truth – By Another Road

Coming Out: A Sermon on the Transfiguration

I preached this sermon on Sunday, March 2, 2025 at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary text cited is Luke 9:28-43, an account of Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop.

I came out when I was eighteen. And although I came from a pretty open-minded family, it was still a struggle, as it often is for people. But there came a point about halfway through my first year of college when I was just weary of hiding—hiding from others, hiding from myself, hiding from that fundamental desire to be loved and to love someone back. I was willing to do anything, to give up anything, if it meant that I could stop being half-invisible. To live authentically and experience fullness of life. Or at least have the chance to try, and mess up, and keep trying like anybody else.

And so, I came out. And it’s been mostly wonderful, and sometimes difficult, but it was never really optional, because it was simply the truth of me. Ultimately life requires us to acknowledge what is true, even if folks don’t get it or don’t want to get it.

Because what is true is that most of us fundamentally want very similar things: to understand and to be understood; to be able to feel things; to experience life without fear or scarcity; to know and share love; and to leave behind something meaningful when we’re gone. These desires are pretty much universal, whether we are gay or straight; black or white; whether we are in Cincinnati or Kiev; whether we are rich or poor; or any of the other myriad ways people inhabit this world.

It’s just that for some such people, because of their characteristics or their location or their status, they find themselves having to convince other, more powerful people they actually deserve those fundamental things, too. That they aren’t half-invisible.

And while the powerful don’t usually like it very much, many such people, in their own ways, eventually have to muster the courage to come out—not specifically as I did, but to come out into the world in the fullness of their own humanity and say, this is who I am, and I dare to be seen. I dare to inhabit the dignity of myself. And I offer myself—all of myself—for I am no longer constrained by the fear of being misunderstood or maligned. Because I would rather perish in the light than wither in the shadows.

Every liberating impulse of the human heart, guided by the Spirit and made manifest in everything from the crossing of the Red Sea to the Stonewall riots to the sit-ins of the Civil Rights movement to the demands of peacemaking of our own time—all of it is a form of coming out. Coming out of Egypt, coming out of Jim Crow, coming out of the closet, coming out from behind the structures of prejudice and fear and choosing to see each other as we are, as the beautifully diverse children of God.

Churches could learn a lot from all of this coming out, I think. Especially, God love us, those polite, well-meaning churches that have, for too long perhaps, been hiding our own light within our walls, wondering why the world is looking elsewhere. I wonder what such a church might learn from the people who’ve had to come out in their own lives.

And I wonder, too, what we might learn from today’s Gospel account of the Transfiguration, when Jesus came out as…God.

Make no mistake, that’s what this story is: a coming out story. Not as any of the categories of identity we usually associate with that term, but a coming out nonetheless. A bold revelation of selfhood to a world not quite ready for it.

On this particular mountaintop, just before his journey to Jerusalem and the suffering that awaits him there, Jesus decides he is tired of being half-invisible, too. He is, perhaps, weary of hiding the truth of himself: that he is the Son of God; the indwelling of the divine light; the Creator aching with love for creation—and he cannot hide it anymore. And for this moment, at least, in the company of his most trusted friends, before he surrenders himself to the culmination of his difficult work, he decides to come out.

And so he does. And so we behold him.

This is Jesus, in blazing brilliance, in that white light which is formed by every color of the rainbow. This is Jesus, at last inhabiting the dignity of himself. This is Jesus, God, who also fundamentally wants the same things: to understand and be understood by us, to know and share love with us, and to leave us something meaningful of himself when he’s gone. This is Jesus, willing to pay the price for being himself, willing even to be rejected, because he knows that the truth is not optional, because the truth of him is love in its many forms, and it always has been and it always will be.

This is Jesus, the God who has always called his children to come out from whatever harmed them or held them back from fullness of life, now doing it himself.

The point of this, my friends, is that if Jesus can come out as God in a world that did not welcome him….and if our vulnerable siblings can come out as human beings seeking dignity in a world that does not welcome them…then perhaps we as the church should realize that our own future also depends on our willingness to come out of the shadows and into the light. To come out and say, we are Christians, and this is what we stand for. And that we will no longer let others hijack the narrative of our faith or the nature of the Gospel for craven, fear-based, or politically expedient ends.

We who seek to do good and proclaim love as the Way, perhaps we need to come out and say that we do so not simply because we are well-educated or well-mannered people, but because we are passionate followers of Jesus, and that is what followers of Jesus actually do: they love without exclusion, they surrender their lives to compassion, and they are not cowed by the forces of evil and mistruth.

Perhaps we who often find it easier to practice a private, respectable faith need to align ourselves more closely with those of our neighbors whose very humanity is a matter of public debate. Our neighbors of other ethnicities and creeds and identities whose very decision to step outside the house and exist each day is an act of courage. Perhaps by seeking them out and knowing them better, we could find some of the courage we need ourselves as Christians. The courage to name Jesus as Lord. The courage to reject, in the name of Jesus, those forces which diminish or demonize any category of people. The courage to not be half-invisible ourselves any longer. To wear God’s heart on our sleeve.

Because we are living in a time that demands an accounting of our values, of our commitments to one another, and of the depth of our souls. We are not the first to live in such a time, nor will we be the last.

And for those of us who have already had to come out and be ourselves in one way or another…well, some of us are rather accustomed to this sense of high stakes in the basic activities of living. We’ve got some tips to share. There is much that we can learn from one another to navigate the road head. To encourage each other. To stand with each other.

I hope and pray we will continue to do that work here. Whether through the building up of people participating in outreach services, or in the expansion of our advocacy and justice ministries, or in deepening our study of Scripture or in the practice of prayer and contemplation, I hope our parish will find and reveal the fullness of itself in this time. I hope that, right here in West Chester, we will help guide the broader church out into the possibilities of the present moment, despite the perils of stepping into the light. We have too much good news to share here to let it hide behind the doors or wither in the shadows.

If that sounds a little daunting, I get it. But as God likes to say, don’t be afraid. Pretty much anyone who’s had to risk simply being themselves in one way or another can tell you: it’s mostly wonderful. Sometimes difficult, yes: even Jesus, after the transfiguration, still had to keep on casting out demons and dealing with people who couldn’t or didn’t want to understand him.

But mostly, the peace of being wholly oneself with other people, without fear, is a wondrous gift. A gift from God. It is the thing that has saved some of us. Maybe it will help save all of us, together.

All we have to do, beloved church, is hold fast to the love that is the truth of us.

And then…come out.

Tomato: A Sermon

I preached this sermon on Sunday, September 1, 2024, the first Sunday in the ecumenical Season of Creation, at St. Anne Episcopal Church, West Chester, OH. The lectionary texts cited are Song of Solomon 2:8-13; James 1:17-27; and Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23.

When I moved back to the midwest several years ago and started serving in parishes in this part of the world, I got to experience all over again the distinct pleasures of the turning of the seasons.

Living out in California, where summer and fall are pretty much the same, you have to rely on manmade, manufactured reminders—back to school sales and ads for pumpkin spice lattes. But here, in the midwest, we get real, tangible, earthy signs of the changing year as we make our way through it.

For example, right now is not just Labor Day weekend or the precipice of football season, as wonderful as those things are. It is also…tomato season. Oh dear God, is it ever tomato season. Ask me how I know this.

You see, every year right about this time, a curious thing happens in the life of a midwestern priest. Tomatoes start appearing in odd places. They show up on your desk when you come back from lunch….and they appear randomly on Bible study tables and at breakfast meetings. They manifest, almost miraculously, in little bags pushed into your hands by unseen gift-givers as you make your way through a Sunday crowd.

Indeed, had Jesus wanted to perform a feeding miracle in our own time, he would have done well to pick August in the midwest, and the crowds would have feasted on bread and tomatoes, and there would have been far more than twelve baskets left over!

I am grateful for the generosity of the gardeners among us, truly, especially since I don’t have much of a green thumb. For those who enjoy them, as I do, there are few things that approach pure, balanced perfection more than a late summer tomato, barely able to contain within its fragile skin the deep, bittersweet, vegetal tang of green stem and sunlight. Tomatoes are, if you will forgive my tendency towards poetics, almost saintly in their abundant, delirious, self-giving, delicious brightness.

Oh yes, you can look for reminders of God even in a tomato.

And I was thinking about tomatoes this week not just because Matt and I have a stack of them on our counter and because we’ve been eating salads and BLTs and tomato sandwiches for dinner, but because these tomatoes revealed something to me about our Scripture passages this week.

Yes, really.

What all of our passages this morning are all talking about, to some extent, is what I would describe as an ancient struggle experienced by humanity in its search for meaning and healing and hope: the perceived struggle between our inner life and our outer life.

Think about it. Almost without realizing, we constantly talk in our faith lives about the tension between inner reality, inner spirituality, inner knowing, and what happens on the so-called outside: our actions in the world or those of others. This dichotomy is always with us. And usually we understand this interplay between inner and outer as one of conflict.

Maybe our inner thoughts and feelings strive to be kind and loving, but then our outward actions betray us. This is what James is warning against in his letter, when he encourages the church to be doers of the word and not just hearers of it—to put their money where their mouth is and match their actions with their interior commitments.

But then at other times, we might actually be doing good things, helpful and righteous things in public view, yet there is war and bitterness in our hearts. We are consumed with pettiness or jealousy or some other self-defeating emotion. This is what Jesus is warning against in the Gospel as he reproaches the scribes and Pharisees for committing grand public acts of virtue while their inner life and their theological imagination are shriveled and small and hard. To Jesus, the Pharisees are like the most beautiful tomato you have ever seen, only to bite into it and realize it is made of wax.

But God wants neither of these outcomes for us—God doesn’t want us to be houses divided against ourselves, or to live divided lives. God wants our insides and our outsides to match.

That’s the invitation that Jesus is making to his disciples. It’s really quite simple. And really quite hard!

If we want to know what this looks like in practice, of course, we can look at Jesus who was, in a way no one else ever could be, someone who cultivated within himself and lived visibly with an undivided love for God, self, and neighbor.

When he tells the Pharisees that what comes out of a person is what defiles them, he is not saying that the interior life matters more; he is upending their assumptions about how the world works so that they might finally perceive that their judgment is not just harmful, it is irrelevant, because everyone and everything is part of a whole.

One of the most distinctive and important aspects of Jesus is that in him, the ancient dichotomy of struggle between the inner and outer life does not exist. There is simply—life. Life flowing through, life taking shape, life abundant, rising up as urgently as a summer garden. Nothing to hide, everything to offer.

And I don’t know about you, but my God, as I look around our world, full of real crises and manufactured divisions and illusory promises…my God how I long for something with integrity, for something true, for something that is what it says it is, someone who is what they appear to be. And how I long to be the version of myself that is also all of these things, even when things get tough.

Like the voice crying out in the Song of Solomon, looking for her lover through the latticework, we are all desperately seeking something true, something whole, something that won’t betray us or turn on us or trick us, and it can often seem rather impossible to find…

…until you meet Jesus and realize that he is–my Lord and my God–the real deal. That he is the ripe summer fruit that is just as delicious as it looks. He is the fruit that bears no curse. The simple, abundant gift of life rising up from the earth and coming down from heaven. Stem and sunlight.

And if we, as the church, as the followers of this simple, bittersweet, abundant God, if we hope to show the world who he is, then by God we’d better get out there and act like it, whether in the pews or in the laundromat or in the office or in the public square. And we’d better get in here, too, into our hearts, and nourish ourselves with the prayer and silence and study that seed and nourish our work.

Because the Gospel, ultimately, is about leaving behind the notion of inner and outer lives. We don’t get to choose between them. The world needs us to do love and to be love at the same time. The world needs us to be disciples who are as uncontrived, as self evident, as whole as Jesus. And yes….as uncontrived and self evident and whole as those tomatoes that keep appearing everywhere I look.

So I guess that’s what the tomatoes showed me this week—those saintly summer tomatoes. They aren’t the most impressive or exotic thing. But, they are, blessedly, exactly what they appear to be. They are a promise kept, for once in this world. And they offer themselves, without reservation, without calculation, and with completeness, for the sustenance of all.

And just when you think there’s nothing left….they keep showing up, in unexpected places, to remind you what sunlight tastes like. Sort of like Jesus. And, at our best, like us, too.

So yes, if anyone asks you this week, you can say, well…he preached about tomatoes.

But if I have learned anything thus far, it is that you can look for reminders of God everywhere, even in a tomato.

And imagine—if God can be revealed in a tomato, then, maybe, just maybe, he can be revealed in us, too.