Second Testament Matthew.6:26-27, 23:37-39, Mark 1:9-11 and parallels
Humans have existed always with non-human animal species, and birds have provided ecological benefit to the environment. Birds pollinate plants, control insect population, disperse seeds, cycle nutrients, function as scavengers, maintain habitats, and assist conservation. Humanity reaps benefits from sharing the planet with birds.
Nature has been infused with spirit and aliveness, and birds have become a apt metaphor for Spirit in both testaments. The dove has been drafted as metaphor or even a symbol of the Spirit. The Spirit of God (ruach Elohim) in Genesis 1:1-2 hovers (merahefet, can also be translated flutters or trembles) over the deep to birth creation. The same verb is used in Dt. 32:11 where an eagle…hovers over its young.” The image of Spirit is an avian or bird Spirit hovering over the chaos waters at the start of creation. The dove appears in Gen. 8:11 when a released dove returns with an olive branch to signal the flood waters receding. These links between spirit, bird, and water with new creation echoes the new beginning or creation in the baptism of Jesus and the descent of the dove Spirit in bodily form (Lk. 3:22) Michael Trainor observes how Luke stresses the corporeality of the Spirit as dove links Jesus to “a world more-than-human.” He comments, “Jesus’ link to the wider Earth household is affirmed through his insertion or immersion into Earth water. This primordial being, watery subsistence at creation beginning, surrounds him like a womb, From Earth’s water, he is born into ministry.” God breathe the Spirit into the soil material body of Jesus to create a new Adam, a new Earth Child. His kinship with the Earth is confirmed by the Mother Dove Spirit. In Nazareth. Jesus proclaims, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring the good news to the poor” (Lk. 4:18). Jesus carries on the avian Spirit’s anointing to preach the good news, restore the ill to community of creation, and practice God’s kin-dom.
The image or symbol of mother dove as Spirit is generally not understood as similar to the incarnation of the Spirit in Jesus. David Clough notes that the doctrine of incarnation is not applied to the spirit He cites an example of St. Augustine, who rejects the idea that the Spirit is incarnate in the dove at Jesus’ baptism. The distinction between the incarnation and symbol may reflect the anthropocentricism of the doctrine that distinguishes the incarnation in a human as different from a dove. However, is there an commonality of incarnation at conception and at baptism is the agency of the Spirit in embodying presence in various material forms in the both testaments. Is the presence of the Spirit at the beginning of creation, embodied presence materially, and in the conception and resurrection of Jesus. Is this presence and agency of the Spirit in creation differs as presence and agency at the incarnation and resurrection of Jesus as the Christ?
Jesus draws example of God’s providence for young ravens (Ps. 147:9). In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus argues against excessive concerns of disciples for material needs for food and clothing. He points to the witness of the “birds of the heaven”, who neither sow nor reap nor gather harvests into barns, yet God feeds them. He urges them not to be anxious but trust the sovereignty of God to provide. In another aphorism, Jesus uses examples of God’s care for sparrows, “Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father’s will” (Mt. 10:29). Just as God cares for the smallest of creature, Jesus encourages his disciples to trust God’s compassionate care and wisdom in providing for all of creation.
One final action of Jesus behalf of doves in the Jerusalem Temple demonstration. The Temple economy was based on factory farming of animals for sale and sacrifice. A.N. Wilson wrote, “The stench of the blood and of roasting flesh can hardly be drowned by the smoke of incense; nor the cries of traders or the uplifted voices of priests and pilgrims at prayer, have drowned the screeching of the beasts as they had their throats cut.” Animal sacrifice at the Temple was a thriving and profitable religious business. John 2:2, 22 notes that Jesus freed the doves along releasing the oxen and sheep. The early Christ community dealt with eating meat sacrificed to idols (1 Cor.8). For the Temples in the ancient world functioned not only a place to offer sacrificed animals but a portion of the roasted meat was sold in the open market. Stephen Webb argues that the eucharist was a vegetarian meal, often described as a sacrifice of praise. Jesus may not have been a strict vegetarian in his diet but had definite notion of caged birds and animals.
The Avian Welfare Coalition’s National Bird Day focuses on reducing the harm and suffering of birds in the destructive exotic bird trade, caged birds, and cruel breeding mills. Are these new temples of the religion of commodifying birds in pet trade for profit. Exotic bird sanctuaries serve are full of rescued of abused and unwanted birds. . Bird extinction has significantly accelerated over the last 50 years due to human environmental impact and climate change.
In the spirit of Jesus’ creation-centered spirituality, Franics of Assisi preached the following sermons to birds:
Birds, my sisters, you owe God a great deal. You ought to praise [God] always and everywhere for the freedom you have to fly everywhere, … for your ornate and colorful clothing, … for the song given to you by your Creator…. You neither sow nor reap, yet God feeds you. [God] gives you the rivers and springs for drink; the mountains and hills, the rocks and crags as refuges; the high trees for nests; and even though you do not know how to sew or weave, he gives you and your children the clothing you need. Therefore, your Creator who gave you all these benefits, loves you very much. You be careful, my little birds, don’t be ungrateful, but try to praise God always.
In his book, Reading the Hebrew Bible with Animals Studies, Ken Stone writes,
Rab Judah remarks in a Midrash on Genesis. “It is not written, “one the high mountains are the wild goats,” but “The high mountains are for the wild goats.’ Thus, for whose sake were the high mountains created? For the sake of the wild goats.” As he goes on to note, God created the world even “for the sake of unclean things.” (Bereshit Rabbah 12:9). Rab Judah reading of Psalm 104 seems to conclude that God did not create the world only for us, with animals in the background. God created the various spaces of the world for diverse species. We have our place, but it one place among many.
This is God’s vision for us!

For those who are not familiar with the Hanky Code, one of the first codes was first published in 1969. Gay males invented a color-coded system to communicate with other gay men. A handkerchief of a given color, placed in either the right or left back pocket of his pants, was all that a gay man needed to tell other gay men what he was looking for that night. This code, expanded in subsequent years, into a complex ritual code that few gay men now fully comprehend. There are now “bear codes” with little bears and “twink codes,” as I discovered in the online Gay Encyclopedia while researching this article.

Clothes codes have existed across time and cultures for people attracted to the same gender and wanting to communicate to like-minded peoples. The late Yale historian John Boswell, in his book, Christianity, Homosexuality, and Social Tolerance, noted that there was a color and clothing code two thousand years ago in the Roman bathhouse for men attracted to the same-gender. He writes, “Colors and styles of clothing appear to have been used as symbols for availability as prostitutes and the role preferred.” [Boswell, 1980, 78]

I want to speak about Jesus’ handkerchief code. It is a bit different from the above codes but functions as a cultural ritual to communicate an encoded message to the Beloved Disciple. It plays a central role in the resurrection account in John’s Gospel.

On Good Friday, we remember that Jesus hung from his cross for at least six hours, hanging between two thieves. Darkness fell on the land at noon, which lasted until Jesus’ death. Jesus’ disciples abandoned him. The only ones that stood at the cross were his women disciples—Mary his mother, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene—as well as the Beloved Disciple. They stayed at his side, trying to offer what little comfort they could as he suffocated in excruciating pain. Jesus looks to the beloved disciple to take his place with his mother. He entrusts her care to him and her care of him.

Years ago, I wrote:

I have often witnessed the repetition of this adoption event (between the Beloved Disciple and Mary the Mother of Jesus) at the death beds of gay men dying of AIDS with their lovers and their families. It is the powerful entrusting of unfinished business in the face of death and personal tragedy. Gay lovers and mothers of deceased gay men have reenacted the narrative too many times, forming a human quilt to share their grief and a community seeking solace in the midst of tragedy. [Goss, Take Back the Word, 213]

The Beloved Disciple and the mother of Jesus created a new family of choice. LQBTQ folks have had to learn to create a culture of love and compassion in the face of tragedy. I have witnessed this at each diagnosis of cancer at the Valley Church—how people rally around in support and love to health challenges that individuals face. We intuit very naturally that God is not absent in the midst of health challenges and even death itself. We realize that God does not abandon us, as God did not abandon Jesus on the cross. We create a family much like the Beloved Disciple and Mary the Mother of Jesus.

Upon Jesus’ death Joseph of Arimathea,, one of his closeted followers, requested Jesus’ body. He and Nicodemus, another closeted disciple, prepared Jesus’ body for burial. They had been afraid to declare themselves openly for Jesus because of the social consequences. They laid Jesus out and wrapped his body with seventy-five pounds of a mixture of myrrh and aloes. And they placed the handkerchief around Jesus’ head. They wrapped him with a handkerchief, under his chin and over his head. This was to prevent the dead man’s mouth from falling open. Soudarion (Latin: sundarion, a loan word used in Greek) is a cloth to wipe off perspiration—an artisan’s handkerchief. It is the same word used in John’s Gospel for the burial wrapping around Jesus’ chin and head. Joseph of Arimathea placed Jesus’ body in his own private burial plot in a garden. Jesus was laid to rest – no longer the charismatic prophet and wonder worker, now just a corpse.

Let’s go back years into Jesus’ past. During Jesus’ time, there was one way a carpenter let an employer know that the job was finished. It was a sort of artisan’s signature. I heard this once in a sermon from an older Jesuit priest while in college. I have never been able to confirm this fact through research, but I choose to believe it.
Jesus was a carpenter, belonging to the artisan class in Galilee. He worked with his hands to fashion wood — perhaps, farming instruments, tables, and chairs. In The Last Temptation of Christ, Nikos Kazantzakis imagines that Jesus built crosses for the Romans. There was always a ready need for crosses for the Romans to keep a lethal peace in what they considered as one of their troublesome provinces. About the time of the birth of Jesus and four miles from Nazareth, the Romans laid siege to the rebellious Jewish city of Sepphoris. The leaders of the revolt were crucified, and the 25,000 inhabitants were sold into slavery.


Let’s imagine that in his earlier years as a carpenter, Jesus was commissioned to work on a piece of furniture for a client. He works on the furniture for a couple of days in the hot Galilean summer. Upon finishing the piece of furniture, he folds a piece of cloth the size of a handkerchief (soudarian) in half and then folds it in half again. It is a signal code that he has finished the work, and the client could walk into his courtyard shop to examine the artisan’s work and recognize by the cultural handkerchief code that the work is complete.

On early Easter morning, Peter and the Beloved Disciple ran to the tomb after the report of Mary Magdalene that the stone was removed. The Beloved Disciple arrives at the tomb but waits for Peter. When Peter arrived at the tomb that Easter morning, full of sorrow and depression at his denial of Jesus, he entered the tomb and saw the burial linens. The burial clothes were flattened while the handkerchief was folded up in a place by itself. I am sure that Peter may have understood that the corpse was taken. Perhaps like Magdalene, he wondered if grave robbers stole the dead body. Or did the Romans choose to desecrate Jesus’ corpse?


But when the Beloved Disciple enters in the tomb, he sees and believes. What caused his faith and his believing? He would have dismissed the idea that grave robbers would have left the burial clothes on the floor and carried off a stiff, naked body. That would not make sense. Maybe momentarily, he gave consideration to the idea that Jesus’ spiritual body passed through the burial wrappings. That would be plausible, except the handkerchief was folded up in another place in the artisan code.


The Beloved Disciple knew Jesus well. He had heard stories of his earlier carpenter years. He read the handkerchief code left behind. The handkerchief was folded in half and folded in half once more. The Beloved Disciple realized that Jesus had left a coded message. His work was finished. Did he have a flashback to Jesus’ last words on the cross? “It is finished.” Those words did not register with him while he watched Jesus perish. He now realized that those words were a victory cry, for Jesus had finished his revelatory work. He was lifted up from the earth on the cross – drawing all people to himself.

The Beloved Disciple left the tomb encouraged with faith. He understood Jesus’ hanky code message. Neither Magdalene nor the disciples understood until Jesus appeared to them.

For centuries, Christians identified with the Beloved Disciple. They recognized that he symbolized the Christian community. This Easter can we step into the sandals of the Beloved Disciple, be with Jesus on the cross, let Jesus entrust you to care for his family and community? Can we run to the tomb and gaze on Jesus’ hanky message and proclaim that Jesus is alive and a living presence in your life and in our community?

For many, I practiced that after stripping down the altar on Holy Thursday, he altar laid bare until Easter morning. On that morning, there will be on our altar will be a hanky folded in half and then folded again. Remember that you are the Beloved Disciple entering the tomb; see the handkerchief and have faith in the risen Christ.

Happy Easter and the Blessings of the risen Christ.

This is not a sermon, but seeds for action.

I attended the O & A Townhall Meeting with Rev. Derek Terry, Program Director, on Project 2025 on July 30th. There is valuable information and slides to share. I would add there is a strong movement to promote a cultural genocide of silencing and eradicating LGBTQ+ voices of the Heritage Society. I want to note that the President of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts, has ties to the Catholic extremist organization, Opus Dei, founded in Spain in 1928 by Catholic priest Josemaría Escrivá with clear fascist leanings. It is worth making available and carrying on grassroots discussions. I find it incompatible with the ministry of the compassionate Christ and his radical inclusive welcome:
• PDF of the Slides: Google Drive Link https://drive.google.com/file/d/10beJiM_UzNKjpBTpX2gWuXQvrwokMAzw/view
• Project 2025 Full PDF https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
• Financial Info On The Heritage Foundation https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/237327730
• Resources from GLAAD https://glaad.org/election-2024-exposing-project-2025/
• NY Times Article https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/01/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2025-questionnaire.html
• How Project 2025 will Impact Black People https://capitalbnews.org/project-2025-black-voters/

Listen to Voices of Nature  Earth Day 2024

Listen to voices of nature is important for us this year’s Earth Day.   I saw a T-shirt logo, “Earth Day is everyday.” I have learned to listen to nature’s many voices over the many years as I have sought comfort during moments of grieving as well as times appreciating the beauty and sensory feast of nature’s scent, sounds, sharing in cycle of interbreathing oxygen and carbon dioxide with plant life, feeling sun light, wind, and rain. As my embodied senses take in the natural world, our senses become embodied points not only contact but direct consciousness of nature. Often accompanied by my companion dogs, who enjoy the sunlight or being together, I become aware how mindfully they attend the present moment while we humans easily suffer from attention deficit disorder when it comes to nature.  In a radio interview, Evelyn Underhill, an author of early studies of mysticism, describes humans as “deaf at a concert.”  Here is the full quote:

But so many Christians are like deaf people at a concert. They study the programme carefully, believe every statement made in it, speak respectfully of the quality of the music, but only really hear a phrase now and again. So they have no notion at all of the mighty symphony which fills the universe, to which our lives are destined to make their tiny contribution, and which is the self-expression of the Eternal God.[i]

So many Christians are deaf to the symphony of animacy and subjectivity in nature; they do neither take the time to be attentive to the biophony, the sounds of life, or geophony, the sounds of the natural processes of the bioregions where they live. It raises a thorny question. If we are unable to listen and perceived the S0pirit’s presence in nature, how likely are we able to listen and perceive the Spirit in churches?

We neither appreciate fully our bonds and interconnections to the more than human life around us.  We do not slow down to become mindful of what is spatially available and immediate to our senses and feel gratitude for the pre-original gift of the Earth, a gift of the Creator Spirit who provides the necessities for life: air, water, soil, sun and the life around us. Few slow down to realize our relational interconnections unless we practice some contemplative practice somatically engaging our immediate environment. Nature has a sacramental presence of the Spirit and the incarnated Christ.  Thomas Berry often quotes, “The universe is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects.” We swim in the presence of life entangled with Spirit.

Pope Francis wrote a prophetic message for World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation, September 1, 2022. [ii] He starts out his message, “Listen to the voices of creation…” We need to learn to listen to the voices of nature and learn the languages of the more than human life and the Earth. He writes, “If we learn how to listen, we can hear in the voice of creation a kind of dissonance. On the one hand, we can hear a sweet song in praise of our beloved Creator; on the other, an anguished plea, lamenting our mistreatment of this our common home.”  

Listening and learning the various languages of the Earth is to learn and listen to our ancestral parents: God’s Spirit and Mother Earth, ultimately the Sun that spun of her star energy to form the Earth.  By listening to the anguished voices of nature/Earth, we become aware how our extractive economies are harming life for a myth of limitless expansion for profit and consumption exceeding the resources of the planet are leading to climate instability, floods, droughts, loss of biodiversity, climate migration, and increased suffering both of human and nonhuman life. It is time for us to listen to nature and allows us to rekindle a love affair with the Earth.  If we fall in love with the Earth, we will step up to become Earth keepers.

In listening to the pain of anguished voices of nature, we might discover that that the Spirit and the incarnate Christ have deep roots in life and in the planet. They are found in our midst.  In his daily reflection, Richard Rohr made aware of bronze statue of the descent of Spirit of St. Francis of Assisi. Take a look at the figure.[iii]  The Spirit is not descending from above, for Francis looking to the dirt of the Earth and finds Spirit in the soil.  The Spirit is revealing herself in the soil. It reminds me of the insight of American environmentalist, farmer, author and poet, Wendell Berry, who wrote,

The most exemplary nature is that of topsoil. It is very Christ-like in its passivity and beneficence, and the penetrating energy that issues out it its peaceableness. It increases by experience, by the passage of seasons over it, growth rising out of it and returning to it, not by ambition or aggressiveness, It is enriched by all things that die and enter into it, it keeps the past, not as history or as memory, but a richness, new possibility, its fertility always building out of death into promise.  Death is the bridge or funnel by which its past enters into its future.[iv]

In Genesis 2, humanity is born from the soil, and we are part of the soil community. Berry makes an amazing correlation of Christ as topsoil, the most fruit   Good topsoil is full of nutrients and full of billions of live bacteria. Topsoil is the foundational of Earth’s ecology; it contains living creatures and non-living nutrients that provide a double ability to drain and retain water that allows good crops as well as provides erosion control. It is the terrestrial matrix for generating risen life, a perfect symbol for tomb in the garden, germinating into the risen Christ (Jn. 12:24-26)    The artist of the descent of Spirit upon Franics and Wendell Berry point to a powerful union of resilience for our churches if we take the opportunity to realize that Spirit and incarnate roots of Christ is in topsoil. The topsoil preserves and generates life.  The seeds planted in the soil are the Spirit’s churches and numerous groups. We must grow our churches and faith communities and sprout as resilient communities of hope, resistance to nature’s commodification and exploitation, and become Earth Protectors.  Watering, sunlight, and good soil as well nurturing and interrelations provide growth. Similarly, our churches must planted in earthen soil and ecological interrelated elements, not am isolationist heavenist salvation escaping earthen life and its responsibilities to our more than human siblings.

The Spirit amidst the symphony of Earth voices calls us peoples of faith to a renewal to connect to the Earth community of life. The Spirit calls for a new creation-centered church to address the climate crisis and catastrophe that we collectively have created. Rev. Brooks Berndt, the Environmental Justice Minister of the United Church of Christ, asks us and our churches to imagine a new ecological Pentecost for Christian churches:

What if we thought of this moment as the beginning of our story (of Pentecost)? In the unlikely circumstances, it is a time for dreaming, for imagining new possibilities. Others might not understand it. They may even disparage it, but the vision of what could be is more powerful than the voices of critics and naysayers.

What is this moment is the dress rehearsal for for your church? It is your chance to try out new ways of being, to enact an alternative to the dismal reality of the present. Like any dress rehearsal it is okay to make mistakes, perfection is not expected. What matters is the effort and practice that is always leading toward the next inspired performance.

Or perhaps, you prefer a different metaphor. What is your church is the training ground, the experimental lab, the flight simulator for budding movement? Whatever the case may be, your church now has the opportunity, a chance to empower its members to go out into the world equipped, trained, and prepared to respond to the call placed upon our present generation. Now it the time, This is our kairos moment. All of have us have the power to act, to be vessels of the divine, and to make possible the world to which we dream.[v]  

Our ecological kairos as individuals and communities stand before us a decision to make this Earth Day.  Are we to be grafted to Spirit and the Incarnated Christ and commit to become Earth lovers and Earthkeepers? Or do we fail to listen to the voices of Earth and nature?

---

[i]  Ibid.

[ii] Read Pope Franics’ message:  https://www.vatican.va/content/francesco/en/messages/pont-messages/2022/documents/20220716-messaggio-giornata-curacreato.html

[iii] https://cac.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/St.-Francis-Statue-Original.jpg  Richard Rohr, “The Transformation of Art,”  Daily Meditation, April 15, 2024, https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGxSlPVsbgvTkqTjpWvWsMhQVzn

[iv] Wendell Berry, The Long-Legged House, (New York, Harcourt Brace and World, 1969, 204

[v] Brooks, Berndt, Cathedral on Fire: A Church Handbook for Climate Change, Cleveland, United Church of Christ, 2020,  54.

Toolkit: Compassion is Justice: Standing in Solidarity with Transgender Nonbinary Youth and Adults

Rev. Dr. Bob Shore-Goss

I want to start with a scriptural verse Mt. 25: 40  “Whatever you do the least of my family, you do it to me.”  Here Jesus brings a notion of the least, those marginalized and scapegoated, he is the persons or groups targeted for exclusion and violence.  What I love about Jesus is that he consistently teaches us that compassion is justice.  When we stand in solidarity with those who are marginalized we stand Jesus the Christ.

I want to call us as a Conference to stand with transgendered folks as they are scapegoated in a phenomenon called by sociologists “panics.”  I was introduced to the notion of sex panics in the 20^th century by gay historian Allan Berube. Berube describes sex panic as “a moral crusade that leads to crackdown on sexual outsiders.”  I experienced the sex panics of the Moral Majority and other Christians who targeted and scapegoated gay and stigmatized them as “diseased,”  “degenerate,” and “dangerous” Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, labelled us as “intrinsically evil, objectively disordered.”  There are so many horror stories of violence and exclusion during that period.   Violent rhetoric leads us to increased violence and hated crimes.

There are increased violence and xenophobic targets:  Jews, Asians, asylum seekers, people of color, and LGBTQI+ folks.  We are in another sex panic that has been widened to include gender variance panic. Such moral panics play upon irrational feelings of fear that some person or group of persons, whose values, skin color, or  lifestyles threatens the well-being and safety of society.

The UCC, in various conferences including Florida, have passed resolutions in support of trans and non-binary folks.  The General Synod will consider a resolution to affirm the dignity of transgender and non-binary dignity amid legislative attacks. https://www.ucc.org/synod-is-asked-to-affirm-commitment-to-transgender-nonbinary-dignity-amid-legislative-attacks/

I want to propose some resources for congregations and actions in compassion solidarity with trans and non-binary youth and people”

Biblical Support for Preaching:

There are three passages we might want to reflect upon: Isaiah 56: 1-5, Mt.  19:12, and Acts 8:26-40.  Take a look at the Queer Bible Commentary for further reference;  Justin Sabia Tanis, Trans-Gender: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith, and Sean D. Burke, Queering the Ethiopian Eunuch, and Halvor Moxnes, Putting Jesus in Place: A Radical Vision of Household and Kingdom are good sources for preaching. Justin Sabia-Tanis and Sean Burke are seminary professors and contributors to the Queer Bible Commentary, and Melissa and Melissa-Harl Sellew & Joshua Reno write on Galatians from a transsexual perspective.in the QBC.  I would add the work Trans/Formation co-edited by two colleagues and friends that I have worked with Lisa Isherwood and the late Marcella Althaus-Reid.  The essay give insight into the deep and profound spiritual lives amidst struggle against religious and cultural prejudices. There are many more books by trans Christian authors.

Eunuchs are gender variant or proto-trans folks in the Bible. I want to address three passages briefly.

Isaiah 56:5 declares, “To the eunuch notes how eunuchs, who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within  my walls, a monument and a name better than sons and daughters, I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.”   This Isaian prophecy speaks of inclusion and the diversity of gender variant peoples.

 The context for Jesus’ eunuch saying in Matthew 19:11-12 is a slur against Jesus. Jesus identifies with the third category of  eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for God’s kin-dom. Jesus stands in solidarity with eunuchs, and I have personally met a number of eunuchs dedicated to Jesus’ kin-dom practice, and they are included in our congregations as lay and ordained members.

 Let me now focus on the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8: 26-ff. The Ethiopian  eunuch embodies intersectionality as a man, African,  non-Jew God fearer, and a eunuch in the court of the Queen of Ethiopia, and he is the first non-Jewish convert to the Jesus movement. Eunuchs have been proto-transgendered individuals in the ancient world and even in the modern world as Hijras, religious eunuchs in Hinduism. The eunuch was not religiously acceptable in the ancient world as transgendered folks are not acceptable to many conservative Christians today. The post Easter Jesus movement reflected Jesus’ radical inclusive practices of inviting outsiders and marginalized into his table fellowship. If God in the Isaiah scripture, Jesus in the eunuch statement in Matthew, and Luke in Acts on the baptism of the Ethiopian eunuch is welcome into the body of Christ, then we can stand in solidarity.

UCC Response

I am proud of the UCC response: From the UCC website: The Rev. Paul Eknes-Tucker, pastor of Pilgrim Church UCC in Birmingham, Ala., joined a group of parents and medical providers in the state to file a lawsuit against it, and a judge blocked its enforcement while the case proceeds.  In Alabama, Texas, Florida, there are may legislative attacks on trans children and youth and their families.

What can our churches do?  Here are some of my suggestions as well UCC churches, Conferences, and eh denomination.

1. If you are not ONA, become ONA. Take the time to learn about LGLBTQ+ issues.  Not going through says a lot about not caring enough to learn about us. The ONA has a process, and my husband Joe is a UCC clergy and recognized ONA trainer. He had 1600 clinical hours at LA Children’s Hospital, 400 hours as chaplain in the Transgendered Children’s Cinic. For his second MA in Pastoral Chaplaincy, his MA thesis is “Pastoral Care of Transgendered Youth.”  I was the first pastoral writing on transgendered youth.  An abbreviated version is included in Queering Christianity: Finding a Place at the Table LGBTQI Chrsitians. We were co-pastors of MCC United Church of Christ, North Hollywood, CA and worked with a number of trans women and men. Rev, Megan Moore a transgendered woman UCC clergy wrote a chapter on “The Transgendered Christ.”
2. Educate yourself. Read Justin Sabia -Tanis book Trans-Gender:  Justin is a trans gay male, a UCC clergy, and seminary professor at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities. He has a number of talks and worship service on youtube. One talk. One is  “When did we see you Lord,”  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNrzY5aVCaI&t=106s Justin has spoken to the North Hollywood Church that I and my husband co-pastored. I supervised  his D. Ministry thesis that became the book Trans-Gendered: Theology, Ministry, and Communities of Faith, originally published by our own Pilgrim Press.   

•  In addition, watch Call Me Malcolm.  It is on the UCC youtube channel.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh4Pv10lFyc  Malcom is an ordained UCC trans male clergy. I have shown it at churches and in the classroom for university students. It is quite good.

• Network and find a trans local network. Invite a speaker to come share their biographical journey. Each semester, I invited a transgender person into my university class to speak about their journey and answer questions bout their journey. This had impact upon the students. Real people make the issue real for the congregation.

• Include as part of your worship Trans Day of Remembrance, November 20^th.  The recitation of names of trans folks murdered that year.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sh4Pv10lFyc

Action Items of UCC ONA on the Day of Trans Remembrance

https://www.ucc.org/what-we-do/justice-local-church-ministries/justice/health-and-wholeness-advocacy-ministries/lgbt/trans/transgender-day-of-remembrance/

Further UCC resources

 Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance
– A Pastoral Letter and Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance
If you wish to name in your prayers the transgender victims of murder in the U.S. and worldwide, the current list is in the resources posted at Remembering Our Dead and the Trans Murder Monitoring (TMM) project. 

• UCC Resources for Transgender- Non-Binary Resources  https://www.ucc.org/what-we-do/justice-local-church-ministries/justice/health-and-wholeness-advocacy-ministries/lgbt/trans/

•  Transgender and Nonbinary Dignity and Rights Under Attack

Transgender Non-Binary Bill of Rights, https://www.ucc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Transgender-Talking-Points-for-Faith-Leaders.pdf

These talking points are for use in general conversation, panel presentations, interviews, church legislative bodies, and other settings of engagement on the issues. Anti-trans political forces are trying to criminalize families and doctors as they work to address the trauma of being assigned a gender at birth that is incongruous with the child’s or adult’s actual gender identity. Children are being targeted by banning them from sports teams that match their gender. These attacks not only impact trans and nonbinary children and youth, but adults and seniors, as well, and are drivers of crimes against trans and nonbinary people that continue to escalate. These actions threaten the safety and well-being of the whole community.  Please notice the talking Points are useful conversion and advocacy.

• Join advocacy group or form advocacy group in the Florida Conference, We need to oppose vulnerable trans children/youth.  They are being denied medical service, and the suicide rate of trans you four times that of LGB youth. Florida Transgender Resources Check for local resources and networking.  These include social and legal resources.  https://www.transgendermap.com/resources/usa/florida/

• Be bold. Hang the modern rainbow flag outside on the church that includes trans colors. It makes a statement that you are in solidarity with trans and non-binary persons Your churches need to be places of solidarity and welcoming.

Don’t hesitate to contact me or Joe if you have questions or are in need of further resources

Rev. Dr. Bob Shore-Goss. revdrbobshoregoss@gmail.com

Rev. Dr. Joe Shore-Goss, revjshoregoss@gmail.com

Listen to the stories and start conversations:  Let me end with a paraphrase of Gregory of Nyssa by womanist theologian M. Shawn Copeland. .

If my sister or brother is not at the table, we are not the flesh of Christ. If my sister’s mark of sexuality must be obscured, If my brother’s mark of race must be disguised if my sister’s mark of culture must be repressed. Then we are not the flesh of Christ. It is through and in Christ’s own flesh that the “other” is my sister.is my brother, indeed, the other is me… The establishment of the Church is re-creation of the world. But it is only in union of all particular members that the beauty of Christ’s body is complete. M. Copeland, Enfleshing Freedom, 82)

 I

Pentecost is celebrated as the founding of the Church, when the Spirit descended upon the male and female disciples in the upper room. It occurs after Jesus ascends into the clouds and his disciples are no longer to see him. Traditionally, it is assumed the ascended risen Christ is in heaven. He sends the Spirit as his replacement for his disciples and what becomes the church. The ascended risen Christ is missing, but the church claims that it has his Spirit. Does it? In what way?

In the last few years, I have understood what the ascended or risen body of Christ means to Pentecost and all definitions of what church is. Churches have understood that the Spirit belongs to them; they think they control and own the Spirit. Jesus and the Spirit are reduced to presence controlled by ritual, sacrament and prayer, and actions within the church. But what if the Ascension, the disappearance of the risen body of Christ in the clouds, activates the commission of Pentecost. Churches think that they have locked up the Spirit of Christ as exclusively their own.

The ascended risen body of Christ is a “missing body” for churches. The ascended body of Christ is a way of speaking theologically that the ascended Christ is “everywhere”, even outside the institutional churches and even outside of Christianity. Creator, Christ, and the Spirit are not the exclusive property of any church. Divine presence constitutes the church. In early Christianity, thoughtful writers argued that the incarnational risen Christ and the Holy Spirit are the two hands of God active in the world, not just in the churches. The world and church are not one sphere.

Churches have restricted the Spirit and the ascended body of Christ within itself. They stand under a grand illusion that they actually control the incarnational presence of Christ rather than understand what the true disappearance of the risen Christ and his disappearance in the clouds means. In John 3:8, Jesus says, “the wind the Spirit) blows where she pleases.” There is a wildness to the Holy Spirit. She infuses Jesus at his baptism in the wilderness, and that Spirit actuates a “wild Christ” who brings a message of God’s compassion and presence in our midst. I have understood the Spirit as mischief maker, undomesticated and causing mischief. “By mischief, I mean what the late John Lewis described as “good trouble.”

Yale theologian Linn Marie Tonstad writes, “Ascension means the body of Jesus is, in a sense, lost to the church—the church does not have it, so the church cannot control who gets to be or who gets to eat Christ’s body.” (Queer Theology) In other words, the church should not exclude outsiders.
Churches often define the body of Christ, the church as the presence of the risen Christ through the Spirit, in word and sacrament, prayer and ritual, and compassionate action and love. Yes, of course, and even more. God, Christ, and Spirit are bigger than churches, bigger than the Bible, and bigger than Christianity. Hear me correctly, I am not saying God neither present in Christianity nor the church, but God is simply bigger and wider.

An ecological biologist, Chris Ubl, offers a description of inclusivity:

Inclusivity is grounded in relationship whereas exclusivity stems from separation. A consciousness rooted in inclusivity generates trust, one moored in exclusivity foments fear—especially, the fear of the other. When our goal is exclusivity, we silence those with whom we disagree, but when inclusivity becomes our goal, we create a world that works for all. (Developing)

Jesus practiced radical inclusive love and compassionate care to end suffering and exclusion. This practice was expressed at his open table. He did not exclude all sorts of suspect and wounded people and outcasts but welcomed them into a table fellowship of a disciples of equals, male and female. Quite radical, a table fellowship without hierarchy, a discipleship of equals, the greatest serving the rest, and open to all, celebrating God’s gracious hospitality and loving acceptance. The open table was radical then and can be again. It has been significant practice for me and my journey in discerning the presence of God. Ultimately, divine presence constitutes church.

Many churches, however, place all sorts of fences and exclusions around the table. They arrogantly control access to the presence of the incarnate Christ. They decide: Who are worthily admitted and who may be excluded to that presence. They fence out and exclude all those unlike themselves—the others. They place so many conditions and strings attached for admission.
The missing body of the ascended Christ in the clouds symbolizes that the churches have made little or no effort to understand their mission first not to exclude people from God’s presence in word and sacrament and secondly to search for the missing body of the risen Christ elsewhere, outside of themselves and even different folks.

The search for the missing body of the ascended Christ has been a lifetime mission for me to look for and discover divine presence outside of its walls. It is a church without walls, a church wherever divine presence is found. As I discovered that presence is found in unexpected places and unimagined or even within “indecent” individuals and locations. You would be surprised where God’s presence may be residing and needs discovery.

There are two significant features of Jesus’ ministry that have equipped my search: 1) his compassionate action; 2) and his open table practice. They are interrelated and co-exist together.

Compassion is not just an emotional response to someone suffering; it includes a sense of identification with the suffering and attempts to alleviate suffering. Compassion is the recognition that the person suffering and in need could be me and what described as “the least of my family.” (Mt. 23:40) Compassion shatters barriers between people. We are open to outsiders. Diarmuid O’Murchu, in his book Inclusivity, writes,

Gospel based compassion tolerates no outsiders. It is embraces and seeks to bring in all who are marginalized, oppressed, and excluded into empowering fellowship. It evokes a double response requiring a reawakened heart that knows it cannot withhold the just action that liberates and empowers. The transformation of the heart which might also be described as the contemplative gaze, asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. (O’Murchu, Inclusivity)

In Luke 6:36, Jesus instructs, “Be compassionate as God is compassionate.” Gospel compassion allows us to see ourselves in those who are suffering and humbly reach out help and discover Christ’s presence.
Jesus practiced an open table of hospitality where all—in particularly, outcasts, tax collectors, prostitutes, the throw-away people– were welcome. Jesus practiced an inclusive vision of God’s compassionate and hospitable welcome. Let me use spiritual writer, Henri Nouwen definition: “Hospitality is the virtue which allows us to break through the narrowness of our fears and open our home to the stranger with the understanding that salvation comes to us in the form of a tired traveler” (Wounded Healer) His definition originate in Jesus’ ministry of hospitality: Hospes venit, Christus venit. “A guest comes, Christ comes.” The UCC welcome states, “no matter who you and where you are on life’s journey, you are welcome here.” This encapsulates the Jesus’ open table of grace. God’s hospitality has no exclusions. As he commands his disciples in sending them in proclaiming the good news: “Freely received, freely give.” (Mt. 10:8) We do not hoard grace; we give away. Indigenous peoples receive gifts, but a gift is not a gift until it is shared or given away. We named this disparagingly “Indian giver” and I name it not hoarding grace and freely giving it away.

I grew up Catholic, and we were taught: “There was no salvation outside of the Catholic Church.” The Catholic church had the real presence of Jesus at the table, the real Jesus. Few others did. That meant Protestants and non-Christians were not saved, but damned. Grace, salvation, and the open table of Christ cannot be hoarded and restrict. They are free given to us to freely share and give way. In my journey through life, with joys and suffering, I have found that broke down many of my barriers and prejudices of growing up in a small town in Connecticut. The Spirit has an uncanny ability when I would settle with new boundaries of pulling the rung from under me and expanding me even further.
In seminary, my boundaries expanded dramatically, working in India with Mother Teresa and her House of the dying Destitute in Calcutta, making a Zen Buddhist retreat with Joshu Sasaki Roshi at a Trappist monastery, and even in a graduate seminar for doctoral studies.

It is the outsiders who challenge us to live Jesus’s inclusive vision of a compassionate and hospitable community, to search outside and find the presence of the Spirit and the risen body of Christ. The open table reflects God’s hospitality, where there are no exclusions. There are no outsiders to Jesus and to God. For Jesus, freely sharing food signifies the abundant hospitality and inclusive love of God. With Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf coast, there were many American organizations and faith communities that gave to those folks in need of the basics. The PEW Foundation studied giving among Christians for Katrina, and they discovered a reluctance among Evangelical Christians to give to anyone unlike themselves. This is not the compassionate action in Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan. I pastored a predominantly LGBTQ church and with several LGBTQ+ churches collected all sorts of relief goods for a black church not open and affirming of LGBTQ” folks. We collected and delivered a huge truck of goods to the church without any strings attached. “Freely received, freely given.” Mt. 10:8) No string attached to people different from ourselves.

My journey has led me to see and experience the wider God in various natural places and locations. As a child, I loved nature and its beauty, especially, trees changing color in the autumn. Mindful connecting with the natural world, the beauty and populated with biodiverse life. I intuited with my senses and my mind that God lives in places. The Bible claims that creation speaks. The language of creation, if we listen with our senses and awareness, elicits wonder, invites attentiveness to a divine presence. The whole universe, in particular the Earth, expresses a language of presence and communion, more complex and mysterious than any written religious text.

The open table I practiced, along with the meditation practices I learned from the Jesuits in finding God’s presence everywhere and the Buddhist meditative practice of paying attention to your senses prepared me to discover the epiphany of divine presence. I found the sense of communion with God in the eucharist was also present in wider manifestation. I experience what one translation of Psalm 33:5, “Earth is filled with the compassion of Lord.” The Christ, the incarnation of God’s compassion, was found in abundance. I discerned the presence of God’s compassion experienced at the open table. Compassion is another word for grace, and that grace surrounds us. We interbreather that grace with other life, we are intimately interconnected to a web of all life

If God should take back her spirit to herself, and gather to herself her breath, all flesh would perish together, and all mortals return to dust. Job 14:14-15

Advent started Sunday November 28th, and November 30th is Extinction Species Remembrance. I realize with auto-immune disease my own mortality and that I probably will not be alive in a decade from now. Why in a decade? That is the time where humanity has to turn around its lifestyle and develop a sense of urgency to deflect planetary temperature rise by 1.5 degree Celsius, marking a significant point in climate change’s irreversibility.
There is an urgency to examine what you can do deflect the consequences of human impacted climate change.
Advent looks to Christ’s return (parousia) by remembering four central virtues: peace, hope, joy, and love. We look to Christ’s arrival after his resurrection. This made sense when we viewed God transcendent to the world and not immanently present the world. I will suggest the arrival language needs to be applied to ourselves. The risen Christ and the Holy Spirit are already involved in creation and in particular, the Earth. What I will suggest that the four Advent virtues are intentional practices. Intentional practices are deliberate actions to improve yourself. In spirituality, it is the practice to consciously intend a way of behavior. I suggest in meditation/prayer each evening that I intend to be kind to every person I meet the next day. It begins to work as you practice kindness and eventually, this practice becomes a natural daily action. The Advent virtues—peace, hope, joy, and love—are intentional practices that allow to arrive at perceiving the presence of the risen Christ is in our midst and in the living world. We arrive rather than Christ returns.

I recommend that the meditation upon our scripture be reconnected with nature as also a location of wisdom and divine presence. Both are formative for seeing the risen Christ and the Spirit active in the Earth processes and all nature. Such intentional practices of the four virtues reconnects us to the organically living processes which Colossians 1:20 affirms that risen Christ is reconciling all things to God. I am arguing for reconnecting scripture with nature to assist to slow down, listen attentively, and meditatively discern that the risen Christ is present in nature.

First Week of Advent: Peace with Earth and the web of life.

Humanity, in general, does not live in peace with the Earth and the community of life. Actually, we aggressively wage war with nature and the Earth. Our mode is to conquer, dominate, and extract resources in pursuit of greed. War mentality includes entitlement, domination, ownership, and power. It involves incursions, invasions, and conquest against nature. Steven Chase notes that nature is “consummate conscientious objector.” (Nature as Spiritual Practice) Nature’s cries remain unheard in human war, rape, poisoning, and degrading bio-regions. Nature is objectified, impersonal, degraded, and disposable. From the Creator God’s perspective, nature is alive, persona, intrinsically valuable, and especially, beloved.

Second week of Advent: Hope.

Hope for the Earth community of life cannot be discussed without ecological heartbreak. Today is Extinction Remembrance Day where we remember the casualties and loses of this war: “Remembrance Day for Lost Species, November 30th, is a chance each year to explore the stories of extinct and critically endangered species, cultures, lifeways, and ecological communities.” (https://www.lostspeciesday.org/) These losses are directly the result of human social, economic, and political actions that impact climate change and exploit the resources of the planet without limit. We fail to realize that we part of continuum of life begin with the first cell billions of years ago. Many of us are even unaware of the loss of these species and the loss of biodiversity. November 30th is a day of ecological grief. We are neither attentive to loss nor do we hear the silent cries of the Earth.

Can we hope in the desecration of the planet for short term greed and profit at the expense of the vulnerable. The words of Mark Wallace are vividly remembered in the struggle for hope:

…we can imagine that the Spirit today is pleading with the human community to nurture and protect the fragile bioregions we all share…Because God as Spirit is enfleshed in creation, God experiences with the core of her deepest self the agony and suffering of an earth under siege. The Spirit then, as the green body of God in the world, has become in our time the wounded God. (Finding God in the Singing River)

Compassion literally means to “suffer with.” The choice for close intimacy with the natural world and the Spirit enfleshed in the world is the path of compassionate solidarity with the suffering. Mourning and heartbreak is accompanied with the loss. It s in the phoenix of ashes of environmental grief that the site of the both of resilience and resistance. We do not grieve for what is not related to us. Berta Caeres, environmental activist from Lenca indigenous people of Western Honduras was assassinated in 2016. She claimed “We come from the Earth, the water and the corn.” She continued:

Let us wake up, humankind. We’re out of time… We must answer their call (threatened rivers).. Our Mother is militarized. Fenced-in, poisoned. A place where basic rights are systematically violated, demands that we take action. Let us build societies that are able to co-exist in a dignified way, in a way that protects life. Let us come together and remain hopeful as we defend and car for the blood of the Earth and of its spirits. (quoted in John Dear, They Shall Inherit the Earth)

Thomas Berry writes,

We need to hear the creatures of the Earth before it is too late, before their voices are stilled forever through extinctions occurring at such rapid rte. Once gone, they will never exist again be available to us. (The Christian Future and the Fate of the Earth)

If we take the time to move away from our self-centeredness and become other centered, we will notice the growing silence or absence from extinct species. Several years, Sixty Minutes highlighted the photography project of Joel Sartore, a National Geographic photographer, developed a digital Photo Ark. He has photographed over ten thousand species. His purpose is to help us to look at these non-human animals and be inspired to care for them while there is still time. Sartore and Berry remind us of the heartbreak of loss of more than human life and poisoning of bio-regions for an extractive fossil economy of death. Let us find in our environmental mourning flashes hope that ignite resilience and resistance. I find this in our indigenous brothers and sisters who fought for the waters, the land, and life.

Extinction Rebellion, a global environmental activist, is born of environmental grief at loss. Environmental heartbreak inspires hopeful actions to fight against climate change.

Third Week of Advent: Joy in Reconnection to the risen Christ in nature.

There is a profound joy in reintegrating ourselves into the goodness of the Earth an aliveness that God pronounced good. Daniel Spencer, UCC eco-ethicist describes, the “the act of restoration—of restoring our place within the Earth community, of restoring the ecological and divine integrity of the community itself.” (Spencer, “Restoring Earth, Restored to Earth”) Earth restoration is mutual presencing of ourselves and the Earth community of all life. Indigenous botanist Robin Kimmerer writes,

What if we could fashion a restoration plan that grew from understanding multiple meanings of the land? Land as sustainers, Land as identity. Las grocery and pharmacy. Land as connection to our ancestors. Lad as moral obligation. Lad as self. (Braiding Sweetgrass)

By mutual restoration, we are entangled God’s original grace, restoring our spirit to an earthen identity, repairing damaged environments, slow-down rapid extinction of species and the elimination of biodiversity. In looking carefully to the land as teacher, healing, and creativity, Earth-loving Christians may develop novel eco-systems to counter destructive human impact and destruction of the environment. We realize that our spirit, imagination, and embodied sensory actions do not belong to ourselves but belong to the Earth and ensouled Spirit. This is the joy of belonging and creating the kinship of God’s kin-dom.

Fourth Week of Advent: Love.

In God is Green, I explore the question that Jesus asks of the lawyer in story of the Good Samaritan. “Who is my Neighbor?” Neighbor indicated a nearness and/or a proximity. When Jesus argues for compassion and love for neighbor. Daniel Miller argues that Jesus’ intention is to upturn the exclusiveness and restrictions of the lawyer’s question. Miller extends the parable to nonhuman animals. He writes. “The Parable of the Good Samaritan embraces nonhuman animals as neighbors because it focuses on the action rather than the recipient of neighborly love.” (Animal Ethics and Theology) Miller continues,

By taking humanity’s earthly human nature, Christ becomes a neighbor not only to human but also to creatures of the earth…Because has become our neighbor, we can then be neighbors to others…Because Christ drew near as neighbor to all earthly creatures, we are able to do the same. (ibid)

Miller argues for a “taxonomy of nearness” in our evolutionary history to become human animals. He expands the definition of neighbor as Jesus expanded the Leviticus definition of neighbor but to extend the notion of neighbor to nonhuman animal species. I recommend reading chapter 8 of God is Green for the full argument.

I end off with a quotation of Rev. Jim Antal, former UCC Conference Minister)

No longer can we claim the moral high ground when we treat only our nearby human neighbors as ourselves. No longer is it morally adequate to expand our understanding of justice to include in the circle of neighborly treatment more distant neighbors. We must recognize that all people, indeed all creatures alive and all those yet to be born are our neighbors. As Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr said, ‘We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” (Climate Church, Climate World

In summary, Jesus’s words in the Gospel, answers the question of the return of Christ.. “Truly I tell you, just as did it to the least of those who the least of my family, you did it to me.”(Mt. 25:39) The least of my family is the most vulnerable Earth and the web of interconnected life. The body and presence of Jesus the Christ is resurrected in all life.
When we intentional practice the four Advent virtues together, we may participate in the ecological grace of Christ multiple forms of presence.