Episcopal Church Pride Eucharist: Acts 1:1-11; 1 John 3:1-3 (Saint Helena Breviary);
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26
The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Video of the whole service can be found at the link below. The sermon begins at 29:10.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/organizations-affiliations/lgbtq/
“I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." – John 17:26
Good afternoon, good evening, church. I am so glad to be with you even across the miles for this Pride service. Thank you to Presiding Bishop Rowe and to all who organized this service for the honor of being invited to preach today.
This past Christmas I received a quirky gift: a little RadioShack mini cassette player. I had asked for it, even sharing its Ebay listing, because of two mini cassette tapes that had been sitting in my desk drawer. I had been carrying them around in my life since my undergraduate years at Bryn Mawr College – shout out to my classmates who have celebrated our thirtieth reunion this very weekend. When I sat down and placed the first tape into the recorder, there was my voice as a twenty-one-year-old senior in December of 1994, interviewing a priest and openly gay man for a paper in a course called Peace and Conflict Studies. My chosen topic was the conflict over sexuality in the Episcopal Church as it was unfolding at that time. I myself had come out a year and a half earlier – as gay, not yet as trans – and had been exploring a vocation to priesthood since my first semester when I had read about the Philadelphia Eleven, the first women ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in 1974. I was eager to know more of the history and evolving landscape of the ground on which I stood as I anticipated graduation and a new life chapter. John – that is all I know of the Philadelphia priest’s name – gamely shared his experience in my recorded interview. Since he had described himself as having “been out for a long time,” I was curious how he thought about being gay in relationship to his ministry. “Do you see it as integral to your ministry or do you see it as somewhat a part of you that isn’t necessarily in the forefront,” I asked him. “Hm,” he replied,
"Let me answer this way. And you may have had this experience, too. That people say to you, ‘oh, I love you even though you are gay.’ And my answer is, ‘on the contrary, you love me because I am gay. That the things that you love about me – my warmth, my empathy, my identification with the marginalized, my passion for justice, my humor – all of those things have been shaped by the experience of being gay. So if you love me, not only is being gay part of the package. In a very, very real spiritual sense, gay isthe package. So that’s how I view it."
And then after a pause he continued, “I define success in my life based on the quality of my relationships. And so that is, in a sense, saying that my life is defined by love. And being gay is how I love.” “I’ve never heard it put that way,” I responded, “but I like it.”[1]
In our gospel passage today (John 17:20-26), Jesus lifts his voice to God the Parent in the presence of his disciples. It is the conclusion of an extended prayerful discourse, unique to John’s Gospel, situated at the last supper but shared with us today on the other side of Christ’s Passion in the latter days of Eastertide. The Feast of the Ascension was this past Thursday, as our first reading reflects (Acts 1:1-11), and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is on the horizon next Sunday. Our passage conveys a combination of already and not yet, of time both extended and compressed, and of impending struggle anticipated. Jesus is lending the disciples strength for that struggle. That strength is conveyed through the power of union, of relationship – a oneness of community that reflects the bond of God the Son with God the Parent. This communal bond is also open-ended, as Jesus’ prayer is spoken not only for the benefit of the disciples present at that supper but also for those whom they had not yet met, those with whom they would come to be linked, whom they were called to connect with. Jesus speaks of how glory pervades the oneness he shares with God the Parent, and how that glory also radiated out into the community of the disciples (John 17:22). This was a glory borne out by love: love circulating within the Godhead, love shared by Jesus – by God the Son – with the communion of his collective body. Love gloriously abiding, opening, connecting, strengthening this motley crew for all that was to come. It was through this love that they could be seen, recognized, known. Their love would convey God’s glory. They were to be defined by love, as the Philadelphia priest put it.
And yet there was a gap. Both God and the community were not and would not be clearly seen for who and what they were. Jesus speaks to this dynamic in our passage when he says, “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you” (John 17:25). The very first chapter of John’s Gospel had also declared of the incarnate Word, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him” (John 1:10). Jesus knows that the disciples would also experience being unseen, misperceived, or actively distorted in their Roman imperial context – his prayer in this moment is meant to uphold the disciples in anticipation of this reality. To strengthen them not by might or power but by grounding in a love that cannot be shaken, by the knowledge that their deepest identity as children of God can never be taken away.
Our canticle from the first letter of John also reflects this perspective. “The world does not recognize us, for the world has not recognized God,” it explains (1 John 3:1). There is an abiding connection between our perception of God’s presence in its mystery, and our ability to see one another in the various dimensions of our humanity, as people made in the divine image and bearing forth that image in the myriad ways we have been shaped: by our gender and sexuality, our race and ethnicity, our countries of origin, our socio-economic contexts, our abilities. Our canticle, expansively rendered for communal prayer by the Order of Saint Helena, speaks to this perception connection.[2]
The passage always reminds me of a moment in seminary, 2000-2001, a few years after my conversation with the Philadelphia priest. I was reading 1 John for a class. By this time I was a candidate for the priesthood and had begun coming out to myself and others as trans. At that time I was frequently misgendered, particularly in gender specific activities or spaces such as restrooms, or situations that required me to show identification—experiences many in the trans, non-binary and Two Spirit community have on a regular and much more intense basis, particularly now as our community is targeted on so many levels. It was unsettling at best, downright scary at worst. The gender and sexuality conversations of the Episcopal Church that I had researched just a few years before did not register such experiences. In that context, the words “the world does not recognize us” resounded in my ears. The sentence that followed it spoke directly to my heart: “Beloved – beloved – we are God’s children now” (1 John 3:2). Right now. Even as I read then. Even as I speak now amid this country’s widespread misrecognition and pointed distortion of so many marginalized communities. We are God’s children now. Amid the unknown, overwhelmed by risk, I heard in our canticle a grounding acknowledgement for all of us who walk together in uncertainty across lines of identity, embodiment, relationship, and experience: “what we later will be has yet to be revealed” (1 John 3:2)). There is indeed much we do not know.
Yet ultimately, amid that uncertainty, 1 John gives us a vision of transformative love. “What we do know is this,” the canticle continues, “when [God] is revealed, we will be like God, for we will truly see God as God truly is” (1 John 3:2). Or as the Sisters of Saint Helena have rendered our canticle, “when all things come to light, we will be like God.”[3] All things coming to light suggests a scene of cosmic justice, of all of us coming to know the truth and being collectively set free by it. This phrasing also evokes revelation, even transfiguration, a radiating reflection of the divine that dazzles us and actively changes us “from glory into glory,” as Paul wrote to the community in Corinth (2 Cor. 318). Beholding, actively honoring, celebrating the glory of God in one another is a participation in this process even now. It goes to the heart of our call in Pride month. Such participation was reflected just this weekend here in California in the talent and poise of openly trans track and field athlete AB Hernandez, whose mother has declared, “my child is not a threat: SHE IS LIGHT!”[4] She is light. We are light, beloveds. We are light. As this month unfolds, as we celebrate Pride around and beyond our church, let us seek out and celebrate that light in one another. Let us actively seek to perceive one another, refusing the distortions and dehumanizing political rhetoric all too often uttered in the name of Christian theology. Let us behold and uphold one another in recognition of the divine beauty in which we stand, queer, trans and allied beloved – something many of you have literally testified to from pulpits to state houses in recent weeks. Thank you for doing that. Let us love one another, not even though or despite our queerness, our transness but because of the unique human beings God has created us to be and to become. In the face of so many who refuse to know us, may our love, our lives reflect the glory of God upholding us, transforming us, strengthening us, and charging us to make our way forward in this moment, together.
The grace, the love, the light of Christ Jesus be with you all. Amen.
[1] C. Partridge interview with the Rev. Dr. John ____?______, Philadelphia area interview, early December (8 or 9?), 1994.
[2] https://www.osh.org/about
[3] The Saint Helena Breviary (New York: Church Publishing, 2006), 179.
[4] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/trans-athlete-embraced-california-track-field-20352080.php Nereyda Hernandez’s full statement is included in this article: https://www.kcra.com/article/us-attorney-california-title-ix-transgender-athlete/64907325
Revelation 22:12-14,16-17, 20-21; John 17:20-26
The Rev. Dr. Cameron Partridge
Sunday, June 1, 2025
Video of the whole service can be found at the link below. The sermon begins at 29:10.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/organizations-affiliations/lgbtq/
“I made your name known to them, and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them." – John 17:26
Good afternoon, good evening, church. I am so glad to be with you even across the miles for this Pride service. Thank you to Presiding Bishop Rowe and to all who organized this service for the honor of being invited to preach today.
This past Christmas I received a quirky gift: a little RadioShack mini cassette player. I had asked for it, even sharing its Ebay listing, because of two mini cassette tapes that had been sitting in my desk drawer. I had been carrying them around in my life since my undergraduate years at Bryn Mawr College – shout out to my classmates who have celebrated our thirtieth reunion this very weekend. When I sat down and placed the first tape into the recorder, there was my voice as a twenty-one-year-old senior in December of 1994, interviewing a priest and openly gay man for a paper in a course called Peace and Conflict Studies. My chosen topic was the conflict over sexuality in the Episcopal Church as it was unfolding at that time. I myself had come out a year and a half earlier – as gay, not yet as trans – and had been exploring a vocation to priesthood since my first semester when I had read about the Philadelphia Eleven, the first women ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church in 1974. I was eager to know more of the history and evolving landscape of the ground on which I stood as I anticipated graduation and a new life chapter. John – that is all I know of the Philadelphia priest’s name – gamely shared his experience in my recorded interview. Since he had described himself as having “been out for a long time,” I was curious how he thought about being gay in relationship to his ministry. “Do you see it as integral to your ministry or do you see it as somewhat a part of you that isn’t necessarily in the forefront,” I asked him. “Hm,” he replied,
"Let me answer this way. And you may have had this experience, too. That people say to you, ‘oh, I love you even though you are gay.’ And my answer is, ‘on the contrary, you love me because I am gay. That the things that you love about me – my warmth, my empathy, my identification with the marginalized, my passion for justice, my humor – all of those things have been shaped by the experience of being gay. So if you love me, not only is being gay part of the package. In a very, very real spiritual sense, gay isthe package. So that’s how I view it."
And then after a pause he continued, “I define success in my life based on the quality of my relationships. And so that is, in a sense, saying that my life is defined by love. And being gay is how I love.” “I’ve never heard it put that way,” I responded, “but I like it.”[1]
In our gospel passage today (John 17:20-26), Jesus lifts his voice to God the Parent in the presence of his disciples. It is the conclusion of an extended prayerful discourse, unique to John’s Gospel, situated at the last supper but shared with us today on the other side of Christ’s Passion in the latter days of Eastertide. The Feast of the Ascension was this past Thursday, as our first reading reflects (Acts 1:1-11), and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost is on the horizon next Sunday. Our passage conveys a combination of already and not yet, of time both extended and compressed, and of impending struggle anticipated. Jesus is lending the disciples strength for that struggle. That strength is conveyed through the power of union, of relationship – a oneness of community that reflects the bond of God the Son with God the Parent. This communal bond is also open-ended, as Jesus’ prayer is spoken not only for the benefit of the disciples present at that supper but also for those whom they had not yet met, those with whom they would come to be linked, whom they were called to connect with. Jesus speaks of how glory pervades the oneness he shares with God the Parent, and how that glory also radiated out into the community of the disciples (John 17:22). This was a glory borne out by love: love circulating within the Godhead, love shared by Jesus – by God the Son – with the communion of his collective body. Love gloriously abiding, opening, connecting, strengthening this motley crew for all that was to come. It was through this love that they could be seen, recognized, known. Their love would convey God’s glory. They were to be defined by love, as the Philadelphia priest put it.
And yet there was a gap. Both God and the community were not and would not be clearly seen for who and what they were. Jesus speaks to this dynamic in our passage when he says, “Righteous Father, the world does not know you, but I know you” (John 17:25). The very first chapter of John’s Gospel had also declared of the incarnate Word, “He was in the world, and the world came into being through him, yet the world did not know him” (John 1:10). Jesus knows that the disciples would also experience being unseen, misperceived, or actively distorted in their Roman imperial context – his prayer in this moment is meant to uphold the disciples in anticipation of this reality. To strengthen them not by might or power but by grounding in a love that cannot be shaken, by the knowledge that their deepest identity as children of God can never be taken away.
Our canticle from the first letter of John also reflects this perspective. “The world does not recognize us, for the world has not recognized God,” it explains (1 John 3:1). There is an abiding connection between our perception of God’s presence in its mystery, and our ability to see one another in the various dimensions of our humanity, as people made in the divine image and bearing forth that image in the myriad ways we have been shaped: by our gender and sexuality, our race and ethnicity, our countries of origin, our socio-economic contexts, our abilities. Our canticle, expansively rendered for communal prayer by the Order of Saint Helena, speaks to this perception connection.[2]
The passage always reminds me of a moment in seminary, 2000-2001, a few years after my conversation with the Philadelphia priest. I was reading 1 John for a class. By this time I was a candidate for the priesthood and had begun coming out to myself and others as trans. At that time I was frequently misgendered, particularly in gender specific activities or spaces such as restrooms, or situations that required me to show identification—experiences many in the trans, non-binary and Two Spirit community have on a regular and much more intense basis, particularly now as our community is targeted on so many levels. It was unsettling at best, downright scary at worst. The gender and sexuality conversations of the Episcopal Church that I had researched just a few years before did not register such experiences. In that context, the words “the world does not recognize us” resounded in my ears. The sentence that followed it spoke directly to my heart: “Beloved – beloved – we are God’s children now” (1 John 3:2). Right now. Even as I read then. Even as I speak now amid this country’s widespread misrecognition and pointed distortion of so many marginalized communities. We are God’s children now. Amid the unknown, overwhelmed by risk, I heard in our canticle a grounding acknowledgement for all of us who walk together in uncertainty across lines of identity, embodiment, relationship, and experience: “what we later will be has yet to be revealed” (1 John 3:2)). There is indeed much we do not know.
Yet ultimately, amid that uncertainty, 1 John gives us a vision of transformative love. “What we do know is this,” the canticle continues, “when [God] is revealed, we will be like God, for we will truly see God as God truly is” (1 John 3:2). Or as the Sisters of Saint Helena have rendered our canticle, “when all things come to light, we will be like God.”[3] All things coming to light suggests a scene of cosmic justice, of all of us coming to know the truth and being collectively set free by it. This phrasing also evokes revelation, even transfiguration, a radiating reflection of the divine that dazzles us and actively changes us “from glory into glory,” as Paul wrote to the community in Corinth (2 Cor. 318). Beholding, actively honoring, celebrating the glory of God in one another is a participation in this process even now. It goes to the heart of our call in Pride month. Such participation was reflected just this weekend here in California in the talent and poise of openly trans track and field athlete AB Hernandez, whose mother has declared, “my child is not a threat: SHE IS LIGHT!”[4] She is light. We are light, beloveds. We are light. As this month unfolds, as we celebrate Pride around and beyond our church, let us seek out and celebrate that light in one another. Let us actively seek to perceive one another, refusing the distortions and dehumanizing political rhetoric all too often uttered in the name of Christian theology. Let us behold and uphold one another in recognition of the divine beauty in which we stand, queer, trans and allied beloved – something many of you have literally testified to from pulpits to state houses in recent weeks. Thank you for doing that. Let us love one another, not even though or despite our queerness, our transness but because of the unique human beings God has created us to be and to become. In the face of so many who refuse to know us, may our love, our lives reflect the glory of God upholding us, transforming us, strengthening us, and charging us to make our way forward in this moment, together.
The grace, the love, the light of Christ Jesus be with you all. Amen.
[1] C. Partridge interview with the Rev. Dr. John ____?______, Philadelphia area interview, early December (8 or 9?), 1994.
[2] https://www.osh.org/about
[3] The Saint Helena Breviary (New York: Church Publishing, 2006), 179.
[4] https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/trans-athlete-embraced-california-track-field-20352080.php Nereyda Hernandez’s full statement is included in this article: https://www.kcra.com/article/us-attorney-california-title-ix-transgender-athlete/64907325
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