A sermon in three Acts. Act I: Kings
My imposter syndrome has many layers.
As someone who was raised in the Roman Catholic Church and ordained in the Episcopal Church, the nagging voice in my head (or the actual voice of my grandmother) -- but are you a _real_ priest? As a trans woman who has transitioned socially but not yet medically, am I trans enough? Am I feminine enough? As someone who has been in awe of the Catholic Worker movement all my life but makes my living as an economics professor in the suburbs, am I radical enough, am I liberation-oriented enough to belong at St. Peter's? As someone who got a perfect score on my PSAT but haven't really built any of the humane institutions I aspired to see built in the world, have I done enough with the potential God gave me? The worries that I'm an imposter, the doubts that I'm not enough to belong here -- they're constant.
By contrast, me as the speaker here today for Pride Sunday is totally different sort of fear that I don't belong. I'm definitely queer. As a trans person in 2025, no one would say "oh, you're just mainstream." I'm just so new at this -- at being out, at publicly acknowledging my queerness -- at seeing Pride month not as an occasion for fear that people might figure out that I'm not straight, but as an occasion to embrace, dare I even say celebrate the way God created me -- Pride Month is definitely for me, but I am just so new at this that I wonder if some other speaker today might have more to offer. But here we go:
In our first lesson, Elijah said to Elisha, "Tell me what I may do for you before I am taken from you." Elisha said, "Please let me inherit a double share of your spirit." He responded, "You have asked a hard thing, yet if you see me as I am being taken from you, it will be granted you; if not, it will not."
Legends have gone before us, whose mantles have struck the waters, parting them that we might pass through on dry ground.
We are enough. We are not the great ones of old who went before us, but we are God's people for our own day. But we stand where we stand because of those who went before us, because of those whose spirit we inherit. Our struggles for justice, for liberation, for life carry on because we inherit the spirit, perhaps even a double share, from those who struggled before us.
Yesterday, we celebrated a wedding here at Saint Peter's. Two beloved members of this congregation are now married, and both the church and the state recognize that union. Hallelujah! It has not always been thus.
On July 22, 1997, three same-sex couples in the State of Vermont filed a lawsuit claiming that their local communities' refusal to issue them marriage licenses violated the Vermont Constitution's equal protection clause. While six people filed the suit against the state and three municipalities within the state, the suit became known as Baker et alii (a Latin phrase meaning "and others") versus Vermont et alii, or more commonly, Baker v. Vermont.
On December 20, 1999, after a lengthy journey through the state court system, the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that the denial of marriage benefits to same-sex partners was a violation of the state constitution. The creation of civil partnerships in Vermont was a massive step toward marriage equality in this country. This week marked the ten year anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges. Why then am I talking about Baker v. Vermont, which only applied to the state of Vermont, and didn't go all the way to allowing same sex partnerships to call themselves marriage?
Our struggles for justice, for liberation, for life carry on because we inherit the spirit, perhaps even a double share, from those who struggled before us.
This past Monday, The Ven. J. Stannard Baker, deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of Vermont serving at the cathedral in Burlington died unexpectedly of a heart attack at the age of 79. I met Stan at General Convention last year. He chaired the liturgy and music committee, and I attended all the committee meetings. As I attended day after day of the 7am meetings, he started to recognize me there in the gallery and we got to talking. I can't say we were close friends, but we got to work together, and when he ran for a seat on the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church, I spend a good part of the week talking up his candidacy to anyone who would listen, and he was indeed elected. We remained in touch via Facebook since then. Other friends of mine had been in a zoom meeting with him hours before his sudden death. We are all shocked. Stan was a tireless advocate for the "all the sacraments for all the people" movement, striving for marriage equality within the church. And Stan Baker was the lead plaintiff in the case Baker v. Vermont filed 29 years ago that got the ball rolling. Few people can claim to have done as much both for inclusive marriage rights r-i-g-h-t-s and inclusive marriage rites r-i-t-e-s than Stan. May we inherit a double share of his spirit.
Our struggles for justice, for liberation, for life carry on because we inherit the spirit, perhaps even a double share, from those who struggled before us. Rest in peace, Stan. We carry on your struggle.
Act II: Galatians
I was slightly amused when I saw that this reading from Galatians was prescribed by the lectionary for the day we had selected as Pride Sunday. While not one of the core six "clobber passages" of scripture often weaponized against queer folx, it's certainly "clobber-adjacent." It makes no direct reference to queerness or homosexuality. But it does say that the works of the flesh are obvious: sexual immorality, impurity, et cetera.
Even the notorious Revised Standard Version didn't translate any of these words as "homosexuality," a word that hadn't appeared in a bible translation before 1952. It takes a certain circular logic to make this a condemnation of queerness: If queerness is inherently sexual immorality or impurity, then in this passage, queerness is condemned as one of the works of the flesh, as opposed to the works of the spirit.
Without that circular reasoning, though, this passage from Galatians, with its commandment to love one another, and not devour one another, isn't anti-queer in any meaningful sense. If we start from the premise that anything described as unclean in Leviticus is inherently immoral, this passage would be telling us that having Pride Sunday -- a Sunday where we celebrate that we are proud of how God chose to create each of us -- is a bad thing. But if we take seriously the revelation to Peter in Acts 10 that distinguishes Levitical prohibitions against evil from Levitical prohibitions against uncleanliness, and commands us to not call anything impure that which God has made clean -- in that moral framework, non-hegemonic sexuality is no longer by definition "sexual immorality," and queer folx can be guided by this letter to the Galatians just as much as straight people.
So if we're not going to just say that sexual immorality is whatever it is that those icky queer people do, wink wink nudge nudge, then what _is_ this sexual immorality that is a work of flesh, and how is it different from loving one another, which is a fruit of the spirit? What is "gratifying the desires of the flesh" and what is "love, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness?"
Human sexuality, be it queer or straight, seems to have a lot to do with both the very real desires of the flesh, but also with loving one another in a way that can involve kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness. How do we, both queer and straight folx, deal with this distinction if we throw out the overly simplistic and harmful answer that "when married straight folx do it, it's holy, but for everybody else it's icky"?
Certainly consent is a beginning of the line between moral and immoral sexuality. Unless someone freely and enthusiastically consents, it is immoral to conscript them into someone else's sexual activity.
But that isn't the only line. That which is not enthusiastically consensual is immoral, but not everything that is consensual automatically becomes moral. A second piece that perhaps ironically is more relevant to people in heterosexual goings-on than many queer pairings is about the moral weight of creating human life.
Children deserve love and support. Sexual activity that doesn't take into account the serious responsibility of loving and caring for the children it may produce can be a failure to love -- not love of one's partner, but love for one's children. Queer activity that is erotic but not reproductive doesn't have this particular moral barrier, which means that despite the traditional presumption that "when married straight folx do it, it's holy, but for everybody else it's icky," queer sexuality might be actually less likely to be immoral than straight sexuality for this reason.
But there's a third dimension as well. Sexuality might be consensual, and not creating babies who don't get the love they deserve, and loving and faithful and generous and gentle and all that, but still be problematic for the same reason that any other good, pleasurable, enjoyable thing in creation can be problematic: it is always possible for one good thing to happen to the detriment of other good things. Just because something is good doesn't mean it is our calling. The cornerstone of this building is inscribed with a Latin phrase I learned well from my time teaching among the Jesuits: "ad majoram dei gloriam" -- to the _greater_ glory of God. Too much of one good thing can take away from our call to another greater good thing. If we spend too much time focusing on enjoying good food, or watching good television shows, or getting good rest, or, yes, engaging in good erotic activity, all these things are good, but they cease to be good if they distract us from other, perhaps higher good that we are called to do. Pleasures of the flesh -- be they culinary, erotic, sensual, artistic, material, or whatever -- are not inherently bad -- indeed, they can be very, very good, but not when the passions of the flesh become an obsession with that which is enjoyable to the extent that we are distracted and prevented from the other service God calls us to do in the world. Very few people have trouble choosing between good and bad. The challenge is to choose between two things that both have a component of good to them.
Which bring us to Act III: The Gospel
This following Jesus thing is serious business.
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head. Let the dead bury their own dead, but as for you, go and proclaim the reign of God. No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the reign of God.
This whole "Pride in being the person God created me to be" thing is urgent because the Gospel takes everything we've got. And this is where I feel not an imposter but rather uniquely **qualified** to preach on an occasion like this, because I know from experience all too well that if we're not at peace with who we are, if we aren't ready to celebrate how God created us, if we're not proud of being whom God made -- it's a distraction from the work God has for us. If even a year or two ago someone told me I'd voluntarily preach a section of a sermon about sexual immorality when curling up in a hole and dying instead was an alternative, I would not have believed them. We can't talk about scripture authentically until we are at peace with whom God made us to be.
We need to be proud of God's creation because proclaiming the Good News will take nothing less than our whole authentic being. When we're afraid that people might see our authentic selves, we don't bring our whole authentic selves to God's work. We've got our hand on the plow, but we're always looking back over our shoulder, afraid that if we do this or that in service to the Gospel, people might find out who we really are.
I know this. I've lived this.
When I was afraid that people would figure out that the person God made that was me wasn't a straight, cis-heterosexual male, I was less able to proclaim the Good News with all my being. Because I needed to hide my being -- from others and from myself. If I didn't believe that God loved me -- just as God created me -- how can I authentically tell everyone else that God loves them too, just as they are. Now is God calling me to transform? Of course. God loves us as we are, and God calls us to grow to new things. Is God calling me to sexuality? Is God calling me to be a nun? What does God have in store for me? I have no idea. Discernment is ongoing, thanks be to God. But I can only commit to the journey when I can be proud of what God has created in me.
We celebrate Pride Sunday not because we indulge the desires of the flesh and exalt ourselves, as some critics of Pride events seem to think. We are proud not of our own works, but of our God, who created each of us, from the malest male to the femalest female and everything in between. The God who separated light from darkness and made the dawn and dusk sing for joy looked at this beautiful, diverse creation, with all sorts of genders and all sorts of sexualities, and all sorts of diversity of every imaginable dimension, and says that it is very, very good. We celebrate that today. We are proud to be a part of what God hath wrought: we are each a beloved part of this creation, so dearly loved and cherished by our creator God. Amen.
