Easter and Trans Day of Visibility coincided this year for only the second time since the inception of TDOV in 2009, and the last time until 2086. In congregations around the globe, the inspiring power of this overlap was lifted up by and for trans and non-binary people and our beloveds even as other corners of the U.S. criticized positive, public acknowledgments of this overlap, as various news stories – e.g. here and here – reported. As the Washington Post noted, "it isn’t just that Easter and Trans Day of Visibility fell on March 31. They fell on March 31 during a [United States] election year, one that is underway as the trans community becomes a more frequent target of the political right."
At the close of his Easter Sunday sermon at St. Aidan's in San Francisco, the Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge lifted up the inspiring overlap of these days. Describing an experience of attending the pre-dawn Easter Vigil at the SSJE Monastery in Cambridge, Massachusetts several years ago, he shared,
"Exhausted and shivering, I stood in the courtyard and observed the lighting of the New Fire... Then came the Paschal Candle. As the presider traced the Alpha and Omega, and the year on the candle, declaring Christ the beginning and the end, a sense of sacred temporal layering, the presence of deep time, washed over me. Then the presider pressed into the candle red nails, their wax encasing grains of incense – marks of the wounds that are present in Christ’s risen body, as next week’s gospel reading emphasizes (Jn 20:19-29). I was so struck by the sentence that was then spoken: “By his holy and glorious wounds, may Christ our Savior guard and keep us.” In that moment, gazing upon that candle and taking in these prayerful words – the same we prayed in our vigil last night – I took in this holy, physical presence that burns throughout the Great Fifty Days of Easter, accompanying our most profound moments throughout the year, from baptism to burial of the dead. But I didn’t just see a candle. I saw a body. A Paschal body. A risen body, resplendent in all its waxen plasticity as all bodies are. I saw in its layered depths all the stories we have passed through and over. It is a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. It is a light to all peoples. It is marked by wounds the prayer so rightly names as glorious, as one of the Wesley hymns invites, “with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.” In that predawn moment, I thought of my own journey, all the pathways I have traveled, losses and delights, mysteries yet to unfold. I thought of the marks on my body as a trans person, the stories I have lived. There in that candle all of it was lifted up as glorious. On this Trans Day of Visibility I share with you this sign of glory that I have seen. I say to you, you who are trans, you who are non-binary, you who are cisgender: in you, in your body, Christ is revealed in glory. And we, all of us together, reaching across our chasms of experience and understanding, in solidarity and hope, in the face of death and denunciation, are invited to be changed by that sight. We are called to make our way back out into the world as Christ’s fiercely compassionate gardeners, as people on whom the Spirit of resurrection life is breathed even now, even in a world so full of toxicity spewed at our fellow humans and at our planet, targeted to tear us apart. See and believe. Believe and see. Show to the world around you – your neighbors and friends, your family, your work, your layered communities: resurrection life is profoundly present even as it also awaits us in final fulfillment. Christ is among us in glory. May we declare with Mary: I have seen the Lord."
The whole sermon is linked here.
In the comments, feel free to share other sermons you know of that celebrated this Easter / TDOV overlap.
As we make our way through the 50 Days of Easter, may we uplifted by resurrection joy.
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
At the close of his Easter Sunday sermon at St. Aidan's in San Francisco, the Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge lifted up the inspiring overlap of these days. Describing an experience of attending the pre-dawn Easter Vigil at the SSJE Monastery in Cambridge, Massachusetts several years ago, he shared,
"Exhausted and shivering, I stood in the courtyard and observed the lighting of the New Fire... Then came the Paschal Candle. As the presider traced the Alpha and Omega, and the year on the candle, declaring Christ the beginning and the end, a sense of sacred temporal layering, the presence of deep time, washed over me. Then the presider pressed into the candle red nails, their wax encasing grains of incense – marks of the wounds that are present in Christ’s risen body, as next week’s gospel reading emphasizes (Jn 20:19-29). I was so struck by the sentence that was then spoken: “By his holy and glorious wounds, may Christ our Savior guard and keep us.” In that moment, gazing upon that candle and taking in these prayerful words – the same we prayed in our vigil last night – I took in this holy, physical presence that burns throughout the Great Fifty Days of Easter, accompanying our most profound moments throughout the year, from baptism to burial of the dead. But I didn’t just see a candle. I saw a body. A Paschal body. A risen body, resplendent in all its waxen plasticity as all bodies are. I saw in its layered depths all the stories we have passed through and over. It is a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. It is a light to all peoples. It is marked by wounds the prayer so rightly names as glorious, as one of the Wesley hymns invites, “with what rapture gaze we on those glorious scars.” In that predawn moment, I thought of my own journey, all the pathways I have traveled, losses and delights, mysteries yet to unfold. I thought of the marks on my body as a trans person, the stories I have lived. There in that candle all of it was lifted up as glorious. On this Trans Day of Visibility I share with you this sign of glory that I have seen. I say to you, you who are trans, you who are non-binary, you who are cisgender: in you, in your body, Christ is revealed in glory. And we, all of us together, reaching across our chasms of experience and understanding, in solidarity and hope, in the face of death and denunciation, are invited to be changed by that sight. We are called to make our way back out into the world as Christ’s fiercely compassionate gardeners, as people on whom the Spirit of resurrection life is breathed even now, even in a world so full of toxicity spewed at our fellow humans and at our planet, targeted to tear us apart. See and believe. Believe and see. Show to the world around you – your neighbors and friends, your family, your work, your layered communities: resurrection life is profoundly present even as it also awaits us in final fulfillment. Christ is among us in glory. May we declare with Mary: I have seen the Lord."
The whole sermon is linked here.
In the comments, feel free to share other sermons you know of that celebrated this Easter / TDOV overlap.
As we make our way through the 50 Days of Easter, may we uplifted by resurrection joy.
Christ is risen! Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!
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