Listen to Fr. Joseph’s sermon here >
There was a time, a time not so long ago, when I would have been terrified to stand up here today. A sermon overtly about Pride, during a service that we overtly claim as “Pride Sunday”? I would have politely but firmly refused. It would have felt too vulnerable, too much like a risk—or worse, like self-indulgence. You see, I never had a doubt about God’s love for me. I was blessed with a perfect assurance of my belovedness, even in the depths of grappling with myself towards eventually coming out. I knew God loved me even when I struggled to love myself.
The institutional church has not been so consistent. During college, when I finally worked up the courage to pursue my priestly vocation within the Roman Catholic Church, I was informed that I would not be accepted into discernment if I had “a deep-seated tendency towards homosexuality.” In case you haven’t puzzled it out, the tendency is pretty deep-seated, is pretty integral to the person who God formed me to be. I was the kind of kid where my mom would send a note to my teacher before school started every year, giving them a heads up that I was “a sensitive child.” It’s that kind of deep-seated. So, the Roman church gave me a choice: hide away a part of yourself or walk away from the ongoing movement of the Holy Spirit. This is who God called you to be, right? The choice should be easy. And it was, eventually. I left that tradition—the tradition that I had been raised in and only one that I had ever really known—when I refused to devote my life to Christ based on a lie.
I eventually found a home in the Episcopal Church, and it got better. I was be able to be who I was called to be, priestly ministry and sensitive child both. But there was a still a cost. During the long discernment process towards ordination, I was asked openly about my sexual orientation. And I answered honestly. I will always be grateful that I was able to answer honestly, but the response was that such honesty would make things more difficult. My queerness was implicitly framed as a liability, as something that would make the process harder for me. The process was hard, but I survived it. I stand before you the priest that God always meant for me to be.
I’m telling you the bare bones of this story because I don’t think that it’s a particularly original story—quite the opposite, really. I think that all too often we are asked to fit into society’s preconceptions of who we ought to be, to shave down the unexpected parts of ourselves in order to fit through the narrow gate of conformity. I believe that even within the Church too many of you have had to offer up a part of yourselves on the altar of others’ expectations. You have been asked to be less loud, less messy, less strange, less much—less yourself in a myriad of different ways. I know that I have, and I know that I still hear that voice whispering in my ear sometimes.
Please know that God loves you, wholly as you are. Today’s Gospel reading is an almost pointed articulation of that love. Jesus declares in Matthew 10:40 that: “whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me.”
If you’re a language nerd like me, you may appreciate knowing that the Greek word for “welcome” in this passage is δεχόμενος, from the root word δέχομαι. It’s a word that can have a broad range of definitions, meaning anything from “receive” to “take” to “accept” or even “welcome.” As Jesus finishes out his speech setting out the apostles’ ministry before he sends them out to share the Good News, he declares that the one who receives, takes, accepts, or welcomes them will do the same both to him and to the one who sent him. In other words, the act of welcoming or receiving him is inseparable from the act of welcoming and receiving the one whom he sends. You cannot accept the Good News without being willing to accept the one who is sent bearing that message. And you are all bearers of the Good News of Jesus Christ. The whole point of this Church business is to bear that glorious burden together.
It is the burden of knowing that God loves you just as deeply and profoundly as God knows you. That God loves your loudness, your messiness, your strangeness, your muchness. God loves the myriad of different things that make you fundamentally you. God loves them, and it is because of them—not despite them—that God calls you to share that love in turn. Because it is in welcome and reception that we most truly express and recognize that kind of love. What else is Eucharist? It is to welcome one another to receive God’s love just as surely as we receive it ourselves, in the midst of all the glorious muchness that is who we are as the image and likeness of the Almighty.
It is the burden of accepting that to allow for resurrection is to allow for the unexpected, for that which is definitionally beyond anything that we can conceive. (Lord, doesn’t that sound messy?) In the waters of baptism we find ourselves, just as we find a self beyond anything that we could possibly imagine. And we are invited to welcome both together in a new-forged unity as we share in the ongoing ministry of the great cloud of witnesses that is made up of saints past, present, and yet to come. We may even term that ministry as “radical welcome.”
Such welcome is an act that isn’t defined by mere invitation or inclusion, those gestures towards Divine expansiveness without really allowing for anything to change at all. Radical welcome demands more of us than that. It demands that we be willing to be resurrected, even as we invite others into resurrection right along with us.
On this Pride Sunday, as we welcome Russell into the company of the baptized, my prayer for him and my prayer for all of you is exactly the same. May he know a Church where he is embraced fully. May you know a Church where you are embraced fully. May it be beyond our wildest imaginings, ushering in something radiant and new.
Amen. Happy Pride.
