 by the Rev. Ted Thornton
In Luke 10:9, Jesus instructs the seventy missionaries he’s sending out to spread the gospel with these words, “...say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you.’ “ Imagine you’re a member of an updated 21st century group of “Seventy” called to go out into today’s world this coming week to proclaim this message. How will you choose to describe the kingdom of God to those who don’t know or don’t like God-talk? Is this assignment crazy? Think of what the original Seventy might have thought, especially after listening to Jesus admonish them about the resistance they were likely to encounter in a Roman province infamous for its hostility to Jews and Judaism. Jesus could not have put the danger more bluntly: “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves (Luke 10:3).” Failure is at least in part assumed. Now remember: Jesus, like some of his Jewish contemporaries, was an apocalyptic prophet who didn’t think the world had much time to get itself ready to meet God. I don’t think many of us today really think that way or live that way. We more closely resemble Mark Twain, who said, “When the end of the world comes, I want to be in Kentucky. They're always twenty years behind everything.” (Apologies to Kentucky!) In any case, most of us live our lives as if tomorrow will come and all too fast with its litany of first-of-the-work-week challenges. So, you should think about the words you will use in your preaching about the kingdom of God. For starters, is “kingdom” even the right word for our times? The evangelists after all didn’t take the Greek word basileia - “king” - literally to mean a person with a crown - so much as a realm or domain within us and between us [our Godly household or oikumene as depicted on the Whiteman window over the altar], the physical, emotional, and spiritual space we inhabit through which God’s love moves or tries to move if only we will let it. After all, haven’t we in our times had enough of kings actual and wannabe? “No Kings, no kings!,” shouted five million people across this country as they marched a few weeks ago on Flag Day, June 14, 2025. The “kingdom of God” is a communal attitude, an orientation, a sphere of action, a commitment to live a Godly life. And so, a growing number of Christians think a better translation of “kingdom of God” is “realm of God”: “realm” because that word conveys better the conviction that God’s presence is found in the way we conduct our everyday lives, not in the symbols of crown, scepter, and absolute power as we see them in history. This brings us to the most important question of all for how we might best proclaim the realm of God in our times: which is more important, proclaiming Jesus’ as our personal savior, or performing acts of loving kindness for others (what Jews call chesed)? Both themes are present in the New Testament: emphasis on right actions in the synoptic gospels and emphasis on belief in Jesus as savior in John. Have the meanings of love and belief changed since New Testament times? Actually, members of the early Church drew no distinction between Godly love and belief. They regarded practicing loving kindness toward others as the primary way we express our belief or faith in God and God’s son Christ Jesus. They didn’t think you could separate belief in Jesus from doing what Jesus told us to do: to treat one another with loving kindness. A reading of the Sermon on the Mount [Matthew 5-7] makes this pretty clear. We express our belief and our faith in Jesus by behaving lovingly, compassionately, mercifully, and in the spirit of forgiveness toward one another. Martin Thielen, a retired Southern Baptist minister put it this way, “At its core, authentic spirituality is not about beliefs. It’s about behavior.” Rev. Thielen cites a scene from The Americans, a TV drama that aired from 2013 to 2018 in which one of the characters asks, “What if you don’t believe in God, or religion, or prayer? Her friend responds, “None of those things matter. All that matters is how we treat each other.” And, this corresponds to the dominant theme that unites both the synoptic gospels and John. The Great Commandment in Matthew 22:36-40 - “Love God and love your neighbor” - fits tongue and groove with John 13:34, where Jesus tells his disciples, "A new commandment I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another." Rev. Thielen concludes, “This ‘new’ commandment is a call to us to love each other in the same way that Jesus loved his disciples and the world. It emphasizes the importance of practical acts of love, kindness, and service within the Christian community and in the world at large.” This isn’t an easy fit for us in a world where zero sum thinking is the day to day “kingdom” we live in. Nevertheless, we Christians, the new Seventy, are called to challenge this plague of zero sum thinking that infects our relations with one another. Damien Cave wrote in a recent Op-Ed piece in the New York Times (March 1, 2025, “Welcome to the Zero Sum Era. Now How Do We Get Out?“). Mr. Cave challenges the notion that the best outcome is winner takes all. How much saner and productive for all of us to work toward an outcome built upon collaboration and cooperation, where benefits and risks are shared across the board.The belief that life is a battle over finite rewards where gains for one mean losses for another has no place in the realm of God. Here’s a final problem for the new Seventy. Does the realm of God within us expect us and others to be perfect? This obsessive and cruel pursuit has spawned more bloodshed than any other philosophical and political doctrine in history. Think of Robespierre in France (as many as 17,000 heads fell to the guillotine), Lenin and Stalin in Communist Russia (thirty million dead), Pol Pot in Cambodia (seven million dead), and the worst of them all, Mao in China where an estimated sixty-million starved to death during Mao’s “Great Leap Forward,” sacrificed in the pursuit of a perfect society. Each of these leaders believed in the perfectibility of human behavior. Consider how at least one of these enterprises ended: the French Revolution finishes with Napoleon crowning himself emperor, a far more absolute ruler than the king whose head they cut off. It took France nearly a century, until the Third Republic came into being in 1870, to usher in a more stable form of democracy. We have badly misunderstood what Jesus meant when he says in Matthew 5:48, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect." I’m among those who think that translation is again the problem here, especially when taken out of context. In Matthew 5:48, the Greek word translated as "perfect" is τέλειος (teleios). Instead of perfect, a better translation is the goal of completeness, maturity, or wholeness, not faultlessness or sinlessness, and certainly not literal perfection. Jesus certainly didn’t think perfection was a reachable end. He dramatically illustrates this point when he tells the mob that’s about to stone the adulterous woman to death in John 8:7, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone.” What Jesus means is that we are to strive to love one another as God loves us, and here’s the important part: to love one another without prejudice or partiality, not favoring one religion or race over another, or one sexual orientation over another, and to do so even if we can’t do it perfectly. And, when we fail, as we’re bound to, to confess our failure and ask God and those we’ve offended to forgive us.This is how the realm of God works, folks. The expectation that we will fail or make mistakes along the way is built right in. It’s one of the fundamental articles in the Constitution of the realm of God. The late poet and singer Leonard Cohen expressed this beautifully in his song, Anthem. “Ring the bells that still can ring, Forget your perfect offering, There is a crack, a crack in everything, That's how the light gets in.” Your light, my light, our light; we shine through our cracks, our shortcomings, our errors, our vulnerabilities, not through our vain and selfish fantasies of perfection. Good luck and Blessings as you go forth this coming week to proclaim and live in the realm of God. Amen.
0 Comments
sermon by lay minister, alyssa kai “This is another day, O Lord. I know not what it will bring forth, but make me ready, Lord, for whatever it may be. If I am to stand up, help me to stand bravely. If I am to sit still, help me to sit quietly. If I am to lie low, help me to do it patiently. And if I am to do nothing, let me do it gallantly. Make these words more than words, and give me the Spirit of Jesus. Amen.” Hi everyone! I’m usually in a back pew, up in the loft, or sick at home on the livestream, so it’s really nice to share space with you today—much less speak to you directly. Before I begin, I want to thank all of you, for being my church; Heather, for the chance to speak; and my friend jay, for helping me sort through my thoughts when the topic overwhelmed me. Today’s readings place us in a constellation of distances from God—in the wilderness, in the sound of sheer silence, in the multitude, in bone-breaking mockery—and nowhere do I feel closer to God than in Galations 3:28. “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”1 This line is what I want to speak with you. I want to dwell with you in a vision of boundaries broken and brokenness healed. I long to expound with you a pearl of wisdom from poet Julian K. Jarboe: "God blessed me by making me transsexual for the same reason God made wheat but not bread and fruit but not wine, so that humanity might share in the act of creation."2 Paul, who I wrestle and argue and beef with so often, sent this beam of undisguisable love across two millenia directly to me and my trans siblings. I want to bask, dream, and rejoice with you in God’s love that frees us, God’s love which dispatches the strict binaries that bind our life, God’s love which throws open all prison doors and gathers everyone into unending jubilee. I cannot speak with you about Galations today. Instead let’s voyage to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where we will meet a man possessed. He used to have a home, clothing, a community. Now, he is alone, nude, covered in scars and open wounds where he has harmed himself. He lives, ritually unclean, among the long-dead, not far from a herd of as many as two thousand pigs. More than once, his community attempted to bind him in chains and shackles so he would not cause harm to anyone. But he could not be bound; binding could not help him any more than it could contain him. When he broke free, did he flee solely at the demons’ whim? Did he flee in shame, or for his life, from a community whose only intervention on his behalf was imprisoning him? Whether by his own actions, by the will of the demons, or by the abdication by his community, Jesus finds him as one theologian said “dehumanized, animalized, marginalized.”3 And suddenly, as so often happens in the midst of our suffering, before we know how, or why, or what it means: here’s Jesus. The man recognizes him, who he truly is, what he’s capable of, and he cries out (in the Greek) “what to me and to you”—perhaps “what business do you have with me,” or “what have I done to deserve this,” or “why are you dragging me into this?” We could read this story dozens of ways. We could contrast this passage with its immediate predecessor—the settling of the stormy sea—and admire Jesus’ power over both the natural and supernatural4. We could focus particularly on Jesus’ unflappable calmness in both scenarios. We could decide the man suffers from mental illness5; we could decide that mental illnesses are literal demons, and maybe so are parental disobedience, or autism, or transgenderism6. We could blame the man for his pagan religion, or for some unnamed sin, which allowed the demons to more easily enter him7. We could praise the man as Jesus’ first apostle to the gentiles8. We could read a veiled critique of the Roman regime, and celebrate the metaphorical self-destruction of the occupying forces as the pigs charge into their lake. In other words, we could substitute “demonic possession” for “colonial occuption.”9 We could retreat to celebrate a story of healing, ignoring the real corpses floating in the water. We could even claim, as Aquinas and Augustine did, that Christians have no moral duty to animals1011. All of these explanations suffer from the same terrible choice; we have so many stories we could tell about someone else’s wretched suffering. Perhaps that’s the point. The philosopher René Girard focused on this passage specifically in his 1992 text The Scapegoat. Girard describes the possessed man liberated from chains yet captive from madness, among the tombs yet alive, a collapse wherein “there is no longer any difference between life and death, freedom and captivity.” He holds the man’s community responsible. They tell Jesus to leave after the possessed man has been freed; whatever their direct reasons, economic or sociopolitical, they have been deeply disturbed by the loss of their scapegoat, not his healing. To Girard, the stones the man used on himself were the same ones the community might have used on him otherwise. Alone or in community, his punishment becomes unavoidable, all chains and stones, in what Girard calls the “scapegoat mechanism.”12 In preparing for today, I thought of scapegoats, and I certainly cried for the demoniac. I also cried for the pigs. In Girard’s view, Jesus sent the demons into the pigs to symbolically sacrifice the crowd for the individual, rather than the one for the many, thus breaking the scapegoat mechanism by inversion. This reading is not literal enough for me. I cried for the intelligent, social, friendly animals who were forced to bear the weight of great evil. I imagined my life, bearing the mantle of “ritually unclean,” being made an example of on the shores of Galilee. I imagined the pigs’ minds overtaken by self-destructive impulses driving them to oblivion; and, I imagined them fleeing from horrific pain the only way they knew how. Pigs can swim—on that day on the shore they were forced, or chose, not to13. I cried for the scapegoats. I was reminded of my people. I cried for a world not ready for Paul’s Letter to the Galations. I would submit that modern American political life has selected a few groups to be prime public scapegoats. Among them are our undocumented neighbors, Palestinians, and transgender people. I can only speak for one among these, and I do not mean to elevate my people’s suffering over any other. But I asked Heather for the chance to speak today to try to convey just how bad things are right now for us. Let’s trace a path in numbers. In 2015, 21 anti-trans bills entered state legislatures. Some of these bills banned youth trans healthcare, criminalize drag, prosecuted parents or teachers supporting their kids, banned trans care for adults, restricted bathroom and sports access, banned drag performance in public, or restricted schools from discussing gender identity at all. In 2016, there were 55; in 2017, 37; 2018, 30; 2019, 32. Then in 2020 there were 91, the most ever, roughly the same as the past three years combined. In 2021, we saw 144 anti-trans bills enter state legislature; 18 passed. In 2022, 174 bills introduced, 26 passed; in 2023, 615 bills introduced including 40 first-ever national bills, 87 passed; in 2024, 701 bills, 51 passed; and thus far in 2025, halfway through the year, 937 bills14. Ten times as many as 2020 already. For example: in 2023 the Utah legislation passed a ban on gender affirming care for youth, pending a further report. At the time, Governor Cox described the bill as “pausing” treatments “until more and better research can help determine the long-term consequences.” Because despite the clear, peer-reviewed evidence affirmed by The American Academy of Pediatrics, The Endocrine Society, The World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and The Society for Adolescent Health & Medicine, despite a small population of trans youth on hormones or hormone blockers15, despite regret rates for surgical intervention around the 1 to 2% far lower than almost all elective surgeries16, despite many millenia of gender expression beyond the binary, despite over a century of modern trans healthcare, there is never truth enough for our critics. Utah’s report came out this year, and affirmed that youth gender medicine is a public good associated with positive outcomes; the Utah legislature appears unlikely to act on it. According to Governor Cox: “there doesn’t seem to be an appetite to readdress it.”17. Laws follow rhetoric. As early as July 2022, the Trump campaign realized they could garner excessive applause for demonizing pediatric gender medicine, trans healthcare for prisoners and the undocumented, and trans women in sports or bathrooms18. A year ago, the gruesome “Kamala is for they/them, president Trump is for YOU” political advertisements entered circulation; I hope you did not have to see them. Since inauguration, executive orders have referred to “the invented concept of “gender identity,”” “taxpayer funding of gender experimentation,” “ideologues us[ing] legal and other socially coercive means to permit men to self-identify as women,” “radical gender ideology to appease activists,” “endanger[ing], humilat[ing], and silencing of women and girls,” “force[ing] Christians to affirm radical transgender ideology against their faith,” and, in reference to gender youth medicine, “Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.”19 Fox news aired 424 weekday segments about trans athletes over four months—the number of trans athletes in this country can be, at the highest estimate, around 100.20 I was one of them, over a decade ago in the midwest; it was pretty bad, it boggles my mind how bad it would be now. The state of Florida has been allowed to medically detransition trans prisoners under its care21. Lawmakers have routinely blamed trans people without evidence for helicopter crashes and mass shootings22. A few weeks ago a trans woman in Philadelphia, who I undoubtedly share friends with, suffered an acid attack at the hands of a group of children. Children who were not born with this hatred; children who were taught. With state bans forcing young people into a body they know isn’t theirs, many of my people have become refugees in their own country, fleeing to states like Massachusetts, or—if they can manage—fleeing the country entirely. And the current senate budget reconciliation bill currently bans trans healthcare for approximately 275,000 trans people on Medicaid—myself included. I would rather not enter menopause at 33, and thankfully that’s the worst I’ll face; but many of my siblings are faced with the choice to detransition or die. That’s the point—to eradicate trans people from public life entirely. That’s all I had to report when I finished my draft last week. Then last Monday the president’s son called trans people “the most violent domestic terror threat if not in America, probably the entire world.” On Tuesday, a court temporarily allowed trans people to renew their passports with their gender marker; our passports had previously been categorically denied. Last Tuesday night, the administration ended a program of the 988 suicide hotline service which provided queer-focused counseling for queer people via the Trevor Project. Trans people in transphobic societies are at extremely high risk for suicide--that is the public health crisis here—and as a survivor who’s lost many friends, this news stung intensely. I went to bed, woke up Wednesday morning, and the Supreme Court declared Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for trans minors, SB1, constitutional. (The law still allows hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgical intervention for cisgender (non-transgender) children with a variety of conditions.) In the court’s view, SB1 does not discriminate care based on whether or not a patient is transgender; it simply prevents doctors from treating gender dysphoria, the thing that transgender people get treated for, which is somehow different. Justice Roberts affirmed SB1's goal to "protect minors from physical and emotional harm" by "encouraging minors to appreciate" rather than "become disdainful of" their bodies; in other words, conversion therapy: protect them from being trans by making them not23. I am telling you all of this for two reasons. First: I frankly do not see an organized political body who is ready to unilaterally defend us. Some liberal leaders have demonstrated only symbolic and conditional support of trans lives; some are willing to abandon this scapegoat on the other end of the culture war. The New York Times, for example, has repeatedly fomented, laundered, and rebroadcasted a gender-critical voices, anti-trans talking points, and skepticism of the clear, scientific, demonstrable reality that youth gender medicine is a good thing24. Their reporting has been in turn cited in many court cases, including Wednesday’s supreme court ruling. When that ruling came out, a Democratic leader called it "cruel," and then "an attempt to divert attention from ripping away healthcare from millions of Americans."25 As if we, also, aren’t millions of Americans. These days I am often reminded of something someone once said about the words of our enemies and the silence of our friends. But more importantly, I am telling you this much in the way that Luke tells us of the scars and wounds on the Demoniac’s body—because God’s work of healing necessitates understanding the illness. I want to affirm and remember with you what is is real, and what is true. I have no creed to offer you, but I have a few things I can tell you. God blessed me with a fat, trans, and disabled body. Hormone blockers, hormone therapy, and surgical intervention has saved my life, saved my friends lives’, saved my peoples’ lives. There is an obvious, uncontroversial, manifest reality that transgender people exist and benefit from trans healthcare at any any age. There are people who benefit from lying, from treating the truth as controversial. They do this out of fear, out of revulsion, out of academic ambivalence, and above all because it gives them power. I pray for them whenever I can. It is not inevitable that trans people must be treated this way, not some unavoidable backlash nor necessary consequence to so-called progress, anymore than it is inevitable that humans scapegoat each other. To follow Jesus is to reject the inevitability of the scapegoat. We do not believe in a good guy superhero Jesus who came here to cast out the bad guys. We believe in a Jesus who finds the broken things and heals them. I was a miserable, suicidal child, and I was healed by God’s love, puberty blockers, and exogenous estrogen. God did not ask me to change who I was or what I needed; God was in the healing. And I and you and all of us are called to reject the inevitable seeming earthly things and cast our hearts and hands to deeper certainty. I imagine the man, formerly possessed, standing on the shore of Galilee as Jesus and his followers leave on foot, or in boat, by a sea of corpses. The man turns back around and sees his community— we can only imagine their joy, or their fear, or something in between, at his transformation. As he walks toward them I am reminded that many things are inevitable in this life, but welcome is not. We do not get see the brokenness between this man and his community healed. We only know that he told the truth about what happened to him as honestly as he could, so that people would understand. We are in the position of his community today; we must choose to welcome. And we can take heart that gender variance, gender trouble, is at least as old and as rich as the bible we hold dear. We can hear it in the Song of Songs, the “labor pains” in Galations 4, women putting on Christ’s body in Ephesians 5, the eunuchs of Matthew 19 and Acts 8, Jael’s fraught tale in Judges 4 to 5, the promise of Isaiah 56, in Joseph’s coat and in Deborah’s ways26, an infinite becoming in every direction. What I am has not always been; something like me always has. I wish to move with you, the Body of Christ, through this challenging time to, as we like to say here, “God’s dream for this world.” I hope we can carry each other across the need for a trans scapegoat that possesses us, across the victimization and brokenness waged upon our neighbors, toward a world more less like the Gerasene, and more like Galations. 1 NRSVUE, my preferred translation, an opinion I’ve borrowed entirely from my friend jay, whom I love dearly.
2 Daniel Mallory Ortberg, quoting Julian K. Jarboe. 2020. Something That May Shock and Discredit You. New York: Atria Books. 3 Hughes, R. Kent. 2013. Luke : That You May Know the Truth. Wheaton: Crossway. p. 313. 4 cf “Lesson 37: Christ’s Transforming Power (Luke 8:26-39).” Lesson 37: Christ’s Transforming Power (Luke 8:26- 39) | Bible.org. Accessed June 9, 2025. https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-37-christ%E2%80%99s-transforming power-luke-826-39. 5 cf Born, Jane. 2024. “Demons and Diagnoses: Understanding Mark 5 and Mental Illnesses.” Sanctuary Mental Health Ministries. April 12, 2024. https://sanctuarymentalhealth.org/2024/04/12/demons-and-diagnoses understanding-mark-5-and-mental-illnesses/. 6 cf Greenwell, Andrew M. 2025. “Oh Gender, Thy Name Is Legion.” Catholic Online. 2025. https://www.catholic.org/news/hf/family/story.php?id=51873. 7 cf MacArthur, John. Luke 6-10: MacArthur New Testament Commentary. Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2011. 8 cf Wright, T. (2001). Mark for Everyone. p. 57. 9 McKenzie, Alyce. 2013. “My Name Is Legion, What’s Yours? Reflections on Luke 8:26-39.” Patheos.com. June 17, 2013. https://www.patheos.com/progressive-christian/name-is-legion-alyce-mckenzie-06-18-2013. 10 Spalde, Annika; Strindlund, Pelle (2012). "Doesn't Jesus Treat Animals as Property?". In York, T.; Alexis-Baker, A.; Bekoff, M.; McLaren, B. (eds.). A Faith Embracing All Creatures: Addressing Commonly Asked Questions about Christian Care for Animals. Peaceable Kingdom Series. Wipf & Stock Publishers. p. 102. 11 As a heavily junior biblical scholar, I can’t claim to have read through all of these arguments as thoughtfully as I’d like, nor to have dredged up a representative sample through research. I relied heavily on the commentaries collected by the website Precept Austin ( https://www.preceptaustin.org/luke-8-commentary#8:26) as well as some sources found via Wikipedia—the last refuge of the too-tired. If you’d like to chat about the passage and your own reading, or have a study bible you recommend, find me after service sometime. 12 René Girard. 1992. The Scapegoat. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. 167-183. I take issue with some of Girard’s approach here; he makes some comments about the nature of religion and “Middle Eastern Cultures” that I find inaccurate and unhelpful at best. 13 Aaberg, Nathan. 2018. “Demons and Pigs - a Fresh Look.” Whole Faith Living Earth. August 20, 2018. https://www.wholefaithlivingearth.com/demons-and-pigs-fresh-look/. 14 “2025 Anti-Trans Bills: Trans Legislation Tracker.” 2025. Trans Legislation Tracker. 2025. https://translegislation.com/. 15 Redfield, Elana. 2025. “Impact of Ban on Gender-Affirming Care on Transgender Minors.” Williams Institute. January 29, 2025. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/impact-gac-ban-eo/ . 16 Kidd, Kacie M., and Gina M. Sequeira. 2024. “Misinformation Related to Discontinuation and Regret among Adolescents Receiving Gender-Affirming Care.” Journal of Adolescent Health, September. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2024.08.002 . 17 “Trans Care Ban ‘in the Right Place,’ Gov. Cox Says Weeks after Utah Report Found Care Benefits Trans Youth.” 2025. The Salt Lake Tribune. June 12, 2025. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/06/12/cox-utahs-youth transgender-care/ 18 Contorno, Steve, and David Wright. 2024. “Pro-Trump Forces Flood Airwaves with Ads Attacking Harris over Past Transgender Stances.” CNN. October 18, 2024. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/18/politics/trump-transgender attack-ads-harris/index.html. 19 “2025 Anti-Trans Bills: Trans Legislation Tracker.” 2025. Trans Legislation Tracker. 2025. https://translegislation.com/. 20 “Fox News Aired More than 400 Weekday Segments Mentioning Trans Athletes over Just Four Months.” 2025. Media Matters for America. June 11, 2025. https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-aired-more-400- weekday-segments-mentioning-trans-athletes-over-just-four-months . 21 “Florida Judge Allows State Prison Officials to Withhold Medical Care for Transgender Incarcerated People.” 2025. ACLU of Florida. January 6, 2025. https://www.aclufl.org/en/press-releases/florida-judge-allows-state-prison officials-withhold-medical-care-transgender 22 Yousef, Odette. 2025. “Trump’s Anti-Trans Effort Is an Agenda Cornerstone with Echoes in History.” NPR. February 6, 2025. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5288145/trump-anti-trans-executive-order. 23 United states v. Skrmetti, Attorney General And Reporter For Tennessee, et al. No. 23-477. Argued December 5, 2024, decided June 18, 2025. 24 Please confer the Open Letter to the New York Times, published Wednesday, February 15, 2023: https://nytletter.com/ 25 Schumer, Chuck. Tweet. June 18, 2025, 10:37 AM. https://x.com/SenSchumer/status/1935346196546990398. 26 Eds. Marchal, Joseph A, Sellew, Melissa Harl & Valentine, Katy E. 2025. Trans Biblical. Westminster John Knox Press. Confer especially 14-20  By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
In just a few minutes David Santiago will be baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. And today is Trinity Sunday, where we celebrate the Trinitarian nature of our God as three distinct beings in one, and one in three. As the early Church shifted from a grassroots movement into more of an institution, those in leadership spent a lot of time debating the metaphysics of the trinity. And while I imagine that is an interesting course of study, it’s not actually what matters. We don’t need to understand how it works, but we can understand why it works. Our God, the creator of the heavens and the earth is a relational being. With creation, with all living forms, and with us, humanity. Fragile and tender, innovative and creative beings made in the image and likeness of God. Yet before that relationship comes God's relationship with their child, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. These three in one are in an eternal relationship with one another, and we, and all creation, have been invited into that relationship. From the get go God has been concerned about our relationships. With them, with one another, with this fragile earth our island home. It shows up in every verse of scripture. It shows up in God taking on human flesh to live as we live, and love as we love, in the life of Jesus. And it shows up in the Spirit, whose wisdom and gifts guide us. Throughout our faith journey we may connect with one being of the Trinity more than another - or - one may show up more clearly during particular seasons in our lives. As a small child, with a wonderful mother and an absent father, I experienced God as an encompassing parental God, who was a comfort and a strength. Especially when things were uncertain. Now I’ll admit, in my mind’s eye, this parental God, who I did think of as Father, looked quite a lot like Michelangelo's depiction of God in his painting on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. An older guy, with a long beard, floating around, maybe on a cloud, and pointing his finger to make things happen. When people would describe God as harsh, condemning, and judgmental, and lift verses from scripture to make their point, I wouldn’t argue with them, but knew in my own heart it wasn’t true. In my own experience, our parental God - whether we think of them as a Father or Mother - is much more akin to parables Jesus told in the gospel. A father running to his long lost child, to embrace him in arms of love - no matter what had transpired before. What mattered was his child was ready to return to being in a relationship. Or a mother hen, protecting her chicks. These characteristics of love and a desire to parent and protect us, are the attributes that have always struck me as most essential about God, our Parent. As a young person, who struggled with what I knew to be true of God and what some of the adults in my life said was true of God (harsh, judgemental), I found myself shifting to Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus so clearly depicts God’s dream calling us to be in relationship with one another. He comes alongside the odd ducks, weirdos, and messy people and calls them into the most intimate of friendships, walking alongside one another until his death and resurrection. In a world where we so often feel like the odd duck, the weirdo, or the screw up, it felt so very clear that Jesus accepts us and celebrates us for who we are, as we are. Jesus doesn’t want the mask we put on for everyone else. Rather, Jesus sits beside us and shares a meal with us as we are our most authentic, messy, and fragile selves. And thanks be to God. These characteristics of radical love, acceptance, and friendship, are the attributes that have always struck me most about Jesus. A friend who is also our teacher and mentor, showing us what is possible when we live and love in community for the greater good of God’s world. In early mid-life, I began to take such a comfort in the Holy Spirit. Who for me often shows up as that peace that surpasses all understanding, or that strong sense of urgency and call to take action, whose very presence is inescapable. She is with us, guiding us forward, healing us, softening our hearts, and helping us to discern the gifts God is asking for us to share with one another. The Holy Spirit is the being of God that I see most clearly in our shared common life. Here at James and Andrew, the Spirit shows up in countless ways each week. Though some of the most notable moments have been when our two parishes merged to become James and Andrew, when we resumed in person worship after covid, and the experience of walking through Holy Week together and discovering the empty tomb on Easter morning. The Holy Spirit is what knits us together to be the body of Christ, right here, right now, and She is what knits us to all who have gone before, and all those who will come after us. These characteristics of discernment, peace, gentleness, guidance, healing, softening, and weaving people together in relationship are the attributes that have always most struck me about the Holy Spirit. This is my take, but every person of faith has their own lived experiences with the Trinity - our three in one and one in three. I wonder, how have each of you experienced the Trinity? Which of its distinct members have been easiest to relate to? Which ones are the most challenging? Why do we think that might be? Wherever you are in your own relationship with the Trinity, I would invite us to hold onto the most essential piece - relationship. Our Triune God longs to be in relationship with us, and longs for us to be in relationship with one another. As a whole our society does not seem to value genuine and authentic relationships. Instead our society places value in things, information, money, power, and status. Even more concerning, is we allow ideologies - conservative and liberal - to divide and end relationships. And it brings such devastating consequences as we saw yesterday when Minnesota Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband were shot and killed, while Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette were attacked and injured separately. Whatever our individual beliefs and ideologies, we must put relationships first. We don’t have to agree, but we need to try to remain in conversation with one another. That means continuing to try and be in a relationship with loved ones, friends, and acquaintances who voted for someone that we did not vote for. Or who believe different things about God, and every other justice issue we care about. I know this is a hard ask, but it is what our Triune God asks of us. When I was in seminary, the question of marriage equality was having a second go-round in Maine. We were living in a town and attending an Episcopal Church that were both known as safe havens for same-gender couples. Our priest and his partner lived in the rectory, and they were the only out couple doing so and it had been a big deal at the time. I felt fiercely protective of them, their love, and the love of many other couples in our parish family and community. But my best friend at the time, really believed marriage equality was a sin. I tried to be in conversation - well, I tried to help her understand why she was wrong. But her heart was hardened on the matter. And so was mine. At the time, I didn’t have the emotional intelligence or internal capacity to hold such ambiguity. For me it was all or nothing. And so I walked away from that friendship, and years of joyful memories. Sadly, my friend would have been willing to stay in a relationship, to stay in conversation; but it was all or nothing for me. While I will always stand on the side of love, and feel the same fierce protection for anyone marginalized by our society, I’ve learned it is a mistake to end relationships for ideological differences. Because how can we ever find common ground if we can’t even be in conversation? I imagine I’m not the only one who has made this kind of mistake. What friend or family or church member have you avoided or stopped being in a relationship with because of ideological differences? What would it look like to pray for the Spirit, for the Triune God, to soften our hearts towards those persons? How might we be changed by walking alongside those we disagree with? How might we help bring about God’s dream by walking in Love with all our neighbors, especially those we disagree with? Amen. Lectionary Readings or Canticle 13 (or Canticle 2)  By Rev. Heather J. Blais, Rector
Our gospel lesson takes place on the night of Jesus’ arrest. That evening Jesus modeled servant leadership with the footwashing, offered his final teachings, and then ended the evening with a prayer. Today we heard the very end of that prayer. Jesus is readying himself, his followers, and all of us for what is to come. He begins the prayer by praying for himself. It is a poignant reminder that we, too, are wise to start our prayers by asking for God’s guiding presence. As we strive to be healthy and well, and to make ourselves more fully available to God, so we might be agents of Love in our families, schools, and communities. Jesus' prayer starts off by acknowledging with humility and clarity that his work here is complete. He came into the world as the living embodiment of God’s insurmountable Love, and over the course of his ministry he ignited a movement to pursue God’s dream. He did this by:
Jesus’ movement grew with remarkable speed because people were, and still are, hungry for the message of God’s Love. Soon he had followers who were empowered to work alongside him. Jesus loved these followers, like we strive to love our own families - knowing full well the gifts they bring, and their shortcomings. So that night in anticipation of his death, he prayed for these disciples, his chosen family, and the work before them. Jesus asks for God to protect them, to ground their ministry in joy, and bless them with a deep understanding of God’s love. In doing this, Jesus models for his followers the need for us to regularly pray for one another, those we serve, and the universal Church in all our many expressions. Then Jesus does something that is both incredibly powerful and humbling. He prays for all those who will someday become followers of Jesus through the disciples’ mission and ministry. Jesus is praying for the Church in every generation, knowing full well what is possible when we come together in Christ’s name. Jesus is praying for us. Over 2,000 years ago, the person we now understand as God’s embodiment of Love in human flesh, prayed for each and everyone of us. As well as, for each and every person who through our mission and ministry will come to know God’s love. If that doesn’t humble us at our core, I’m not sure what will. By praying for future followers, Jesus is once again modeling for us that we, too, are called to pray for those who will come after us. Praying in our worship, and in our lived choices, for our children, grandchildren, and the generations yet to come. We have handed them a polycrisis, which is when crises in multiple global systems become casually entangled in ways that ‘degrade humanity’s prospects’. * They need our prayers - in our thoughts, words, and deeds. It also empowers them to someday do the same for future generations. This final prayer of Jesus, teaches us as much about prayer, as it does evangelism. I know, we are Episcopalians, and that other E word makes us a bit jumpy. Because we wouldn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. Yet evangelism is so much more than knocking on doors to tell people about Jesus, or obsessing about the number of people in the pews. (Though leave it to the church to ask for a parochial report each year where we are required to offer that precise information.) Evangelism begins with deep listening and attentiveness - considering:
Evangelism then requires us to take these observations to God in prayer. To collectively discern how the particular gifts of our community might be used at this hour. With so much need all around us, it can be easy to want to jump in and try to do too many things at once, setting us up for overfunctioning and burnout. But no one church community can or should try to be all things to all people. Only the living God can or should be our all in all. Which is why we lean on prayerful discernment, inviting the Holy Spirit to help us see the particular way in which our gifts might be brought to bear, at this particular moment in time. It is deep in our ancestral DNA at both former St James and former St. Andrew’s to feed our hungry neighbors. Eight years into our life as Saints James and Andrew, we have embedded that piece of our heritage into our life together as a new church. Over the decades there have been coffeehouses, roast beef suppers, coffee hours, pancake suppers, and two weekly feeding ministries. The way we go about feeding people may change, but it is a piece of who we have historically been, and the unique gifts we have brought to bear. Jesus taught us that when we feed people, and are grounding that ministry in prayer, we offer much more than a simple meal. We are offering our neighbors an embodiment of the spiritual nourishment and sense of community that we experience in our weekly worship. Now, there is another part of Evangelism that we sometimes overlook. Yes, evangelism will make us uncomfortable because it is going to require us to change. Two things we often would prefer avoiding. Yet when we are effective at being Jesus’ hands and feet in the world as a community, we may inspire people to try joining us in worship. And the real question is, are we ready to receive them? It is tempting for all churches to fall into a narrow understanding of welcome. One where we agree to be more or less friendly, but expect the newcomer to mold themselves to us. Best of all, without ever being told, church members may expect that newcomers can somehow inherently intuit that they: …must not sit in a certain pew. …must share our politics and our thinking on justice issues. …must know when to do what in worship, and what it all means. …must make themselves or their children behave a certain way. …must understand our vast Episcopal vocabulary, which offers a specific name for every piece of church furniture, space, liturgy, or committee. But that is not a genuine form of welcome. When we genuinely welcome visitors or newcomers, we are embodying the Gospel’s call to lovingly welcome the stranger. This requires us to have a softened heart, and remain open to the natural discomfort that accompanies change. At Pentecost, our parish has a tradition of welcoming those who’ve been exploring our parish as a spiritual home. At the heart of the liturgy we use, is the acknowledgment that in welcoming these newcomers, our community has been changed for the better by their presence. Their presence is a gift, and an opportunity for our community to grow in faith. When we can accept discomfort and change as part of growing the Jesus Movement, it helps us live more deeply into our core identity:
As the Episcopal Church, we are a particular cup of tea, and not everyone is going to want to drink us. This is one of the great gifts of the diverse and many branches of the Jesus Movement, where there are so many different expressions of being the Church. However long our paths may cross, it is a privilege to walk together - whether that be for a Sunday, a year, or a lifetime. So, what do we do with Jesus' final prayer? We can begin by following his model of prayer. Praying for ourselves, our community, and those who will come after us. We can accept evangelism as an essential part of our calling as followers of Jesus. Readying ourselves for the fruits of evangelism, by offering a genuine and sincere welcome to newcomers.
Because there is no such thing as a dumb question or a taboo topic at God’s table.
On any given Sunday, in any given ministry - whatever goes right and whatever goes poorly, God is in it, and always with us. Stepping into the natural discomfort that accompanies change, and the joy of knowing this is a sign of growth. And that we are called as followers to grow the Jesus Movement in our time, in our place, in our community. As we hold all of this, it’s helpful for us to remember that the most common way for someone to begin exploring a church is when they are invited by someone they trust or respect.
Amen. Lectionary Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21 John 17:20-26 Psalm 97 * As described by Rev. Jesse Zinck at the 2024 Clergy Conference of the Diocese of Western Massachusetts |
Mission
We believe God is calling us to cultivate a community of love, joy, hope, and healing. Jesus is our model for a life of faith, compassion, hospitality, and service. We strive to be affirming and accessible, welcoming and inclusive; we seek to promote reconciliation, exercise responsible stewardship, and embrace ancient traditions for modern lives.
Summer Office HoursTuesday 9:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Thursday 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Closed holidays Our gardens and grounds are open from dawn to dusk for the community to pray, rest, be. Please help us take care of this sacred space by following the outdoor ethic & principle of “leave no trace.” |
Contact Information
|
Worship Times10 a.m. In-Person Worship & Livestreamed
View worship services. We would love to have you join us soon! |