What It Means to Honor Marriage (and other important lessons) – Hebrews 13:1-8

What this episode covers

Honoring marriage or a relationship is not only for straight relationships. More often than not, people who are in queer relationships take faithfulness even more seriously. This episode also shares how there are more important things to focus on in this world than to nit-pick other people’s relationships. Episode TranscriptBrian: Welcome to the Queer Theology podcast Fr. Shay: Where each episode, we take a queer look at the week’s lectionary readings. We’re the co-founders of QueerTheology.com and the hosts for this podcast. I’m Father Shay Kearns B: And I’m Brian G. Murphy. FS: Hello and welcome back to the Queer Theology podcast this week we’re taking a look at the text for Sunday, September 1st. We’re gonna look at Hebrews 13:1-8, and I’m gonna read it for us now. Keep loving each other like family. Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this, some have been hosts to angels without knowing it. Remember prisoners as if you were in prison with them, and people who are mistreated as if you were in their place. Marriage must be honored in every respect, with no cheating on the relationship, because God will judge the sexually immoral person and the person who commits adultery. Your way of life should be free from the love of money, and you should be content with what you have. After all, he has said, I will never leave you or abandon you. This is why we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper, and I won’t be afraid. What can people do to me? Remember your leaders who spoke God’s word to you. Imitate their faith as you consider the way their lives turned out. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever! So let’s continually offer up a sacrifice of praise through him, which is the fruit from our lips that confess his name. Don’t forget to do good and to share what you have because God is pleased with these kinds of sacrifices. B: Oh man! FS: There’s a lot in here! B: Yeah. We’re reading this passage and I’m like, yeah, love each other like family, this is going to be great, we’re gonna talk about queer chosen family, open up your homes to guests, yes! Remember prisoners, the mistreated, and then I can almost hear in my head this record scratch, eerrr eerrr talking about marriage and I realize in myself that despite being a Christian my whole life and openly queer for over a decade — oh my God, 15 years at this point — closer to 2 decades than 1 — and I’ve been open and polyamorous for eight-plus years. I’m finding that sometimes my extinct is to clench up a little bit whenever marriage or relationship are talked about in the Bible because I don’t always trust it. And then I realize, oh wait! Marriage must be honored in every respect like no cheating on the relationship. I was like, oh yeah! I actually do take relationships and commitment in a relationship very, very seriously. I think sometimes even more serious than people who are monogamously married. And there is no cheating in my relationship, and I don’t know, I can’t say for certain whether or not, the author of this passage intended to be endorsing queer-polyamorous relationships to millennia in the future. But I do know that if you look at the spirit of this, that actually queer & polyamorous relationships fit right into this and are not so antithetical to it as folks might assume on first brush. So that was the first thing that jumped out at me, what about you Shay? FS: Yes, there are two things for me, kind of going off what you just said. I think part of this too, is understanding the historical context about what these writers were trying to do and who they were trying to protect, right? In a setting where women were able to be practically discarded, to say that you had to respect your marriage relationship and that you shouldn’t commit adultery was really protecting someone who was marginalized and oppressed in that community. I look at so many heterosexual and even heterosexual-Christian relationships today, and I think,

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