by The Rev'd Shelly Fayette

“Do we have a gender neutral bathroom?”

“No, though there is the ADA-accessible bathroom by the sacristy.”

“Well, can we make that a gender neutral bathroom?  Can we order a sign this week?  If that’s what people need to feel safe, then that’s what we need to have.  And we need to advertise it.”

And voila.  St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, OR, was going to have a gender neutral bathroom in order to make sure trans folks knew they were welcome in the space.

How did we get here?  Let’s back up.  

I am one of two interim priests serving this good-sized parish in the capitol of Oregon, known throughout the state for the excellence of its music programs.  Worship is traditional, and conversation is lively.  The Very Rev. Lin Knight serves as interim rector.  He asked me to serve as associate beginning January of this year.  I asked him if St. Paul’s was ready for a 34-year-old tattooed lesbian priest, and he laughed.  I heard later he sold me to the staff as a “perky blonde.” 

Lin had served St. Paul’s nearly a decade ago as interim as well.  During this time, the Oregon Supreme Court ratified its Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), prohibiting same-sex marriages in the state of Oregon.  Since St. Paul’s is in the capitol city, and since the Episcopalians had been getting a lot of press about the election of Bishop Gene Robinson, the paper called Lin to get a statement about this decision.  He told them that he believed the church should be in the business of strengthening all committed relationships.  

Well, I wasn’t here, but I heard this caused quite the kerfuffle.  Letters were flying. The senior warden asked that Lin make a public apology and state that he was speaking for himself only, and not the church.  The parking lot was on fire with chatter. Lin held the center with his signature grace, and eventually the parish calmed down, with many coming to him to thank him quietly for his words.

Sharing a sermon preached by one of our members, Kori Pacyniak for Transfiguration Sunday / Last Sunday of the Epiphany. Preached on Wednesday, 26 February 2014 at Diocesan House, Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

Readings:
[Exodus 24:12-18]; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

As Episcopalians, we’re fortunate enough to get to celebrate the Transfiguration twice in our liturgical year - once on the last Sunday before Lent, often known as Transfiguration Sunday, and then again on August 6, the Feast of the Transfiguration.  It’s nice today to think about August – about long summer days and even sweltering heat as we feel the brunt of another ‘polar vortex’, but there is something peculiar and special about Transfiguration Sunday.

Today’s transfiguration comes at the end of the season of the epiphany, at the end of a long and particularly arduous winter, on the threshold of lent. This year, Christmas and Epiphany seem like long forgotten memories, buried under the snow and ice that have been a near constant presence. There is a hope that spring lurks just around a corner, but on a day like today, spring shows no sign of hurrying. Liturgically, we are at a threshold, or, as one of my priests calls it, a hinge day. A hinge between the seasons of epiphany and lent, but more than that, a hinge between heaven and earth. That’s what we glimpse at the transfiguration, a disruption of the norm and a supernatural event that causes fear in the disciples.

In the icons of the transfiguration, Jesus is usually depicted standing between Moses and Elijah, enshrined in gold and light on the mountaintop with rays of light emanating force, piercing the disciples. In contrast, Peter, James and John are shown lying down or with their faces turned away. We glimpse a moment of liminal space, a moment of transition and transformation and we become acutely aware that something is happening. Something is happening and we are invited to be transformed.

In the first reading, we are called to be attentive to the prophetic message, “as a lamp shining in a dark place” until the day dawns and the morning star rises in our hearts. There is a feeling of waiting, of expectation, of hope in spite of the darkness. Peter, James, and John needed this hope. Six days earlier, Jesus had told his disciples that he would be handed over to the chief priests, killed and raised up on the third day. Difficult news for anyone to swallow. It is not difficult to imagine the sort of darkness the disciples were living in – having to come to grips with the revelation that their beloved teacher would be taken from them and killed. At the same time Jesus was asking them to take up their cross and follow him. We can imagine the feelings of fear, hopelessness, betrayal…through this, Jesus asks his disciples for acceptance of what is to come.

And now, Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him up on a mountain, apart from the others and is transfigured before them – as if they didn’t have enough to deal with. But this clearly supernatural event only gets better. Out of nowhere, Moses and Elijah appear, talking with Jesus and then a voice emerges from the heavens, “This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased, listen to him.” The disciples naturally fall to the ground in fear and it is Jesus who rouses them, reassuring them and telling them to not be afraid. It might not be only fear that causes the disciples to fall down and turn away, but the knowledge and awareness that they are participating in something greater, something beyond their wildest imagination. They know they are being invited into transformation.
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Who are these words from heaven for? In the disciples, they seem to cause more fear than anything. Perhaps it is Jesus himself who needs to hear these words, this reassurance of his father’s love, of approval, of his mission. Despite the supernatural nature of the transfiguration, perhaps this is a moment where we see Jesus’ humanity bleed through. Aware of the task before him, the difficulty of accepting what he is called to do, he takes some of his friends and goes up on a mountaintop to pray. And what is the result? Two of prophets come to speak with him and his father’s voice booming from the heavens. 

We know what comes next. The forty days of lent, the triumphal entry into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, the last supper, the crucifixion and eventually the resurrection. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Let’s take a moment to stand here on the mountaintop, to consider our own selves on the brink of transition – transition into a new liturgical season and transition into a new space for our work. Transition is scary. New things are scary and often hard. Sometimes we don’t feel ready for the change, something we feel that we are incapable of bearing it. We so easily forget that the journey up the mountain, the journey into the wilderness, can carry with it the potential for transformation. 

In Japanese, there is a word called kintsukuroi, which means to repair with gold. It was a word that came into mind when I read over today’s Scriptures, a word that refers to the art of repairing broken pottery with gold and silver lacquer and understanding that the pottery is more beautiful for having been broken because it is precisely those broken shards that allow the luminescent gold to show. This fits in with the transfiguration. The disciples were not perfect people. These were ordinary individuals, each with their faults, each asked to take up their cross and follow Jesus. Asked to leave behind their family and their possessions and enter into this journey with Christ. We, too, are invited into that journey, into the moment of the transfiguration. How will we let Christ transform us? How will we let him repair our brokenness with gold so that we are more beautiful for it?

An update to yesterday's statement:

Integrity USA and TransEpiscopal were saddened to learn that the Rev. Gwen Fry is no longer the Priest in Charge of Grace Episcopal Church in Pine Bluff, AR. We pray for healing for the Rev. Fry, for Grace Church, for the Diocese of Arkansas, and the wider LGBT community in the coming days and months. 
We remain clear and confident that the wider family of the Episcopal Church and the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas – including the Rt. Rev. Larry Benfield— embraces, supports, and is confident in the leadership of the Rev. Fry. We look forward to hearing about the next ordained position into which she will step in the Episcopal Diocese of Arkansas.

The events of this week point to the need for continued conversation and education on transgender leadership throughout the Episcopal Church. To aid in this process, IntegrityUSA and TransEpiscopal stand ready to offer a wide range of resources, including the short film Voices of Witness: Out of the Box.

This weekend Transfiguration Sunday will be observed across The Episcopal Church. We will hear the story of how Jesus walked up a mountain and was transfigured beside Moses and Elijah before three bewildered disciples. Only in Matthew’s gospel does Jesus bend down, touch them, and say, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

This message could not be more timely today. As we stand together on God’s holy mountain, may we be strengthened to walk together through the challenges that lie before us, confident that in the process we will be changed into Christ’s likeness from glory to glory.

For further information/comment, please contact:

for IntegrityUSA
Mel Soriano, mel@integrityusa.org

for TransEpiscopal
The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge, cepart@yahoo.com
Ms. Donna Cartwright, donnamartina@gmail.com

We wrote this statement of purpose as part of our process of applying to join the Consultation shortly after the 2006 General Convention. It was posted to our original blog on Tuesday, March 13, 2007. 

TransEpiscopal is a group of transgender Episcopalians and our significant others, families, friends and allies dedicated to enriching our spiritual lives and to making the Episcopal Church a welcoming and empowering place that all of us truly can call our spiritual home. Our group was started in January of 2005 and initially served as an online, nationwide community of support. After several informal gatherings in various parts of the country, we held our first Advent retreat in 2005 in New Jersey, sponsored by the Oasis Commission of the Diocese of Newark. In January 2007, several of us attended the first Summit for Transgender Religious Leaders co-sponsored by the National Center for Transgender Equality and the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies in Ministry at the Pacific School of Religion in Berkeley, California. Having met with leaders, lay and ordained, from various denominations and religious traditions, we are inspired and galvanized to support a new chapter in transgender advocacy that is spreading across the country this year; a window is now opening in which transgender people have an opportunity to secure civil rights protections that long have eluded us, and to win an increasing degree of acceptance and welcome in this country’s religious denominations. 

As Episcopalians we are proud of those times in our denomination’s history when the Church has supported and empowered those who historically have been marginalized or “othered” within and outside the life of the Church. We are grateful for the gains made by the groups that have entered the wider Church conversation before us, and we look forward to helping to sustain and to build upon those gains. Because we also recognize that this is a time of continued conflict in our denomination’s life, and knowing that our voices may intensify and add complexity to an already challenging debate about human sexuality and gender, we seek to enter that wider conversation with awareness and respect even as we look forward to more change. Knowing that none of us is nearly as strong singly as we are in concert, and recognizing that many of us embody multiple identities represented by different groups within the Church, we seek to collaborate with other progressive groups, that together we may ever more clearly embody God’s transformative love for all people.

As a group of transgender and allied Christians, we represent a range of gender identities and expressions. “Transgender” is an umbrella term referring to people who transgress the sex/gender they were designated at birth. Some of us physically and medically transition from one gender to another (a complex, multi-staged process that various individuals define in different ways, but which traditionally has been called transsexualism). Others of us believe that our bodies need not take on any particular characteristics in order to identify as male or female. Still others of us do not identify with traditional gender categories. All of us ultimately see gender as a spectrum of multiple lived possibilities. Trans people and our partners also do not necessarily identify as heterosexual. Some of us who identify as male, for instance, are partnered with other men. Others of us who are now female are partnered with other women. And while several of us have found that our previous relationships weren't able to survive our emerging identities as trans, others of us remain with the partners we had prior to transition. One couple in our group has been married for 30 years. Indeed, those of us who are married can witness to a denomination already struggling with marriage, showing that we are already living into its new forms and expanding its dimensions. Many of us are single, and several of us have children and grandchildren. Indeed, some of us are raising children as single parents. We live out our vocations in various ways within and outside of the Church, some of us as clergy, some of us partnered with clergy, some of us as laypeople quite involved in our diocesan or parish governance. Others of us limit our Church involvement to Sunday morning, and some of us are searching for the right community. All of us want to be able to count on the Church to support us and lift us up just as they would other individuals and communities.

Coming out as trans is a time when, for many of us, our faith becomes even more important to us than ever before. As we have come out, some of us have experienced profound difficulty with Church leaders who view us negatively or in condemnatory ways. Others of us have discovered that we are seen as potential sources of controversy. Still others have found an inspiring and at times surprising support, given the widespread lack of information in the Church regarding transgender people. In order to increase that support throughout our denomination and beyond, we encourage the Church to commit itself to learn about transgender lives, not simply as social, medical or psychological phenomena, but most importantly as people on powerful spiritual journeys that uniquely embody a lifelong human path of transformation and authenticity before God.

This was the first post we ever made on our blog just after TransEpiscopal joined the Consultation on March 11, 2007.
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Transgender Episcopalians Form Organization, Seek to Ally With Progressive Groups in ECUSA

Transgender Episcopalians and their significant others, families, friends and allies have announced the launch of TransEpiscopal, an informal organization dedicated to “making the Episcopal Church a welcoming and empowering place that all of us truly can call our spiritual home,” according to its statement of purpose.

The group, which began as an Internet listserve in January 2005, now has dozens of members, including both lay and ordained people. TransEpiscopal has just been accepted into the Consultation, the collaborative organization of progressive organizations within the national Episcopal Church.

The formation of TransEpiscopal represents a deepening and formalization of work on transgender issues that has been under way in the Episcopal Church for several years. A number of dioceses, including Michigan, Newark and California, have done significant educational work about transgender people. In December 2005, the Oasis Commission of the Diocese of Newark sponsored a weekend retreat for transgender people and their friends and allies, the first of its kind. 

Since 2004, six dioceses (Newark, Michigan, New York, Maryland, California and New Hampshire) have passed resolutions at their annual conventions expressing support for the ministry and civil rights of transgender people and their supporters.

“Inclusion and equality are the common denominators in all of the parables of Jesus about the Household of God,” said Jim Toy, a TransEpiscopal member who was the first gay Episcopalian to come out in the Diocese of Michigan more than 30 years ago. “We are called to reaffirm and expand the scope of our commitment to inclusion, equality and nondiscrimination for all individuals and groups who are devalued and disempowered. To oppose discrimination and prejudice and to support equal opportunity and protection is moral, Christian and just.” 

“There is nothing that can separate us from the love of God,” said the Rev. Michelle Hansen, an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Connecticut who transitioned from male to female four years ago. “Transgender people are equally loved of God. It is time the institutional Church comes to terms with God’s people of all sorts and conditions.” 

For additional information contact the Rev. Gari Greene at ggreenjay@aol.com, or the Rev. Michelle Hansen at hansen_michelle@sbcglobal.net.