Guest Sermon for Sunday

Today I am working on a sermon for Sunday. Our Minister is on vacation and so members of the congregation are often asked to take a service. This is my first time. I have known from the beginning what my theme would be - Transformation and Acceptance. Now, I am pulling together the myriad thoughts in my head that have been clustering around these two words for the past few weeks.

On one level, I will be talking about it being the 20th anniversary of the United Church's decision to admit self-declared, practicing gays and lesbians into the ordered ministry, i.e. how our view of them was transformed at that time so that the church no longer saw them as ineligible but as highly valuable. They always were valuable but the church needed to undergo a transformation in order to see it.

On another level, I will be talking about how our daughter, Laura, transformed into our son, Julian, and how we were able to focus on the inner person and be supportive as her outer being transitioned from female to male. I am hoping to be able to convey that the great love in our hearts for her provided the pivot point so we kept our gaze on the incredible person inside her and not on whether she was female or male, straight or gay.

Julian lives in Victoria and is a wonderful writer and, in a recent essay called Not a Straight Line, he talks a little about the advantages of being a transsexual man. He says, "I was raised female, so I have a head start on all those communication skills men are supposed to find so difficult. There are some disadvantages. I don't know all the unspoken rules for masculinity in my culture. Then again, a certain non-attachment to the rules of manhood might not be such a bad thing...I may sometimes feel bewildered and lost about how to be a man in the world, but I have it on good authority that so do all the other guys."

He will be visiting the Sunshine Coast this weekend to attend the Writers Festival. I don't know if he will come to hear the sermon but I hope the message of Transformation and Acceptance is meaningful to those who do come to Gibsons United on Sunday morning.