Friends From Far Away
Romans 16:16
“Greet each other with a sacred kiss. All the churches of Christ send you their greetings.”
I’m not the best at long-distance friendships. I can be forgetful, I’m increasingly bad at texting back, and time-zone differences make me want to weep. This is unfortunate because many of my closest friends live hundreds of miles away. I spend more time than I’d care to admit on Zoom, Whatsapp, and Marco Polo.
Long-distance friendship is a staple of our community. We just had our 6th Revoice conference, and I was moved to watch so many of us reuniting with our friends. More than once, I felt my heart leap with joy as I saw a friend from California, Washington, or Florida - those dear to me whom I could never tire of seeing. As the conference wrapped up on Saturday, I watched as many of us said goodbye; my eyes brimmed with tears as I hugged loved ones, who quickly moved on to other farewells.
At times I’ve felt silly, having so many friends far off. I’ve wondered if I’d be better off investing my resources - my energy, emotions, and time - locally. I valued embodied friendship, a friend who can hug you on a bad day. A mentor once told me that a support system should live within 20 minutes of you, and I’ve never lost that thought. So I worry, every time I turn down an invite from a local friend because of a scheduled Zoom call, that I’m making a mistake in not investing more of myself locally.
I think LGBTQ+ folks often find some of their community online; this is particularly true for the celibate community. We grow up separated, isolated in our own towns and suburbs, without anyone to share our experience. I first found other celibate gay folks when I was 26, on a Facebook group of all places, and it suddenly felt like having 300 new best friends. Of course, that was a bit of a mistake - these weren’t all my new best friends; they were strangers, each with their own baggage, stories, and lives. While they couldn’t all be my instant besties, they could be a community - a place of being seen and known. A space to practice telling my story and telling it honestly. More than anything, they were a place to hear my story echo back. For the first time in my life, my story was met with declarations of agreement, of “same here,” and “I get that!”
It’s been a comfort to me to realize that this experience isn’t unique to our community but is even displayed in scripture. Paul spends much of his time traveling to churches, mentees, and disciples - but also just writing to friends. Many of his letters - Romans, Thessalonians, Ephesians - start and end with greetings, instructions, and warm wishes. He expresses a longing to see his friends, he shows marked investment in their well-being, and he celebrates the gift they are to him.
In some ways, our experience as sexual and gender minorities, finding love and understanding in words from far-away friends, brings us closer to the Biblical narrative of the global Church. My friends in San Diego, and my siblings in the faith, feel close by these shared experiences and struggles - and my longing to see them reminds me that my church doesn’t just exist in the walls of my little local congregation.
As Paul ends Romans 16, he takes his time to celebrate the different ways in which his friends bless him and bless the Church. He greets them with his love and remembers their impact on his life. Maybe we, too, can celebrate this far-away love, even as we miss each other in the post-conference sadness. Perhaps we don’t have to feel silly for the airplane tickets we buy, the Zoom dates we schedule, and the “miss you” texts we send. In fact… maybe these things remind us of the bigness of Christ’s love and the fullness of His Church.
