God is Transcendent

A Pride message for cis heteros in a shaky age

hi Beloved!

Happy Pride! If we can say that so blithely two days after actor Jonathan Joss was murdered in his driveway by a neighbor yelling homophobic slurs, and even The Cut has the audacity to include the sly line that the San Antonio police see ‘no evidence of hate crime.’

My (queer) clergy colleague at church asked if we could focus this month’s Pride preaching on the perils trans folks are facing. A la Claire Willett’s viral post.

I said: YES. So here’s the sermon I preached this past Sunday. I made some adjustments since then. Namely: I got feedback from someone I really respect that privilege walks, especially when done in a container that is less than explicitly safe and well-curated, are no bueno. A privilege walk by its nature outs people; and further marginalizes (I mean, it literally separates people).

When I was preaching it I suggested folks not take a step forward/back, but instead just take a step anywhere when I read a line that was true for them. I also said should only participate if they wanted to. But to do a privilege walk at all launched some social pressure, and de facto othering. So: I’m leaving the prompts in the sermon so you can read them, and feel the impact of them. I suggest as you read, you actually move your own body to EVERY single one of them. Feel them in your body, not because it’s something you’ve experienced personally, but because many SOMEONES in the human family have.

If you’re more of a listener than a reader, here’s the sermon on Youtube, at minute 21:00.

Christlove,

Molly

~

Genesis 1:

Then God said, “Let us make humans in our image, according to our likeness…So God created humans in Their image,
in the image of God they were created them;
male and female.

Galatians 3:

As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 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. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise.

~

Happy Pride, y’all! This is going to be a relatively short and not subtle sermon. When I was growing up as a young Christian, I would occasionally hear the phrase, “God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve,” as a blisteringly stupid argument against homosexuality.

A quick glance at Genesis 1 shows that who God made was in fact Ad’ham, not a proper name, but a word: humankind. Undifferentiated. No gender markers, no sex–just like God, transcending specifics. Only later, in the more detailed version of the creation of humans, was Ad’ham divided into two humans who were different from each other, then 4 humans, then 8 billion.

We became 8 billion different humans. And of course, that kind of diversity is beautiful, but also brings problems. As I often tell folks, here in our church, because we’re Berkeley, we have 350 members and 700 opinions. Which we will demonstrate when we take a vote after worship about what to name our lovely new hall. In fact, you will get to have up to 5 opinions for this vote, because we will use ranked-choice voting. Why make things simple when they can be complicated?

Paul wrote his letter to the Galatians as a kind of antipode to the human creation story. He wasn’t trying to erase difference: race, religion, class, gender. He knew he didn’t have the power to do that. But he was trying to blur the lines. To help us transcend all these categories we use to tag and target and subjugate one another. Because the Christian churches then, as now, were very divided in their positions on many social and political issues. And it threatened to end them.

Here on the first day of Pride month, I want to thank and honor trans and nonbinary folks living as their true selves for extending Paul’s work of blurring the lines. For re-complicating the falsely simplified. Cis women worked for centuries to secure rights for themselves, a long and layered movement that didn’t always include all women, and still doesn’t.

But just in the last 10 or 20 years or so, there’s been in an enormous shift in how we think about gender, largely because of the movement for trans rights, the visibility of trans folks, and the vast expansion of the universe of gender and sexuality. This shift has benefited cis people–because it gives us ALL a lot more room to be the fullness of who we are instead of trapped inside a binary box, doomed to chromosomes as destiny.

There are so many ways to be woman.

There are so many ways to be man.

There are so many ways to be nonbinary or something else entirely ineffable.

And God is all of these and none of these and also something entirely ineffable.

Finally, finally, there is deep creeping awareness of what Genesis 1 really means: Ad’ham, made in the image of God, undifferentiated AND containing in their body and spirit a great and wondrous possibility of everything. Transcendent and transcending.

Trans folks are prophets leading us into a more liberated era of humanity, and they, YOU, because you are here in this sanctuary, are under threat. As prophets have always been. Trans folks are an estimate 3% of the total population, and receive what sometimes feels like 100% of the public vitriol. Yesterday a single trans girl competing in the state track and field championship attracted throngs of protestors and many national news outlets.

On the lefty political internet I’ve been seeing a lot of this kind of language lately:

“You should care about (insert oppressed group of people) because you could be next.”

But of course that’s not true. If you are a white Anglo-Saxon citizen with a name to match, ICE is never coming for you.

And if you pass as cis, you are never going to be targeted the way a trans person is. There is relief in this, but also pain–because we are here together in this church, cis and trans. And how can cis folks accept this pass, knowing that our siblings don’t have it? We are, as Paul said, one in Christ Jesus. It is written. And we will not be divided again. We know each other, and hopefully we love each other too much. So what is there to be done about it?

Protect and shelter one another. That’s what there is to do about it. You can support trans folks financially: like we are giving our offering this month to The Landing Spot, a trans and queer youth group in Placer County, or you can give to amazing orgs like the North Texas TRANSportation Network, that provides travel and relocation grants to North Texas families seeking out-of-state health care for trans youth. Cis folks, you can stand up for your trans kin right here in church by getting names and pronouns right, or be an upstander in public or private against bullying and transphobia. And you can call politicians and fight it at the policy level.

You can also take the call to protect and shelter more literally. This past week in Seattle, a UCC clergy colleague of mine, Rev. Kelle Brown, showed up at a counterprotest to stand up to a group of transphobic evangelical Christians who had coopted a huge public park to spread their hateful message. The police were throwing counterprotestors to the ground and hogtying them, and she literally put her body between the police and the “trans babies” as she called them. Mothering all. Here’s her social media post–about what it meant to make her God-given body a barrier to hate and violence.

I’d like to do a privilege walk to start to get our own God-given bodies into movement, into feeling like what it might feel like to see and understand and protect one another. But because we’ve spent years becoming one in Christ, and that work is ongoing, I don’t want to divide us the way a normal privilege walk does. So participate to the degree that you want–don’t out yourself if that’s not what you came to do on this Pride Sunday. But for those who feel safe to do so, let’s move around the room, let’s put our bodies into this movement, let’s see one another a little more clearly, let’s acknowledge our responsibility to one another.

Privilege Shuffle:

Take a step if you

You've never had to choose between your safety and using a public restroom

nobody gets your gender wrong

you have ever had long hair

you have ever had short hair

People don’t question your name or call you the wrong name

You don’t worry your doctor won’t take you seriously because of your gender

Don’t dread conversations with your family at thanksgiving about your name or how you dress

Your passport has your pronouns right

Have always worshipped in a faith community that affirms and celebrates your identity

Never been asked invasive Qs about your body

Seen people like yourself in the media

Now take a step if:

You’ve had to hide part of who you are to stay safe at work, school, or church.

You’ve been denied housing, a job, or a service because of your gender identity.

You’ve lost relationships due to coming out or living authentically.

You’ve experienced harassment or violence because of your gender presentation.

You've had to self-fund medical or legal steps to affirm your gender.

You’ve had to plan your travel carefully because some places are unsafe for people like you.

You’ve experienced mental health struggles directly connected to gender-based discrimination.

You've had to research whether a church is safe for trans people before attending.

You’ve experienced someone praying for you to change or be “healed” of your identity.

Take a step

Take a step

Take a step.

~

Now look around

Reach out, connect, hand to hand.

We are one in Christ.

May it be so.

May we work to make it so.

Amen.

**************