Lord, you have searched me out and known me; you know my sitting down and my rising up; you discern my thoughts from afar. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;  it is so high that I cannot attain to it. For you yourself created my inmost parts;  you knit me together in my mother's womb. I will thank you because I am marvelously made; your works are wonderful, and I know it well. My body was not hidden from you,  while I was being made in secret and woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb; all of them were written in your book; they were fashioned day by day, when as yet there was none of them. How deep I find your thoughts, O God! How great is the sum of them! If I were to count them, they would be more in number than the sand. (Psalm 139)

Matthew Shepard was a gay 21-year-old college student who died 25 years ago, the victim of a vicious anti-gay hate crime. Matthew’s shocking death electrified the gay rights movement, and he remains an icon among the LGBTQIA+ community. For 20 years, his parents Judy and Dennis did not know where to inter his ashes; they wanted him to be somewhere safe where he could not be attacked again. In 2018, Matthew was interred at the Cathedral of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, DC. At the service, The Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson, the first openly gay Bishop in The Episcopal Church, heartbreakingly and beautifully ended his homily with “welcome home.” 

I recently announced my intention to start (or restart) a special interest group here at Trinity for members and friends who identify as LGBTQIA+ and I was surprised by the response. Yes, there were quite a few people who identify as LGBTQIA+ who reached out to me, but the main interest came from folks who are grandparents or parents or siblings or uncles and aunts of LGBTQIA+ loved ones. And it moved me to tears. With all the hatred and despair that threatens our humanity, and our seeming indifference and inability to see the image of God and to seek and serve Christ in all persons, your responses were a balm in Gilead. 

Oasis, our new Trinity LGBTQIA+ group will officially start in the Fall, and it wonderfully seems like we will need a separate group for allies and supporters. What a blessing!  Princeton Pride 2024 is June 22, and I would like to invite all of Trinity to be a part of our parish’s pride celebration. I’m thinking of it as our first Oasis official unofficial meeting before the Fall. In the coming weeks, we will let you know how you can help with planning. It will be a party!

Friends, today’s political and social climate threatens to reverse many of the gains made by marginalized groups over the last 60 years. The Episcopal Church stands firm in its commitment to justice and equality. In June 2023, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry issued a message of encouragement to “all of my LGBTQ+ family members,” noting, “I believe deep in my soul that God is always seeking to create a world and a society where all are loved, where justice is done, and where the God-given equality of us all is honored in our relationships, in our social arrangements, and in law.”

The good Good News is this: You are seen, you are loved, you are made in the very image of God.

The Apostle Paul said: “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

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