TransPreacher

Sermon preached at Pride Worship, June 16, 2023, at Broad Street United Methodist Church.

Isaiah 43:18-19

Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.

God is a trouble maker.

God never leaves well enough alone.

God who is always creating, a Risen Christ who is always redeeming, a Holy Spirit who all is always moving.

But why?

Why doesn’t God just let things be?

I believe it is because God is always inviting us to expand our understanding of what it means to love:

• What it means to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength
  • What it means to love our neighbor, love the stranger, love the enemy
    • What it means to love the person who is often the hardest to love, the one we see in the mirror… ourselves

God keeps nudging us to draw the circle of inclusion wider, to learn to view every person that we see as the neighbor, to not only show grace and compassion to others but to believe that we deserve it for ourselves… we are called to love.

Love sounds like a warm, sentimental feeling that fills us up, but to live an ethic of love in the spirit of people like Dr King is hard work.

It is to dare to practice love in the face of violence. It is to dare to believe in love even when there all that you see is hatred.

This is God’s word spoken to a people living in exile.

Through the prophet Isaiah, God says:

Do not remember the former things,
   or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing;
   now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness
   and rivers in the desert.

These sound like pretty words, the kind you might find monogrammed on a pillow or on a plaque in an office. But in fact they are tough words.

Do not remember the former things, the things of old? For these people in exile, is the message to not remember Jerusalem, the sacredness of the temple, the Promised Land?

God says, I am going to do a new thing, don’t you perceive it? No, we often don’t. When we are in the midst of struggles and injustices, it is hard to perceive that God is there at all, let alone that God is about to do a new thing.

When the Defense of Marriage Act was passed in 1996, outlawing federal recognition of same sex unions, it was hard to imagine that God would be doing a new thing. At that low moment, no one could have ever predicted that in less than 20 years from that marriage equality would become the law of the land and that people of all genders and orientations would be able to marry. God was doing a new thing, I believe that only the work of the Holy Spirit could bring a change that quickly.

We’ve never done it this way before.

When we last met in person as reconciling United Methodists in 2019, it was months after a special called general conference. A general conference many of us hoped would be a turning point toward inclusion but became a doubling down to exclusion. I will never forget that final vote at the general conference, as LGBT+ observers were locked out of the hall. As votes were being taken to set our church on a harmful path, you could hear fists pounding on the doors and cries and wales of pain. A minute after this finished, we had our scheduled Tuesday evening Bible study at the Church for All People and we shared our pain, our disappointment, our lament.

There was no way in that moment that I could see that God was doing a new thing. Here we are, four years later. In last year’s jurisdictional conferences across the country, the only people elected to the position of bishop were those who took an open and active stand for inclusion of LGBT+ people.

We’ve never done it this way before.

Just a couple of weeks ago, we passed the first recommendations in the history West Ohio Annual Conference to move us toward full inclusion. Something that would’ve been inconceivable four years ago. This work was done thanks to the decades of sacrifices by allies such as Grayson Atha and Jim Waugh and people who put their careers on the line like David Meredith, Angie Cox, and John Girard.

We’ve never done it this way before.

In 2009, Rev David Weekely was the first transgender United Methodist elder to come out. His sharing was supported by his local congregation but his email became filled with threats and hate mail. People wanted to bring him up on charges. He faced significant backlash.

On January 1st of this year I fully and publicly came out in a sermon at the Church for All People and was met with standing ovations, my relationships with church members has deepened, as I mentioned I openly spoke from the floor of annual conference without retribution.

God is doing a new thing.

For many years, for many decades, I denied myself to myself. I was uncomfortable in my own skin, uncomfortable with my reflection in the mirror, unconnected form the name given to me at birth. But I learned to put on a mask and survive.

But God loves us too much to leave us alone.

God loves us too much to let us hide behind our masks.

Today I stand before you as a new creation in Christ. As Isaiah declares:
he has clothed me with the garments of salvation,
   he has covered me with the princess dress of righteousness,
  as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

God has done a new thing in me

            God has given me life

                        God has caused me to spring forth

We’ve never done it this way before and thank God for that!                      

So let us join with God in becoming holy troublemakers.

Let us embody the spirit of people like John Lewis who caused some good trouble.

For there is still work to be done. Because of the work of God’s Holy Spirit, we have come a long way in a short amount of time, but there is a lot to be done. Hundreds of anti-trans bills have been proposed all across our country and in our own Ohio statehouse. Churches remain places of judgment. A bumper sticker reads, “kids are safer at drag shows than at church”.

And despite as far as we have come, we still haven’t learned to fully love each other or ourselves yet.

So let us continue to shine in our rainbow glory.

Let us march in parades and work for justice and hear the voice of crowds cheering for who God created us to be.

Let us offer gifts of love and joy into the world.

We have never done it this way before and that is how God’s kindom will come on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.