When I was 18, I broke up with the girl I was dating because God told me to. I didn’t have a reason (still don’t), I just felt like that was a divine mandate and in order to be faithful to God, I had to break up with her. There was no rhyme or reason to the action. But who was I to question God?

After I broke things off with her, I began going to church by myself. Almost immediately, I met Blair. Blair was a year younger than me, had lush, long hair, and could play the guitar like a demon running from the devil. He and I became friends right away.

We found out that we lived right down the street from one another, and we began hanging out all the time. He helped me learn to play guitar—I was never anywhere near his skill, but he was patient and kind—and we even wrote some songs together. Our passion was Jesus though. We both became involved with the Church in significant ways. We often led musical worship before bible studies, youth group, prayer nights, any time the church needed music, we were there.

We spent a lot of time talking about God, theology, and the Bible. He was my first “deconstruction” friend. We began the long slog of examining what we believed, asking why we believed it, and if there was a better way to believe.

Our friendship continued through our twenties. We grew into adulthood together. After I moved away from the high desert of northern Utah, we stayed in constant contact, texting all the time.

Eventually, he was the best man at my wedding.

We were close. We were brothers. This was my first experience of found family.

Then, on January 22, 2017, it was over. Our friendship had survived a lot of shit since 1998, but after that day in January, nothing could be the same.

It’s my fault. I’m the one that caused a fracture in our relationship. I’m the reason I lost my best friend.

What I did was monumental, earth shifting, and paradigm changing.

I said out loud that queer people were accepted and celebrated by God as they are.

He couldn’t embrace a non-conservative sexual ethic and firmly believed that any and sex should be between a man and a woman, saved for marriage, and that this was holy writ from the Bible.

We were both raised in evangelical purity culture, which taught strictly and without question a white, patriarchal understanding of friendships, relationships, romance, and sex. When I deviated from that understanding, because I had come to believe that God was already moving among queer people, accepting, loving, and celebrating them, it was too much of a strain on his theological framework. Since both of us had built our lives centered and grounded on building a theological framework, that strain forced him to choose between his theology and convictions and me.

He didn’t choose me.

Peace was broken.

The tranquility and solidarity of the relationship was shattered. Violence was done to each of us by losing someone we loved. There was no longer Shalom.

Christians talk a lot about peace. The peace that passes all understanding jumps most readily to mind. Most of that time, peace looks like a Christianized version of serenity now. Peace becomes a substitute for inner stillness, tranquility, quiet. And that kind of peace leads to being nice people who don’t rock the boat for the sake of other people’s peace. And when everyone has peace, we achieve a kumbaya harmony where we’re all nice to each other… but really choking on their emotions.

That is not peace.

It’s especially not the kind of peace that Jesus promised us in John 14.23-29.

Jesus has just finished a meal—Passover—with his closest followers, the ones he loves. After the bread, after the wine, after the ritual has settled down, Jesus begins talking to them, waxing eloquently and metaphysically.

This final discourse that John wrote is full of hidden meanings, thought twisting truths, and comfort to the soul. It’s a doctorial love letter to the followers of Jesus, and one thing he wants them to know for certain is that they will not be alone.

Jesus knows that the cross is where he is going. It’s the next part of his love story. He knows the disciples will scatter and deny him. He knows he will be abandoned, and the disciples will be found cowering in fear.

In an act of pure tenderness, Jesus promises these—us—cowardly apostles something that they desperately need. Jesus promises to give them peace.

Here’s the thing about that word: the disciples might very well have thought about the oppressive force of Rom when that word came gently from the lips of Christ. Rome had this thing about peace. They called it the Pax Romana, the peace of Rome. This peace was achieved through fear and intimidation and violence and the threat of death to anyone who didn’t fall in line and “keep the peace.”

The disciples knew what this peace was: the edge of a sword that kept them from rising up and overthrowing their oppressors. They knew the fear that led to “peace.”

But that isn’t peace. That is non-conflict through shock and awe.

Jesus says, “I don’t give my peace the way the systems of this world do. The peace I give you is my very presence.” Jesus’ peace was different. It wasn’t achieved through threats and intimidation. Peace was given through presence.

The peace of Christ is harmony. It’s friendship, it’s relational. Jesus’s peace isn’t about non-conflict. Jesus’ peace is the foundation of found family.

These disciples—us—were e a motley crew. Some were tax collectors, some zealots. Some were working-class men, some had ties to the high priest’s family. Some schemed and plotted to get ahead. Others were hotheaded and quick to retaliate. All in all, these weren’t people who were all prone to being friends with each other.

But Jesus made them family by telling them that he was sending this relational peace to them all, tying them together, making them more than the sum of their parts.

Jesus promises them this while he is on the cusp of death. He knows he’s going to die the death of an insurrectionist. And it is in the shadow of the cross of suffering and glory that Jesus promises the disciples peace, telling them he would never leave them orphaned. This peace he offers is his very presence made real through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost.

This peace of Christ is sustained relationship, with each other and with God.

Jesus is declaring the disciples as his found family. These are the ones he cares about… and he knows they are going to abandon and deny him. Yet, even with this reality rapidly coming true, Jesus still gives them relational harmony, knowing that whatever they do (or don’t do) cannot affect his gift. This is pre-emptive forgiveness. This is giving a gift that isn’t based on merit or goodness. This peace is grounded in reconciled diversity and forgiven failure.

See, there was nothing the apostles could do that would make Jesus break relationship with him. Jesus would never reject them, never leave them as an orphan. He chose these people to be his found family, and by the power of the Spirit, they would continue to choose each other.

This is why we pass peace in the middle of the liturgy.

We are reminded of the peace we have been given through confession and absolution. And our response? Peace and solidarity with each other. We declare that we belong together, no matter what the world thinks. We are welcomed and wanted by these other people—equally welcomed and wanted—not because of achievement, but because of pure grace.

This peace we pass, the peace of Christ, is joining our presence with Christ’s saying to the person on the other end of the offering, “you belong with me.”

I didn’t get this from Blair. I wasn’t chosen. I was rejected because I choose queer people as my family in Christ. It wasn’t just a disagreement that could be lived with. This was a fracture of a Spiritual family because I chose reconciliation and solidarity with the marginalized. I chose to be where the Spirit is, and for that I was cut off from the found family I had cultivated.

But I found a new spiritual family, one on the margins that is rich with the presence of the Spirit. Maybe the Spirit is so present precisely because it’s in the margins.

When Paul got to Macedonia in Acts.16.9-15, he and his companions—fond family for this missionary journey—headed to Phillipi. There, outside the city, in the margins, in a place of prayer, they found Lyda. Lydia was a businesswoman in a male dominated economy. She was probably not Jewish, yet she worshiped God.

She was a marginalized person. Not only a woman in the patriarchy, but she didn’t worship Roman deities, which put her at odds with the common religious practices. She wasn’t a powerful person, just a woman with a household—normally it was the man’s household, but here Lydia is treated as the head of household—trying to survive in a world that didn’t look at her as anyone of importance.

When Paul sat down and began to teach about Jesus, the Spirit was already moving in Lydia, and she listened eagerly. Lydia, along with her entire household, became one of the baptized. In her, we see the Spirit forming a found family, not shared blood or political power, but shared presence and faith. Lydia becomes not just a convert, but a spiritual matriarch. A leader. A homemaker for the church born in the margins.

The Spirit didn’t lead Paul to Rome to shout his message of God’s peace to the emperor. No, the Spirit—indeed the peace of God—led Paul to Macedonia, to Phillipi, to Lydia, and in the margins where he found her, he found the Spirit.

See, God’s spirit, this peace of relationship and solidarity, doesn’t sit on the thrones of power. This Spirit doesn’t circulate in the halls of government, passing nationalistic laws that force morality and exclusion. This Spirit doesn’t seek to get the best spot in the business world at the expense of everyone else. No, the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost, indwells the margins, the very people Jesus came to be with, indeed, to be one of. It’s in the margins we learn what found family truly is. Among those the world considers unimportant, the Spirit of peace is working to create relationships rooted in Shalom.

When we are rejected and oppressed, when we suffer and are pushed out of the room, we are forced to discover and develop a new community, one not centered in power but instead founded in choice. This is what Jesus did with his disciples. He bound them together by choice and sent them out into the margins, knowing that their strength was in their weakness because in weakness, the oppressive systems that fuel with a false peace based on fear have no control over you. In weakness, we become ungovernable, and in being ungovernable, we discover our true power, that together we are mighty.

I still live with the pain of a found family lost. I’ll always live with that loss—unless by some miracle Blair and I are reconciled. But, even living with that loss, I have new found family. I choose them and they choose me, and in that choosing we are living examples of the Peace of Christ, that shalom of solidarity.

So, look to the margins, to the outskirts, to those rejected by the oppressors and the powerful. There you will learn what it means to build a found family, to live in peace, to stand in solidarity with each other and to be something greater than the sum of our parts.