On Saturday, April 12, the Diocese of Olympia’s first Trans Day of Visibility liturgy was held at St. Peter’s Episcopal Parish in Seattle. As the Rev. Nat Johnson wrote in their parish newsletter, “It was a powerful service, and we were blessed and challenged by the incredible word brought by The Rev. Canon Carla Robinson…. Trans Day of Visibility is a day that provides time and space for the celebration of personhood and belovedness, particularly for folks who society tends to ignore. In our present moment, when so many in power across our government and society are attempting to erase and punish trans-identity, our liturgy offered a powerful resistance by honoring the beauty and gifts of our Trans, Non-Binary, and Two-Spirit siblings. Thank you to all who participated in the service, and thank you to the allies who joined us for this incredible liturgy!”
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Watch the Rev. Canon Carla Robinson’s powerful sermon below!

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!

​On this Trans Day of Visibility, we of TransEpiscopal pray in love and gratitude for trans and non-binary people in all our created goodness. We thank God for creating us in God’s infinite wisdom and for inviting us, calling us to become the people God launched us into the world to become: people of genders both simple and complex, steady and changing, radiantly reflecting the mystery of God’s image. We give thanks for the gift of life on this beautiful, fragile planet, and for the abounding love that delights in the gifts we bring into this world. We pray that this wave of love would surround and uphold us in these difficult days, energizing us for the work that we and so many minoritized communities are called to do together. 
 
In reflection on Palm Sunday, which is approaching this weekend, the historian Benedicta Ward has written,“We have to come to the place where we know who we are. This feast affirms the goodness of creation: to be who you are” (​In the Company of Christ, 26). We who are trans and non-binary, we who accompany our trans and nb beloveds, have traveled far and discerned carefully: we know who we are. We make our way forward together, in pilgrimage. Ward’s description of our living tradition truly resonates: we are “a crowd of friends” in a great “procession of love” (24). 
 
On this Trans Day of Visibility, here is a prayerful invitation: join us in that procession. Celebrate all that God has done, is doing, and will do in and through non-binary and trans people in this world. Stand with and by us. Walk with us. We are in this together.