By Ryon Price
“From now on,” Paul said, “we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. If anyone is in Christ, therefore, there is a new creation…” (2 Corinthians 5:16-17)
And “in Christ . . . there is neither male nor female; for [we] are all one [in substance] in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28)
My great mentor, friend and Broadway ordinand, Hardy Clemons, taught me three key lessons for surviving and abiding as a pastor:
- Never quit on a Monday.
- Don’t try to make friends with mad dogs.
- Don’t borrow trouble.
I’m glad to say I haven’t quit yet on a Monday, and I don’t feed salivating dogs.
And though what I have set out to say and do has sometimes been seen as quixotic, I can say that I’ve never caused controversy for controversy’s sake, but have striven only to ever “trouble Israel” with a sermon solely when what needed to be said was a matter of the utmost conscience, conviction and/or care for the community. What I have to say today is a matter of all three.
I’m speaking today with you on transgenderism. And I do so because transgender people and their families are members of this congregation, and because it is a firm conviction of my conscience that they be cared for, as is fitting in the beloved community of Christ. Transgender people are not problems to be solved; they are human beings to loved, honored, cherished and protected.
It is my hope that I can express genuine care to the transgender persons and their families who are members of this community and perhaps to help us all think theologically and Biblically about why it is that we can and should welcome and affirm transgender persons and other persons of gender fluidity within the church and defend their rights to exist within society.
Three core convictions form the basis of why I believe:
- Everyone is made in the imago Dei – the image of God.
- The image of God is not biological, sexual, genital or congenital, but spiritual.
- The radical spiritual message of the original “Jesus movement” – though much maligned, managed, masked, and often made to miscarry – is still a marker for a whole new way of making out what it means to be human:
“From now on,” Paul said, “we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we no longer know him in that way. If anyone is in Christ, therefore, there is a new creation.”
And “in Christ . . . there is neither male nor female; for [we] are all one [in substance] in Christ Jesus.”
These words were written 2,000-plus years ago. We are still trying to catch up with their radicality even today – though, admittedly, some aren’t trying very hard. In fact, many are still trying really hard to run away from them!
“But in the beginning God created them male and female.’ That’s the Bible,” they say.
Well, yes, okay, that is in the Bible. And let’s be biblical. Let’s remember there are two biblical creation accounts. In the first, the Bible says God creates human beings in God’s image – “in the image of God, God created” …“male and female God created them.” God made humanity in God’s image. Both the masculine and the feminine were made in God’s image. Therefore, both the masculine and the feminine belong to God. Thus God, in God’s very own self, is gender inclusive.
In the second Biblical creation account as well, there is the affirmation of mutuality and belonging. The ishah (translated “woman”) is formed from the rib of the ish (translated “man”), and so the ish says of the ishah, “This is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh,” which I interpret to mean there is something of and belonging to the male that is in the female, and, conversely, the female in the male. And, going back to the first creation story – since they are each made in God’s image, something of and belonging to God in both.[1] There is mutuality, and there is diversity, and there is fluidity in creation because there is mutuality, diversity and fluidity in God.
And so far as the binary goes, we recall that the first biblical act of creation saw the creation of the opposites of light and darkness, day and night, land and sea. Added to this is the creation of male and female on the Sixth Day.
But lest we absolutize this binary too greatly, let us remember not all land is as dry as Lubbock – thank God! God made the sea and the land; but God also made the marshes, and the estuaries, and the coral reefs, and the dawns and the dusks which are neither quite fully night nor quite fully day, and that is what makes them so brilliant and so beautiful.[2] (By the way, Lubbock has great sunsets. You can see Honolulu light up from your back porch.)
The diversity in creation is beautiful and amazing. And just to make the point, let us remember that not two or three months ago, we all saw the night of a total eclipse come right over us, right in the middle of the day. And we all bought special glasses and got out of school and work to come and watch. This was no aberration. It was certainly not an abomination! It was a celebration! Diversity in creation should be a celebration!
But not everything fits neatly into a binary box. There is both diversity and fluidity. There is land, and there is sea, and there are sea islands. There is day, there is night, and there is dawn and there are eclipses. There is male, and there is female, and there is also fluidity. And it all belongs. And as God says at the end of creation: “It is good, good, good.”
Now, let’s consider the New Testament. We read the hypothetical story presented to Jesus of the woman who had seven husbands, all of whom died. That poor woman! She either had really good genes or really bad luck!
Finally, she herself died. “Now, whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” they asked Jesus.
Jesus answers by saying that people will not marry or be given in marriage in heaven, but instead, “they [are] like angels.”
While I don’t know for sure, the scriptures seem to suggest, as traditional church teaching attests, that angels are not singularly either male or female. In fact, sex is not a definite or defining characteristic of angels. It’s not a fixed category. Neither is gender.
And my question is in Jesus saying that people will one day be “like angels” in heaven, was Jesus not more than just implying that the roles of sex and gender ought not be considered too definite, too fixed and too eternal? Was he not saying that they can be changed? That they will be changed?
So, I submit to you this morning that it should not be considered a sin that some be changed on earth even as we know there will be change in heaven.
For sex and gender are not eternally fixed categories.
And the essence of the scriptures teaches us, that “the outward body wastes away, but something inward is renewed,” and the mortal puts on the immortal, and the natural puts the supernatural, and the essential spiritual being is freed from the inconsequential and temporal body.
These are my thoughts which I know are somewhat speculative. But this is where I’ve arrived, both theologically and biblically. I hope that for anyone who is struggling to make sense of transgenderism that what I offer here is beneficial in helping us see that transgenderism and gender fluidity can be biblical and can also be good.
Now, let me speak pastorally for a moment. I know what I am saying may be difficult for some. For those who have a hard time with transgenderism, my prayer is that my Biblical reflections may at least crack open a door. I know we all see through a glass darkly and that without love we are nothing. I pray you see this sermon as an act of love for transgender people. I pray you hear what I’m saying now as an act of love for you. “For without love, we are nothing.”
So, let’s keep talking. In other words, let’s not quit on Monday!
As difficult as this topic may be for some of the rest of us, I know it is most difficult for families directly impacted. Transition is seldom an easy choice or path. There is almost always grief, fear and uncertainty involved, for both transgender persons and for their family members.
So, to the families of transgender persons, I wish to have you hear me say this morning that I will support you. I will not judge you. I will not shame you. I will do what I can to care for you. I know this can be a difficult journey, and I will try to walk it with you.
And, most importantly: To the individuals who are themselves transgender, and/or gender fluid, or sense they may be, I want to tell you this morning that I will be here for you. I care and am concerned for you. I will try to be a good advocate for you. And I will try to be a good pastor to you, though we all know that can come with a cost.
Last week, Broadway Baptist Church was attacked again on X by a local political party chair for our sponsorship of Pridefest, and specifically our support of transgender persons. He called us all manner of vile, disgusting, and wrong things. But I want you to know I will not be moved. I will not be shaken. Pastor means “shepherd.” As Jesus said, the good shepherd is willing to lay down his life for the sheep. I want you to know, I am willing to lay my life down for you. You are made in the image of God. You are beloved of God. You are beloved by me. And I will do whatever I can as your pastor to make sure you are welcome, affirmed and beloved inside the doors of this Beloved Community of God, And outside this community, I stand in solidarity with you.
Some may be surprised to know how many transgender and gender fluid people and families of transgender and gender fluid persons we have here at Broadway. But I can tell you, I’ve had the privilege of pastoring several both here, and also elsewhere. And what I’ve discovered are tremendous people of faith who, in the words of transgender theologian Justin Sabia- anis, have experienced an extraordinary “calling”[3] on their lives or the life of someone they love, and who long to have that calling recognized in church and respected in society.
Let me tell you about one. I will call her Catherine. She called me a while ago to ask if I would vouch for her as an ordained minister. I first knew Catherine before she transitioned. She was a parishioner at a previous church I pastored, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, and the first trans person to trust me with their story, using a term I had never heard at the time – gender dysphoria. Catherine told me about the shame. She told me about the depression. She told me about the struggle to be believed.
There are so many transgender persons who aren’t believed and who can’t find help, even when they are on the brink of suicide. That’s not humane.
Thank God, Catherine found a therapist and doctor who were humane and could help. And subsequently, she has undergone various gender-confirmation treatments, and procedures, and a church relocation or two, and has now been called to pastor a little church as an openly-trans woman. She was calling me because she lost her certificate of ordination in one of those moves and didn’t think the church where she was ordained would reissue one. After all, the present pastor of that church is now a top-level, right-wing, fundamentalist pastor in the Conservative Baptist Network – a group that thinks the Southern Baptist Convention has gone off and gotten too liberal! (Apparently, there’s even more than one way to be a Fundamentalist Baptist!)
Catherine told me, “I don’t think they’d be real eager to sign another certificate of ordination. I’m no longer exactly what you’d call a good, ole’ Southern Baptist boy! I never was.”
Ordination is an act of God, not of the church. The church only affirms the call. And as a representative of the church, I affirm that Catherine has been called as a trans woman and as a minister of the Gospel.
I rejoice with her that she is able to preach that Gospel in such a way that not only forgives her of her sins, but also unshackles her from all the shame and all the guilt foisted upon her by the sins of a superstitious, misunderstanding and maligning society, and empowers her to proclaim the radically good news of the new creation, in which there is neither male nor female, and where there is no judgement according to the flesh, and where we are all one in Christ Jesus. And where you don’t have to be good ole’ Southern Baptist boy to receive the vouchsafe and blessing of God’s Holy Spirit!
God has done a new thing! God is doing a new thing! God is still speaking! God is still creating. God is still calling! And we are still catching up.
And as the old hymn says it:
New occasions teach new duties
Time makes ancient good uncouth
They must ever up and onward
Who would keep abreast of truth
There is a new creation. And things change. And we must be changed also.
From of old, all the way back in the Biblical days, they knew that queer people existed. They knew that non-binary, gender-fluid, intersexual, and asexual people existed. They called them “eunuchs.” They were mostly misunderstood and thus rejected. But let us remember what Jesus himself said about such people:
There are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.
It is theological. And it is biblical. It is pastoral. And it is also Christian. Gender expression, gender fluidity, transgender people, lesbian, gay, bisexual people. Some were born that way. Some have chosen to be that way. Some have been called to be that way.
We should accept this teaching. And we should accept them. We should welcome and affirm them. For they too are made in the image of God, and they too are at one with all the rest of us in this new creation we call the Beloved Community of Christ.
In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, one God, Mother of all. Amen.
— Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. Ryon Price is the Senior Pastor of the historic Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas. A Lubbock native, Ryon is a graduate of Texas Tech University and Duke Divinity School, Duke University. Prior to his call to pastor Broadway in 2017, he served churches in Lubbock, TX Colchester, VT and Durham, NC. In 2021 Ryon was recognized with the Erma C. Johnson Hadley Servant Leadership Award presented by Juneteenth Fort Worth and “the Grandmother of Juneteenth” Dr. Opal Lee. This sermon was preached on June 30, 2024 and was shared by its author for Christian Ethics Today readers.
[1] Here’s a pretty good short summary: https://www.rwuc.org/2020/01/30/affirming-theology-the-genderqueer-adam/
[2] https://www.christiancentury.org/article/critical-essay/nonbinary-gender-and-diverse-beauty-creation
[3] Sabia-Tanis uses the language of “calling” to describe transgender person’s experiences. See Sabia-Tanis’s book Transgender.
