interact with Yvette Flunder. Yvette is a gospel singer, a UCC minister, the bishop of The Fellowship for Affirming Ministries (TFAM), and a black queer woman. I took courses with her, I worshipped with her, and I learned firsthand about the work of her church. Bishop Flunder describes her church, City of Refuge United Church of Christ, as an effort “to create a spiritual community that will embrace our collective cultures, faith paths, gender expressions, and sexual/affectional orientations while simultaneously freeing us from the oppressive theologies that subjugate women, denigrate the LGBT community, and disconnect us from justice issues locally and globally.” The Transcendence Gospel choir, the first all-transgender choir in the US, held their residence at City of Refuge. Their commitment to celebrate and proclaim the radically inclusive love of Jesus Christ has transformed the city of Oakland, the Bay Area, and the lives of thousands of LGBTQ folks, primarily black LGBTQ folks, around the world.
Bishop Flunder, in a recent speech said this, “This is a very dangerous thing I’m about to say now ... I am of the opinion that we need a third testament. Because the Bible has become problematic. ‘Slaves obey your masters as you do the Lord ... Let the women keep silent in the churches and if they have questions let them ask their husbands at home.’ Now I’m a believer ... I wake up in the morning talking to God and God talking to me. But I am completely frustrated with the ways in which the text speaks to the kind of vitriolic God that makes those kinds of things ... people say ‘well it’s in the book’ and I said ‘then we need to pull that page out.’ And they say, ‘well you can’t do that, it’s the word of God.’ And I say, ‘No it’s words about God. C’mon now. But is it the word of God? No, it’s not the word of God.”
The Bible is full of words about God. They are words about God that have been twisted and turned to fit a human agenda, an agenda that asserts the necessity of binaries and divisions. An agenda that relies on social and cultural regimes to render bodies less valuable than others. An agenda that pits people against one another out of fear and a struggle for power.
But we cannot do Christian theology from a place of fear. Or division. Or certainty. We do Christian theology from a place of joy, of love, of liberation, of belonging. Because that, belonging, is exactly what Jesus calls us to in the gospels at every step of the way.
We hear that in our text from the Gospel of Matthew this morning. Jesus is eating with a tax collector, interacting with a woman suffering from hemorrhagic bleeding, and raising a young girl from the dead. Jesus was in the business of healing. Healing people, healing relationships, and healing peoples’ understanding of their tradition as it related to God. In all of this healing, Jesus is embodying the peaceable realm, declaring it already here and yet to come. Who Jesus healed, who he interacted with tells us, time and again, who’s at the center of this Peaceable Realm. Women, children, servants, people with disabilities. And in this passage, that includes the tax collector, the bleeding woman, and the dead girl. And what do all of these people have in common? They were considered ritually unclean.
In the Jewish tradition of which Jesus was a part, contact with them would make Jesus “separate from God in concrete practical terms. Jesus eats with tax collectors, touches a dead body, and is touched by a bleeding woman. This healing is not fixing the defective, or endorsing a particular kind of body as holy or whole. It is restoring relationship, creating community, and transgressing boundaries that exclude people.”[1] These acts of healing represent a larger theological value: that of Belonging.
Mother Theresa once said, “If we do not have peace it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.” In healing these people, Jesus was restoring their relationships with their families and peers. Jesus reunited them with their communities who had once outcast them for being who they were in the world. Jesus understood that to heal people was not just about their physical needs but their emotional needs. The way the religious institution worked then, the way society and some religious institutions work now, is that when you are different, when you don’t fit the mold, when you are “other than” in some way, you are outcasted.
I know what it feels like to not belong. I’m sure you have experienced that at some point in your life too. For some it’s a momentary occurrence, for others it’s a lifelong reality. When we speak of LGBTQ folks and Pride, we are talking about identities that have been a part of the human population for as long as humans have existed and yet the agendas that assert the necessity of binaries and divisions, the agendas that renders bodies less valuable than others, the agendas that pit people against one another out of fear tell us we don’t belong. The Christian agendas that say “being gay is a sin” tell us we don’t belong. But those aren’t God’s words. Those are words humans put in God’s mouth.
Now, we have to be clear. There has been a lot of work done to promote equity and inclusion for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual folks. There is a lot of work yet to be done toward the equity and inclusion of trans folks. But, belonging is different from equity or inclusion. Even if we say that an LGBTQ person has the same rights in this country or this state or this church because we’ve put measures in place to ensure there is no formal discrimination, that does not mean those same LGBTQ people feel like they belong.
The Othering and Belonging Institute at Cal Berkeley writes this, “If members of a social group feel as if they belong, then belonging exists. But if they do not, then belonging is lacking.” The majority population does not get to decide whether or not belonging exists in a space. The marginalized population gets to decide that for themselves. Belonging is realized fully when groups have more than a voice – they are actually able to reshape the institution together....”[2]
Belonging is important to everyone’s wellbeing. It’s important to all of us, no matter how we identify. Just as Jesus helped the outcast and marginalized belong, so we too must do the same.
And on this Sunday, Pride Sunday, we remind ourselves why Pride is important too.
- Pride is important because someone is still waiting for their family to come around.
- Pride is important because there are kids – KIDS – out here who think they’d be better off dead than face persecution for being queer or trans.
- Pride is important because the people who continue to fight for queer and trans rights continue to be silenced.
- Pride is important because there are places on this earth where being yourself is illegal, where we can’t travel without risking jail or death.
- Pride is important because someone is about to come out for the first time and they need to know there are people who will love and support them.
- Pride is important because there’s a kid somewhere who is wearing “straight” like it’s a costume just to make it through to graduation.
- Pride is important because we have forgotten we belong to each other.
As followers of the Way, as followers of Jesus, we too are called to remind one another that we belong to each other – and to listen when the marginalized tell us if they feel that belonging, too. For in the words of Fr. Greg Boyle, “A community of cherished belonging is God’s dream come true.” In God’s realm, we all belong to each other. Not when we fit the mold, not when we fall in line, not when we look or act or live a certain way. We belong, period. We belong to each other and we belong to God.
Happy Pride Month, Beloveds.
Amen.
