Twenty-one Trans, Nonbinary, and Two-Spirit Clergy of the Episcopal Church recently gathered for a retreat in Northern California. We had three days of sabbath, connection, networking, and energizing time together, two years after we first held such a retreat in 2024. Along the way we got to hear two powerful sermons. The first was by Aaron Scott, the Gender Justice Officer on the churchwide staff, who led a workshop, and was a spiritual support person for us in addition to preaching. The second was by the Reverend Canon Carla Robinson (linked here). Below is his sermon honoring the (transferred) feast of the Reverend Florence Li Tim Oi. May it strengthen and inspire you as it did us.
Feast of Florence Li Tim-Oi
January 27, 2026
Aaron Scott
I wanted to spend some time talking about St. Florence Li Tim-Oi. The reality of her, not just the idea of her. Our church sometimes treats its saints like baseball cards: “collect them all!” It’s a very colonial impulse. And we, us here, know what’s like to be loved or hated as an idea, instead of known and seen as real people. So it seemed right to spend more time on HER—Florence Li Tim-Oi’s own words, and her own works in the name of God.
Jesse Zink, writing for Women’s Ordination Worldwide back in 2020, shared the following words about St. Florence Li Tim-Oi’s leadership:
“In Macao, Li Tim Oi’s ministry focused on the great needs of the people there. As she recalled, ‘There was hardly any food, it was so scarce. Many people starved to death. Even if you had money it was difficult to buy rice. The merchants controlled the market and kept the rice scarce and the price high.’ It was not uncommon on her walk to church in the morning to pass the bodies of those who had died of hunger the night before. Through her resourcefulness, she managed to find a source of rice and help distribute it to members of her congregation and others in need. She helped arrange medical care for those who needed it and taught children in an informal school. She visited the mortuary to help people identify deceased family members and performed countless funerals.
[…]
The pace of her ministry was also unrelenting. As she later said: “I was working long hours, and I got to bed very late. Sometimes there would be midnight emergencies, when people would knock on the door and get me up. I would start work again at six o’clock. One day the doctor tested my chest. ‘If you carry on working like this,’ he said, ‘you will die very soon.’ But how could I stop? I didn’t sleep enough. I felt my heart pounding all the time, yet with so much to do I felt sure God would not let me die. I didn’t fear death, even though death was all around me.”
Li Tim Oi’s ordination was hugely controversial. The church press around the world had a mostly vitriolic reaction, focusing not on the efficacy of her ministry but on her gender. The 1948 Lambeth Conference reaffirmed that women should not be ordained priests. When the war ended, Li Tim Oi gave up her license to serve as a priest [though she did not resign her priest’s orders]. She eventually moved [from Hong Kong] to mainland China, ended up in a labor camp for over a decade… [and then again] moving to Canada in the early 1980s. There, she was again licensed as a priest where she served out her remaining years until her death in 1992. It wasn’t until the 1970s that some Anglican provinces, including Hong Kong, began to regularize the ordination of women.”
What are we supposed to do with the lives of our saints?
We love our saints. Yes? That’s not a trick question. We do. I do. I talk to them all the time.
But how exactly are we meant to relate to the saints of our church when we know that, by and large, while they lived and breathed, their leadership was considered a “crisis” by our institutional church?
In the act of canonizing people like the Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi, our church on the one hand is clearly saying: be like her, serve like her, follow God like she did.
On the other hand, what happens when we do that?
We end up on a list of leaders who have “gone too far”—in claiming and living the truth that God’s anointing cannot be confined by human insecurities and anxieties and oppression. No offense but in this crowd, I think more than a few of us have already made it on that list in one church circle or another.
Which really begs the question: how long do you need to be safely dead and in your grave before the church no longer considers your leadership not only uncontroversial, but undeniably inspired?
What grabs me most about her story is the crisis out of which Florence Li Tim-Oi’s ministry is born. She is not someone peacocking and preening and bootlicking her way up the ladder. I know you know what I’m talking about, we all go to the same church. That’s not her. She’s far too militant for all that.
Florence Li Tim-Oi is the realest kind of leader because she is someone who finds solutions to the real problems God’s children are facing. Leadership is not more complicated than that. A leader is a person who solves real problems. Leadership is not about who has the highest formal position of authority. It’s not about a degree or a collar. It’s not about who can say the prettiest words, or ingratiate themselves to the most powerful people.
Leadership is the ability to hustle for food when there is no food, medical care when there is no medical care, school for children when there is no school.
And in Florence Li Tim-Oi’s pursuit of those things, can you imagine how many times someone must have told her “no”? How hard she probably had to dog officials and merchants and God knows who else just so she could feed her sheep? And she’s not dogging anyone so that she can be ordained or given a title or a formal position of authority—Florence Li Tim-Oi was demanding food for her people. And why? Because she’s the one doing their funerals when they don’t eat.
This is the kind of moral authority and moral leadership that can’t be denied.
This is obedience to the demand of the Gospel—that all God’s children should have daily bread, should have life and have it abundantly.
Does Christ ask us to wait for permission to answer that calling? No! He says “YOU give them something to eat.” Florence Li Tim-Oi seems to have taken that verse seriously.
Does Christ ever ask us to wait for permission to assert and organize and protest in defense of the dignity of every human being? No.
How desperately our church and our world need this kind of leadership right now. The kind of leadership that does not wait for permission to serve. The kind of leadership anchored in a deep spiritual endurance that does not seek titles and accolades but justice and mercy in action.
There’s always something deeper for me in this reading from Galatians, that has very much to do with both the life of Florence Li Tim-Oi and the moment we, as trans and nonbinary and two-spirit faith leaders find ourselves. I find something much more radical and disruptive here than Christ superficially erasing our differences. We have been trained to read “in Christ there is neither slave nor free” as if that pointed to individual friendship between the enslaved and those who hold them in captivity. This is a heretical interpretation.
In Christ there is neither slave nor free because Jesus Christ destroys the institution of slavery. Because Jesus Christ destroys all hierarchies of human worth. And wherever systems of oppression are being toppled, Jesus Christ rises again. “In Christ there is no longer male nor female” means that Jesus Christ commands us, in this world, to upend every soundbyte and policy and false teaching that dehumanizes anyone on the basis of gender.
So how does our community fit in here?
To what kind of leadership do we aspire, as trans, nonbinary and two spirit people?
Beloved in Christ: It will be so beautiful when one of us here becomes a bishop someday—I promise you, it is coming, and I will weep in praise on that day. But I want us to consider very seriously whether that is God’s highest calling—for us or ANY of the faithful in this moment?
And I mean no shade to bishops. God can use anyone, God can still use a bishop—Bishop Ronald Hall, who ordained St. Florence Tim Li-Oi, was no slouch himself. His ministry had a reputation, in the more colonial corners of the church, for being too anti-English, too pro-Chinese, too much of a communist sympathizer in his commitment to the poor. But even he didn’t think women should be ordained.
And yet there she was, right where God placed her.
And yet here we are, right where God has placed us.
Placed us to see so clearly through the present distortions of these powers and principalities, this spiritual wickedness in high places. Because many of us as trans people already have the memory in our bones, in our flesh and blood, of what it’s like to wake up to hell every day, to be told that our only option is to continue living in hell, and yet refuse to accept that. We already have practice in trusting and knowing in our bodies that in fact, God’s wildest dream for us is always in reach. And we know how to keep reaching.
How badly do all of God’s children need to be led toward that kind of hope right now? To be led through danger and fear and cruelty and oppression, and drawn toward beloved community and feeding one another and good news for the poor again and again and again?
Don’t give up hope. We were made for these times. We are the leaders we need right now. We are the saints we need right now.
Feast of Florence Li Tim-Oi
January 27, 2026
Aaron Scott
I wanted to spend some time talking about St. Florence Li Tim-Oi. The reality of her, not just the idea of her. Our church sometimes treats its saints like baseball cards: “collect them all!” It’s a very colonial impulse. And we, us here, know what’s like to be loved or hated as an idea, instead of known and seen as real people. So it seemed right to spend more time on HER—Florence Li Tim-Oi’s own words, and her own works in the name of God.
Jesse Zink, writing for Women’s Ordination Worldwide back in 2020, shared the following words about St. Florence Li Tim-Oi’s leadership:
“In Macao, Li Tim Oi’s ministry focused on the great needs of the people there. As she recalled, ‘There was hardly any food, it was so scarce. Many people starved to death. Even if you had money it was difficult to buy rice. The merchants controlled the market and kept the rice scarce and the price high.’ It was not uncommon on her walk to church in the morning to pass the bodies of those who had died of hunger the night before. Through her resourcefulness, she managed to find a source of rice and help distribute it to members of her congregation and others in need. She helped arrange medical care for those who needed it and taught children in an informal school. She visited the mortuary to help people identify deceased family members and performed countless funerals.
[…]
The pace of her ministry was also unrelenting. As she later said: “I was working long hours, and I got to bed very late. Sometimes there would be midnight emergencies, when people would knock on the door and get me up. I would start work again at six o’clock. One day the doctor tested my chest. ‘If you carry on working like this,’ he said, ‘you will die very soon.’ But how could I stop? I didn’t sleep enough. I felt my heart pounding all the time, yet with so much to do I felt sure God would not let me die. I didn’t fear death, even though death was all around me.”
Li Tim Oi’s ordination was hugely controversial. The church press around the world had a mostly vitriolic reaction, focusing not on the efficacy of her ministry but on her gender. The 1948 Lambeth Conference reaffirmed that women should not be ordained priests. When the war ended, Li Tim Oi gave up her license to serve as a priest [though she did not resign her priest’s orders]. She eventually moved [from Hong Kong] to mainland China, ended up in a labor camp for over a decade… [and then again] moving to Canada in the early 1980s. There, she was again licensed as a priest where she served out her remaining years until her death in 1992. It wasn’t until the 1970s that some Anglican provinces, including Hong Kong, began to regularize the ordination of women.”
What are we supposed to do with the lives of our saints?
We love our saints. Yes? That’s not a trick question. We do. I do. I talk to them all the time.
But how exactly are we meant to relate to the saints of our church when we know that, by and large, while they lived and breathed, their leadership was considered a “crisis” by our institutional church?
In the act of canonizing people like the Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi, our church on the one hand is clearly saying: be like her, serve like her, follow God like she did.
On the other hand, what happens when we do that?
We end up on a list of leaders who have “gone too far”—in claiming and living the truth that God’s anointing cannot be confined by human insecurities and anxieties and oppression. No offense but in this crowd, I think more than a few of us have already made it on that list in one church circle or another.
Which really begs the question: how long do you need to be safely dead and in your grave before the church no longer considers your leadership not only uncontroversial, but undeniably inspired?
What grabs me most about her story is the crisis out of which Florence Li Tim-Oi’s ministry is born. She is not someone peacocking and preening and bootlicking her way up the ladder. I know you know what I’m talking about, we all go to the same church. That’s not her. She’s far too militant for all that.
Florence Li Tim-Oi is the realest kind of leader because she is someone who finds solutions to the real problems God’s children are facing. Leadership is not more complicated than that. A leader is a person who solves real problems. Leadership is not about who has the highest formal position of authority. It’s not about a degree or a collar. It’s not about who can say the prettiest words, or ingratiate themselves to the most powerful people.
Leadership is the ability to hustle for food when there is no food, medical care when there is no medical care, school for children when there is no school.
And in Florence Li Tim-Oi’s pursuit of those things, can you imagine how many times someone must have told her “no”? How hard she probably had to dog officials and merchants and God knows who else just so she could feed her sheep? And she’s not dogging anyone so that she can be ordained or given a title or a formal position of authority—Florence Li Tim-Oi was demanding food for her people. And why? Because she’s the one doing their funerals when they don’t eat.
This is the kind of moral authority and moral leadership that can’t be denied.
This is obedience to the demand of the Gospel—that all God’s children should have daily bread, should have life and have it abundantly.
Does Christ ask us to wait for permission to answer that calling? No! He says “YOU give them something to eat.” Florence Li Tim-Oi seems to have taken that verse seriously.
Does Christ ever ask us to wait for permission to assert and organize and protest in defense of the dignity of every human being? No.
How desperately our church and our world need this kind of leadership right now. The kind of leadership that does not wait for permission to serve. The kind of leadership anchored in a deep spiritual endurance that does not seek titles and accolades but justice and mercy in action.
There’s always something deeper for me in this reading from Galatians, that has very much to do with both the life of Florence Li Tim-Oi and the moment we, as trans and nonbinary and two-spirit faith leaders find ourselves. I find something much more radical and disruptive here than Christ superficially erasing our differences. We have been trained to read “in Christ there is neither slave nor free” as if that pointed to individual friendship between the enslaved and those who hold them in captivity. This is a heretical interpretation.
In Christ there is neither slave nor free because Jesus Christ destroys the institution of slavery. Because Jesus Christ destroys all hierarchies of human worth. And wherever systems of oppression are being toppled, Jesus Christ rises again. “In Christ there is no longer male nor female” means that Jesus Christ commands us, in this world, to upend every soundbyte and policy and false teaching that dehumanizes anyone on the basis of gender.
So how does our community fit in here?
To what kind of leadership do we aspire, as trans, nonbinary and two spirit people?
Beloved in Christ: It will be so beautiful when one of us here becomes a bishop someday—I promise you, it is coming, and I will weep in praise on that day. But I want us to consider very seriously whether that is God’s highest calling—for us or ANY of the faithful in this moment?
And I mean no shade to bishops. God can use anyone, God can still use a bishop—Bishop Ronald Hall, who ordained St. Florence Tim Li-Oi, was no slouch himself. His ministry had a reputation, in the more colonial corners of the church, for being too anti-English, too pro-Chinese, too much of a communist sympathizer in his commitment to the poor. But even he didn’t think women should be ordained.
And yet there she was, right where God placed her.
And yet here we are, right where God has placed us.
Placed us to see so clearly through the present distortions of these powers and principalities, this spiritual wickedness in high places. Because many of us as trans people already have the memory in our bones, in our flesh and blood, of what it’s like to wake up to hell every day, to be told that our only option is to continue living in hell, and yet refuse to accept that. We already have practice in trusting and knowing in our bodies that in fact, God’s wildest dream for us is always in reach. And we know how to keep reaching.
How badly do all of God’s children need to be led toward that kind of hope right now? To be led through danger and fear and cruelty and oppression, and drawn toward beloved community and feeding one another and good news for the poor again and again and again?
Don’t give up hope. We were made for these times. We are the leaders we need right now. We are the saints we need right now.
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