Strangers
It took me a while to learn how to read. I remember being behind every kid in my little elementary school and getting extra attention from teachers. A few other things took me longer than other kids - sitting still, tying my shoes, and emotional regulation. Admittedly, people who know me today might suggest I’ve still not mastered 2 out of 3, but elementary school was hard for me. What I didn’t realize at the time was that the reason it was taking me so long to learn was that I was an immigrant kid; my brain was developing two different languages at the same time and with pretty significant urgency. See, my first language, Portuguese, was essential to living with my parents, who were still learning English. If I wanted food, needed help, or had to cry, I needed to be able to communicate in Portuguese. The rest of my life, though, took place in English - I’ve said before that coming home every day felt like crossing the tiniest border into my little Brazilian embassy in the middle of Farmland, NJ. Making friends, learning math, and asking permission to go to the bathroom all happened in English. I think we can cut me a little slack for struggling to tie my shoes, right?
I’ve been a stranger in a foreign land for as long as I can remember. I’ve learned as I’ve gotten older about the experience of other “Third Culture Kids,” who grow up in a home separate from the culture they live in. This community tends to blend our two cultural experiences into a unique, soft-serve-swirl Third Culture, made up of values from both cultures we’re raised in. As much as some of us may prefer our soft serve to be swirled, this can be a confusing and disorienting experience. Since I was a kid, I was too loud, too touchy, and too emotionally passionate for the predominantly-White-American suburb I grew up in… but somehow too serious, too restrained, and too fact-driven for the Brazilian communities my family would land in. The Third Culture experience often feels like a split between being “too much” and “not enough” in both directions, never really landing in the sense of home.
Too Much, Not Enough
At this point, it’s possible you’re starting to relate - even if you’re not a racial or ethnic minority. As I’ve learned over the years, sexual minorities experience many of the same things, especially as we’re raised in the Church. Those of us who choose to name our experience of same-sex attraction but believe in the difficult grace of the traditional sexual ethic often feel torn between two different, warring worlds. This experience of self-describing as gay but choosing celibacy (colloquially referred to as “Side B”) can feel like an emotional and spiritual tug-of-war. Still, the world around you uses your heart instead of a rope as the tension point. Have we not all been simultaneously “too much” and “not enough?”
Too gay for our church community… not gay enough for LGBTQ+ friends from work
Too religious for the friends who share our attractions… not religious enough for the friends who share our faith
Too “repressed” or “self-hating” for some… not self-effacing enough for others
Those of us called to this confusing, beautiful, swirled life can feel like strangers in a foreign land no matter where we find ourselves. Confused about our values, it can be hard to match the values of any group or culture around us. No one speaks our language, no one shares our love, and no one fights our fights. At least, we feel like it’s no one.
The Outsider King
I came to know Jesus when I was about 15, and I remember feeling such a significant sense of belonging as I chose to follow Him. Something about this vulnerable, bleeding God, this Son of Man and King and Kings, felt right to me - as if someone finally understood what it was like to be such a stranger. Throughout His life, Jesus is misunderstood, rejected, mocked, and othered. The more I’ve looked into Jesus’s life, the more I’ve felt understood by the God I serve. Jesus was walking, talking “too much/not enough” for those around him. He was too holy and religious at times - daring even to teach at the age of 12 - but not holy enough, not religious enough to abstain from working on the Sabbath. He sat with those the religious leaders rejected, was touched by the unclean, made up His followers of outcasts, religious lunatics and rebels. In Jesus, I found a God who knew what it meant to grow up in a world that didn’t quite want your good.
Perhaps most significantly for sexual minorities, in Jesus, I found a God who desired intimacy, who looked for connection, even as it was denied Him. At the end of His life, as He weeped in the garden, Jesus asks His friends to sit up with Him. In His hour of need, it’s His closest friends He looks to support as He seeks God. This is a story many of us know all too well - our middle-of-the-night prayers of desperation, supported only by a brave text to a close friend we are hoping is worth the trust.
Citizens
This God-King, who lived as a stranger, who was light in a dark world that did not understand Him - this God-King saw fit to make us not only friends but citizens of the world He lives in. That’s what got me growing up - here was a God who saw me and wanted me. Here was a God who knew the tensions, knew the lines drawn in the sand, and saw past all that. Here was a God who didn’t struggle to imagine a gay man following Him but came to make way for people like me. Immigrants and Third Culture Kids and gay folks and people who don’t even know what to make of their own experience know they need rescue and help and love.
Ephesians says that we who belong to Christ are “no longer strangers and exiles, but fellow citizens…” There’s belonging and protection and RIGHT tied up into that word, isn’t there? “Citizen.” The declaration is clear - because of Jesus, you belong here. You are not too much. You’re not “not enough.” You’re a citizen. The Kingdom is at hand, and there’s a room for you.
This is a beautiful truth, but it can be a hard one to embrace. We’re so used to feeling like outsiders, so used to being questioned. Admittedly, many of us hold this spiritual truth in tension with real lived rejection. It’s not a nagging voice of insecurity that tells us we don’t belong - it’s flesh-and-blood churchgoers, former friends, and members of our own family. As I shared in my closing Homily at Revoice 21, real human forces have conspired to remove us from the Church - but the declaration of Christ, that we are “no longer strangers and exiles, but citizens,” rings louder. In my life, some principles have helped me practice this spiritual truth, even when I’m tempted to go back to being a stranger.
Dragging Mess to Jesus
If you grew up in a snowy climate like I did, you may remember what it’s like to come in from the cold after playing in the snow. Your hands and face sting from the cold, sticky snow, you’re out of breath from heaving snowballs at the neighbor kids, and the novelty has worn off - all you can think of is the sweet, slightly painful warmth you’ll experience as you rush inside. As you open the door, though, you’re met by a parent who INSISTS that you remove all your snowy garments at the door, lest you track snow and ice all over the house. Your hot chocolate sits on the table, awaiting you as a sweet reward, as you throw off your jacket and boots, and snow pants and leave big pools at the door. Can’t drag the mess in, after all.
I’ve been known to carry this posture into my relationship with Jesus. Hebrews says we should “boldly approach the throneroom of grace,” but rather than boldly rushing in, I often find myself standing at the entrance to the temple, wiping every last bit of the outside world I might risk dragging in. In my messy faith-and-sexuality snowstorm, I have to get every single bit of ice and slush off me before I can approach Jesus - after all, I can’t drag the mess in. I’m tempted to avoid Jesus until the questions have been figured out until I know I’ve got answers he’ll like. I keep myself in the cold doorway, for fear I could mess up what God is building. See, I make myself a stranger in my own spiritual household. “Boldly approach,” says the scripture - come running in with your ice and mud and questions, because there is no mess that could make you an outsider in this house.
I must stop pretending I’m an outsider or a stranger to Jesus… instead, I must embrace the truth. That I’m a citizen. That I can drag my mess to Him. I don’t have to have the questions figured out, and I don’t have to get everything perfectly right before I can sit with Him. Jesus wants me to practice belonging with Him by simply showing up, mud and ice and all, and sharing it with Him.
50, not 100
Over the years, I’ve gotten so used to being an outsider that it almost feels safer that way. More familiar. I didn’t realize how accustomed I’d gotten to this experience until my first Revoice conference in 2019. I was invited to a house in an Airbnb made up entirely of gay men who were also POC - other Latino gays and some Black friends. On my last night, I realized I was feeling immense tension and sorrow at leaving - because I had never felt so much like the people around me. For the first time in my 28 years, I had been in a room where I wasn’t the only sexual and racial minority. I was with people who understood not only my experience as an immigrant but my experience of sexuality. I’ve never felt so seen, so understood, such ease in communicating and being embraced.
God’s Church, though, isn’t just made up of people who look and think like me, and I need to resist the temptation to only be known by those who easily understand my experience. After all, isn’t that part of the pain so many of us - racial and sexual minorities - experience in the Church - the pressure to assimilate and look like those around us? The reality is, I am a gift to the Church, and the Church is a gift to me - in our differences, in our unique experiences of Jesus. Rather than picking and choosing a community with those who have 100% overlap of my experience, I may often be called to trust myself to those who struggle to understand and who try to do the work of loving me. I call this the “50, not 100” principle - that often, I will need to let myself be known by others with much less overlap to my experience than I might prefer, even just 50%. Others don’t need to share all of my experience to be my people - Christ has decided so.
Celebrating the Same (Though Different)
Aiding in this effort of connecting with those who differ from me, I have realized the need to practice the celebration of similarity - even while it lives amid difference. It’s so easy to run a mental checklist of qualities we’re looking for in friends and community members, like clicking off a “filter” button on an online store. Our community is not a commercial product we consume from our couch - it’s the flesh and blood Body of Jesus, meant to be engaged and embraced. One of the ways I ease connection is by recognizing how we share core human experiences and core Christian values.
Years ago, I was driving with my best friend, and we talked about our friendships. I was noticeably uncomfortable, and when he inquired, I shared that I was feeling some shame in our friendship with one guy in particular - I found him attractive, and I was worried that would ruin our friendship. We drove in comfortable silence for a moment, and then my buddy (who is heterosexual) said to me, “Hey, do you know I have to do that too?” I was surprised and confused - “what do you mean?” I asked him.
He paused and formed his thoughts, then explained, “I know it can be complicated to figure out boundaries in your friendships with guys. But I want you to know I’ve had to do that with women we’re friends with - I had to consider to what extent I felt comfortable hanging out with them, especially alone, because I might develop feelings for them. That’s just part of navigating attraction and friendships. That’s not a uniquely gay problem.”
I needed to hear that. I need to know that my heterosexual siblings experience many of the tensions I do. In fact, I have found that, at our core, we are far more similar than we are different. Though the avenues and practices might differ, many of our friends are navigating the same questions about sexuality, attraction, shame, and integrity- especially those who share Biblical values of marriage and sex. It can be easy to say, “well, you don’t quite get it,” and sure, there are some unique challenges to homosexual desire and temptation in a world that’s built for the heterosexual experience. At the end of the day, though, there is so much in which we can experience commonality - common desire, common temptation, and common need of Jesus.
Not-So-Exiled
If we aren’t careful, we start to believe the lies spoken over us - that we are strangers and exiles. That we do not belong. That there’s no room for us in the family of God. Our self-advocacy can grow old and can become a fight-or-flight mechanism instead. As I journey forward with Jesus, I find myself constantly invited to put down my defenses, and maybe to even put my backpack down sometimes. I’m learning to live not as an exile, but as a fellow citizen - one of God’s kids, in the family.
