Ash Wednesday: Isaiah 58: 1-12, 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
Preached at Good Shepherd, Berkeley
Rev. Weston Morris
March 5, 2025
In 2021, my wife and I moved from Denver sight unseen to North Berkeley so that I could pursue my Masters in Divinity at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the next step in the path toward priesthood. We were blessed to land in this wonderful, living, active neighborhood. Immediately, after we moved here, we fell in love with this place. It wasn’t long before we became volunteers at the community garden and began to invest in building relationships around the neighborhood. Over time we made friends with a couple of our neighbors and established a rhythm which included late afternoon walks around the neighborhood. We spent a lot of time sitting on the bench near our apartment. In seminary there is a lot of thinking to do, so we came to call that bench the thinking corner.
Around this time last year we went on our usual evening walk, stopping at the thinking corner. Parked in front of the thinking corner was a man who was living in his car. We had seen him a few times before, since he had parked there for a while because he couldn’t pay $300 to get his flat tire replaced. He cooked dinner with a camp stove on the sidewalk and I always made an effort to say hi to him and make sure he had food and water. One evening we were at the thinking corner as the sun was setting and we began to talk to our neighbor who lived there. I don’t remember how we started chatting but we invited him to stay with us for a while. We talked about a lot of things: his frustration about the state of the world. Rage at obvious genocide. The books he liked to read. We got on the topic of religion and talked about Islam and Christianity. He named his disillusionment with religious leadership these days and we agreed that Christians could do better. He was formerly incarcerated for violent crimes but was starting over again. He was proud that he knew where he could find weapons and drugs but that he hadn’t gone for them. The way that he talked about his beliefs and goals made me proud of him too. We talked for so long that the stars came out. I looked up and thanked God for being good and providing this encounter. There was a period of profound peace in silence.
But in that silence there was a pivot. Our neighbor started to do what some cisgender men do when they don’t know what else to say around each other. He lamented loudly the weakness of masculinity in this sensitive country. “Isn’t it crazy that some people think that men can be women and women can be men? What a shame it is that they are doing sex change surgeries on kids in school! How disgusting is it that doctors give people all those dangerous sex change drugs!”
I was so shocked that for a while I didn’t cut in as he ranted. Little did he know that as he ranted to me he was ranting to a transgender person - me. We all were silent praying that he would lose the plot, but he kept going and going and going. The line for me was when he likened gender affirming care to child abuse. Finally, we spoke up kind of all at once and I said, “I’m going to have to stop you right there. It seems we agree on a lot of things but this is one thing that we fundamentally disagree about. You are speaking to a transgender person right now and it is clear to me that you don’t know what you are talking about.” He began to argue and I said, “Man, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.” He stood in flustered silence for a few seconds before murmuring something about not coming out here to fight and returned to his car. We sat in silence at the thinking corner… thinking about what had just happened and what to do next. After a few moments of silence, we stood up and walked away from him, the opposite direction of our home, just in case. As we walked away I remembered he said he knew where there were weapons. I wondered if he would go back for those weapons and that my name, our names, would be added to the Trans Day of Remembrance list. I was filled with fear, a fear all too familiar these days.
In 2024 there were at least 32 murders of trans and gender non-conforming people in the United States, 350 recorded in the world. Murder is an extreme and obviously illegal form of violence that is lethal to transgender people. But it’s not the only form of lethal violence used against us. A recent study showed that anti-trans laws - bathroom bills, sports bans, bans on gender affirming care, etc. - cause up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary young people. Let me say that again: Anti-trans laws cause up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary young people. Suicide attempts. Not suicidal ideation. Not bullying. Not harassment by parents. Not condemnation from religious leaders. Suicide attempts. Between 2018 and 2022 alone, 48 anti-trans laws were enacted in 19 different states. Now in the year of our Lord 2025, I wonder how many transgender children want to die before they have even really lived.
And now here we are, by the complicity and prejudice of Christians all over the country, the US Government sanctified the oppression of transgender and gender non-conforming people. Make no mistake, no transgender person is surprised by this. This is the sanctification of a decades-long tradition of harassing gender non-conforming people, whether they are non-conforming by virtue of sexuality, gender identity, culture, or disability. No, we are not surprised. We are not surprised because we have endured through afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger. Sound familiar? Paul’s letter to the Corinthians speaks to me of the transgender community that I know and love so dearly:
“We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;
as unknown, and yet are well known;
as dying, and see–we are alive!
As punished, and not yet killed
As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,
As poor yet making many rich
As having nothing and yet possessing everything.”
Last night the President of our country stood in front of millions of Americans and said the following words:
“A few years ago, January Littlejohn, and her husband, discovered that their daughter's school had secretly socially transitioned their 13 year old little girl. Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns. They/them pronouns, actually. All without telling January, who is here tonight, and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse. January, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Stories like this are why shortly after taking office, I signed an executive order banning public schools from indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology. I also signed an order to cut off all taxpayer funding to any institution that engages in the sexual mutilation of our youth. And now I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie. And our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.”
Exactly the way God made you…
Ash Wednesday is a day that we think about our frail reality. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. We posture our bodies in prayer, lamentation, and repentance opening the transitional time of Lent – a time where we move through the reality of our existence, turning away from our death dealing ways to the way of life everlasting, the way of love. One way we do this is through fasting: we mark the holiness of Lent and our focus on God by denying ourselves of the things that take us away from the love of God. There are certainly personal, individual sins, things that we do to one another that we could repent from. But I don’t know if you have noticed all the chaos in the world recently. It seems like a lot of it has more to do with collective, systemic failure to live the ethic of love that Christ lived and died for. Isaiah tests our fast, and we are found wanting. This “Christian” nation has sanctified injustice, tied the thongs of the yoke, stolen bread from the hungry, evicted poor from their homes, stripped the vulnerable, and hidden from the goodness of our common humanity.
I read the portion of the president’s speech to emphasize how it is that the politics of this is our business. When God’s name is invoked in a political speech from the highest pulpit in the country it is inherently the business of all Christians. This kind of theology, this kind of God talk, is a perversion of the message of the Gospel and should be condemned with urgency. For the freedom that God promises us is not for a few, but for all, and the oppression of one robs the freedom of another. Yes, our world is burning. Yes, our neighbors are being stolen. Yes, our children are being bullied, tortured, and killed. But there is hope still.
We are not dead — we are alive! We are still part of God’s creation, and we have a responsibility to the most marginalized in our society to stand against injustice including the injustice of anti-transgender violence. We know the end of the story – we need not wait for the resurrection, for “Today is the day of salvation.” So during this season of Lent:
“Should this not be the fast we choose? To loose the bonds of injustice and undo the
thongs of the yoke to let the oppressed go free?”
May it be so.
Preached at Good Shepherd, Berkeley
Rev. Weston Morris
March 5, 2025
In 2021, my wife and I moved from Denver sight unseen to North Berkeley so that I could pursue my Masters in Divinity at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, the next step in the path toward priesthood. We were blessed to land in this wonderful, living, active neighborhood. Immediately, after we moved here, we fell in love with this place. It wasn’t long before we became volunteers at the community garden and began to invest in building relationships around the neighborhood. Over time we made friends with a couple of our neighbors and established a rhythm which included late afternoon walks around the neighborhood. We spent a lot of time sitting on the bench near our apartment. In seminary there is a lot of thinking to do, so we came to call that bench the thinking corner.
Around this time last year we went on our usual evening walk, stopping at the thinking corner. Parked in front of the thinking corner was a man who was living in his car. We had seen him a few times before, since he had parked there for a while because he couldn’t pay $300 to get his flat tire replaced. He cooked dinner with a camp stove on the sidewalk and I always made an effort to say hi to him and make sure he had food and water. One evening we were at the thinking corner as the sun was setting and we began to talk to our neighbor who lived there. I don’t remember how we started chatting but we invited him to stay with us for a while. We talked about a lot of things: his frustration about the state of the world. Rage at obvious genocide. The books he liked to read. We got on the topic of religion and talked about Islam and Christianity. He named his disillusionment with religious leadership these days and we agreed that Christians could do better. He was formerly incarcerated for violent crimes but was starting over again. He was proud that he knew where he could find weapons and drugs but that he hadn’t gone for them. The way that he talked about his beliefs and goals made me proud of him too. We talked for so long that the stars came out. I looked up and thanked God for being good and providing this encounter. There was a period of profound peace in silence.
But in that silence there was a pivot. Our neighbor started to do what some cisgender men do when they don’t know what else to say around each other. He lamented loudly the weakness of masculinity in this sensitive country. “Isn’t it crazy that some people think that men can be women and women can be men? What a shame it is that they are doing sex change surgeries on kids in school! How disgusting is it that doctors give people all those dangerous sex change drugs!”
I was so shocked that for a while I didn’t cut in as he ranted. Little did he know that as he ranted to me he was ranting to a transgender person - me. We all were silent praying that he would lose the plot, but he kept going and going and going. The line for me was when he likened gender affirming care to child abuse. Finally, we spoke up kind of all at once and I said, “I’m going to have to stop you right there. It seems we agree on a lot of things but this is one thing that we fundamentally disagree about. You are speaking to a transgender person right now and it is clear to me that you don’t know what you are talking about.” He began to argue and I said, “Man, we’re going to have to agree to disagree.” He stood in flustered silence for a few seconds before murmuring something about not coming out here to fight and returned to his car. We sat in silence at the thinking corner… thinking about what had just happened and what to do next. After a few moments of silence, we stood up and walked away from him, the opposite direction of our home, just in case. As we walked away I remembered he said he knew where there were weapons. I wondered if he would go back for those weapons and that my name, our names, would be added to the Trans Day of Remembrance list. I was filled with fear, a fear all too familiar these days.
In 2024 there were at least 32 murders of trans and gender non-conforming people in the United States, 350 recorded in the world. Murder is an extreme and obviously illegal form of violence that is lethal to transgender people. But it’s not the only form of lethal violence used against us. A recent study showed that anti-trans laws - bathroom bills, sports bans, bans on gender affirming care, etc. - cause up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary young people. Let me say that again: Anti-trans laws cause up to a 72% increase in suicide attempts among transgender and nonbinary young people. Suicide attempts. Not suicidal ideation. Not bullying. Not harassment by parents. Not condemnation from religious leaders. Suicide attempts. Between 2018 and 2022 alone, 48 anti-trans laws were enacted in 19 different states. Now in the year of our Lord 2025, I wonder how many transgender children want to die before they have even really lived.
And now here we are, by the complicity and prejudice of Christians all over the country, the US Government sanctified the oppression of transgender and gender non-conforming people. Make no mistake, no transgender person is surprised by this. This is the sanctification of a decades-long tradition of harassing gender non-conforming people, whether they are non-conforming by virtue of sexuality, gender identity, culture, or disability. No, we are not surprised. We are not surprised because we have endured through afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger. Sound familiar? Paul’s letter to the Corinthians speaks to me of the transgender community that I know and love so dearly:
“We are treated as impostors, and yet are true;
as unknown, and yet are well known;
as dying, and see–we are alive!
As punished, and not yet killed
As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing,
As poor yet making many rich
As having nothing and yet possessing everything.”
Last night the President of our country stood in front of millions of Americans and said the following words:
“A few years ago, January Littlejohn, and her husband, discovered that their daughter's school had secretly socially transitioned their 13 year old little girl. Teachers and administrators conspired to deceive January and her husband while encouraging her daughter to use a new name and pronouns. They/them pronouns, actually. All without telling January, who is here tonight, and is now a courageous advocate against this form of child abuse. January, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Stories like this are why shortly after taking office, I signed an executive order banning public schools from indoctrinating our children with transgender ideology. I also signed an order to cut off all taxpayer funding to any institution that engages in the sexual mutilation of our youth. And now I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie. And our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.”
Exactly the way God made you…
Ash Wednesday is a day that we think about our frail reality. Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return. We posture our bodies in prayer, lamentation, and repentance opening the transitional time of Lent – a time where we move through the reality of our existence, turning away from our death dealing ways to the way of life everlasting, the way of love. One way we do this is through fasting: we mark the holiness of Lent and our focus on God by denying ourselves of the things that take us away from the love of God. There are certainly personal, individual sins, things that we do to one another that we could repent from. But I don’t know if you have noticed all the chaos in the world recently. It seems like a lot of it has more to do with collective, systemic failure to live the ethic of love that Christ lived and died for. Isaiah tests our fast, and we are found wanting. This “Christian” nation has sanctified injustice, tied the thongs of the yoke, stolen bread from the hungry, evicted poor from their homes, stripped the vulnerable, and hidden from the goodness of our common humanity.
I read the portion of the president’s speech to emphasize how it is that the politics of this is our business. When God’s name is invoked in a political speech from the highest pulpit in the country it is inherently the business of all Christians. This kind of theology, this kind of God talk, is a perversion of the message of the Gospel and should be condemned with urgency. For the freedom that God promises us is not for a few, but for all, and the oppression of one robs the freedom of another. Yes, our world is burning. Yes, our neighbors are being stolen. Yes, our children are being bullied, tortured, and killed. But there is hope still.
We are not dead — we are alive! We are still part of God’s creation, and we have a responsibility to the most marginalized in our society to stand against injustice including the injustice of anti-transgender violence. We know the end of the story – we need not wait for the resurrection, for “Today is the day of salvation.” So during this season of Lent:
“Should this not be the fast we choose? To loose the bonds of injustice and undo the
thongs of the yoke to let the oppressed go free?”
May it be so.
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