Please join us in the virtual world of Second Life each Sunday at 2pm Pacific/ 5pm Eastern time. Download the interface at Secondlife.com, create your avatar, and join us at Sunshine Cathedral.
Observing Transgender Day of Visibility
Call to Worship
Sunshine Cathedral is a different kind of church
where the past is past
and the future has infinite possibilities!
This is the day our God has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Opening Prayer
Opening Prayer Transgender Day of Visibility Celebration
Transgender Day of Visibility 2022
On this Transgender Day of Visibility I want to introduce you to my friend The Rev Aaron Miller of MCC Hartford. Aaron is a dear man. A dedicated pastor. A loving friend and a gift to all who know him. This is called:
Every Note
Like a note in a song, we are each essential.
A beat cannot be skipped without interrupting the song’s rhythm and cadence. Would we say one note is wrong, unnecessary or has less value than another...
when the song is so beautiful that it touches our hearts and compels us to sing along?
Different since birth, the transgender experience has been, at times,
difficult, isolating, and even painful in a world that does not seek to understand.
Arms did not reach for me.
No band aids were offered to protect my spirit and to heal my soul. I was not accepted as one of the boys and I definitely was not a girl. I was a note in the wrong song.
I cried out to God “Why did you create me so differently?”
In the quiet of the sanctuary I had created...something stirred. A still small voice whispered
“You are a note in the song that I am singing”
I answered “Why then am I so different?”
And, God said “You are a beautiful note that creates the harmony in my song --- a song that you call humanity.
Melody and harmony need each other
to create something new and beautiful together.
So, play your note with joy, my child.
You are part of a song that is not yet complete.
Look and you will see...hearts opening to this beautiful song. Some are even compelled to sing along.
I ask that you have faith enough to trust the Songwriter For you are my beloved.
And, your note is beautiful and essential----to Me.”
Amen.
The Lessons
The wisdom of Ida B. Elliott
“Jesus taught so plainly that the [Realm] he came to establish is at hand, within [our] power…to discern as definitely and consciously as we grasp visible objects with the hand, to make the location of the [realm] certain he added, ‘The [Realm] of God is within you.’”
A reading from the Fourth Gospel (John 18.28-40)
The guards took Jesus from Caiaphas’ house to the Roman governor’s palace. It was early in the morning. Many religious people would not go inside the palace. They did not want to make themselves unclean... So Pilate went outside to them and asked, “What do you say this man has done wrong?”
They answered, “He is a bad man. That is why we brought him to you.”
Pilate said to them, “You take him yourselves and judge him by your own law.”
The religious leaders answered, “But your law does not allow us to punish anyone by killing them.” (This was to show the truth of what Jesus said about how he would die.)
Then Pilate went back inside the palace. He called for Jesus and asked him, “Are you the king of your people?”
Jesus said, “Is that your own question, or did other people tell you about me?”
Pilate said, “I’m not Jewish! It was your own priests who brought you before me. What have you done wrong?”
Jesus said, “My realm does not belong to this world. If it did, my servants would fight so that I would not be handed over. No, my realm is not an earthly one.”
Pilate said, “So you are a king.”
Jesus answered, “You are right to say that I am a king. I was born for this: to tell people about the truth. That is why I came into the world. And everyone who belongs to the truth listens to me.”
Pilate said, “What is truth?” Then he went out to the religious leaders again and said to them, “I can find nothing against this man…Do you want me to free this ‘king’?”
They shouted back, “No, not him! Let Barabbas go free!” (Barabbas was a rebel.)
Reflection by Rev. Dr. BK Hipsher
CLICK HERE for Audio of "What is Truth?"
Ah the question, “What is truth?” No generation of people has ever in history had to ask the question “What Is Truth?” more often than those of us alive on the planet at this time in history. Not only have some people expected to be newscasters become disinformation sources for some of the most evil people in the world. But we have to question and curate our own information and decide what is truth online. And if these were not bad enough, there is a way to create what is called “deep fake” videos that appear to show people saying things they never said at all. So how can we possibly know what is truth?
And I’ll be honest with you, there are days when I don’t want to hear the truth. It’s just too hard. It’s just too sad, too anxiety producing, too violent. I steel myself every time I turn on the television in fear of the horrible images that will appear on the screen. When my Apple Watch vibrates on my wrist I no longer look with interest, I look with dread.
Our reading from the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel according to John, contains some important lessons for us. As Pilate questions Jesus he hears something that challenges his outlook on “reality.” Pilate is dealing with a large number of people who have come to Jerusalem for the Passover holiday. The people have become loud and challenging to the authorities. And the religious leaders have identified the teachings of Jesus as the source of the “problem.”
Jesus has been preaching a message of Good News that requires faithful people to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and look to prison reform as a part of living an ethical life. Jesus teaches that love is the number one responsibility of someone who loves God. He has traveled all around the countryside preaching that it is not enough to follow rules of piety. He has questioned the control mechanism of the religious hierarchy. He has turned upside down what people have been taught is the way to be loved by God.
Jesus’ teaching requires the people to question what they are taught and hold it up against a message of love and kindness. And he advocated that if the religious rules are judged by whether the rule is based in love and if not… he just simply ignored it.
He walked through a field on the Sabbath and picked heads of grain because he was hungry. Religious rule broken.
He healed people on the Sabbath. Religious rule broken.
He ate with sinners and tax collectors. Religious rule broken.
He interrupted the stoning of a woman who had been caught in infidelity. (Only the woman was held to account when a couple was found to be having sex outside marriage.) But Jesus called out to the men who were about to throw stones and kill this woman saying, “Let him who has no sin cast the first stone.” Religious rule broken.
My own partner married hundreds of inter-faith and multi-faith couples as a Rabbi breaking the rules of her tradition. I did the same before it was cool. As a seminarian I was Anglican/Episcopal but that tradition was not ordaining openly gay priests at the time I was ready to be ordained. And neither was the Episcopal Church marrying gay couples at the time. But those religious rules that we broke actively, consciously, were not loving. They caused pain. Not only did they not transmit a message of God’s love, these rules left people feeling broken, unholy, left out, unloved.
Just as we must question every single sentence in the newspaper or on television and judge for ourselves whether it is true or not, we also have to ask the same questions of the religious rules we follow and expect others to follow. We must hold up everything against the truth of love and ask ourselves if we follow this rule will we be acting or speaking in a loving way. If not, we need to stop and question what we’ve been told is truth.
Questioning and reforming our own tradition may also cause us to be outcasts. And we see the results of anyone who goes up against the Kremlin each and every day. Make no mistake, Vladimir Putin is using religion to further his sick, sadistic invasion and subsequent war. He’s said that he wants to “de-nazify” Ukraine, a country led by a Jewish democratically elected by the people president of Ukraine and he wants to “save” the Russian Orthodox church. And many of the so-called religious right in the US thinks Putin is a good man even as he slaughters children in hospitals, sheltering in a theater, and separating families to the extent that half thechild population of Ukraine will ultimately be separated. Parents are taking orsending their children across the border to Poland just to get them out of a country where Russian bombs and missiles fall from the sky daily.
We must ask ourselves if every law and every rule of our religious traditions is truth. We must hold it up against the question, “Is it loving? Does is support affirming people? Does the rule show kindness?” These are the questions we must ask of everything.
As President Joe Biden said yesterday echoing the words of another American president Abraham Lincoln when he said. “Might will never make right. Right will always make might.” Ultimately truth will rise to the top. Ultimately love will prevail. And we can help it come sooner by questioning everything. Reading the sacred texts with an understanding heart that the message coming from God in any situation is love, love, love.
When Jesus said the realm of God is within, he may have been referring to our ability to think critically and question what we’re being taught or what we’ve been told is truth. We have within us the ability to question and to decide for ourselves. May we decide what is truth with wisdom, with kindness, and with love.
Ken Yehi Ratzon Let it be so. Amen
For a list of music suggested to meditate on for this service click the link below:
"Pro-Caesar is Anti-Christ" Sunday, April 3, 2022 Lent V, Sunshine Cathedral of Second Life
Please join us in the virtual world of Second Life each Sunday at 2pm Pacific/ 5pm Eastern time. Download the interface at Secondlife.com, create your avatar, and join us at Sunshine Cathedral.
Sunshine Cathedral is a different kind of church
where the past is past
and the future has infinite possibilities!
This is the day our God has made.
Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
Opening Prayer
Opening Prayer in Lent
May we be forgiven for forgetting our divine nature.
May we be forgiven for failing to see the sacred value of all people.
May we be healed of judging ourselves, and others, too harshly.
May we forgive ourselves for not trusting in the absolute goodness and unconditional love of God.
May we forgive ourselves and others of all mistakes, real or imagined, since God has always and only seen the truth of our endless goodness.
May we now let our light shine and live as the children of God that we are. Amen.
The Lessons
CLICK HERE for Reading
The Wisdom of Lola Pauline Mays
In this moment I am lifted into a divine realization and see the truth about myself, my family, my neighbor, and my country. I realize that God within me, as intelligence, can clear my way as my mind remains in a state of peace. I no longer fight a battle of appearances, because I have accepted victory from within. In this calm trust I am awakened to the truth that all God can do for me must be done through me. This stabilizes my mind…I thank God…today for inner peace.
CLICK HERE for Gospel Reading
A reading from the Fourth Gospel (John 19.1-16a)
Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged, and the soldiers twisted thorn-twigs into a crown and put it on his head, threw a purple robe around him and kept coming into his presence, saying, “Hail, [the Jewish] king…!” And then they slapped him with their open hands.
Then Pilate went outside again and said to them, “Look, I bring him out before you here, to show that I find nothing criminal about him at all.”
And at this Jesus came outside too, wearing the thorn crown and the purple robe. “Look,” said Pilate, “here’s the man!”
The sight of him made the chief priests…shout at the top of their voices, “Crucify! Crucify!”
“You take him…,” retorted Pilate. “He’s no criminal as far as I can see!”
The [religious authorities] answered him, “He should die, for he made himself out to be Son of God!”
When Pilate heard them say this, he became much more uneasy, and returned to the palace again and spoke to Jesus, “Where do you come from?”
But Jesus gave him no reply. So Pilate said to him, “Won’t you speak to me? Don’t you realize that I have the power to set you free, and I have the power to have you crucified?”
“You have no power at all against me,” replied Jesus, “except what was given to you from above. And for that reason the one who handed me over to you is even more guilty than you are.”
From that moment, Pilate tried hard to set him free but [Jesus’ accusers] were shouting, “If you set this man free, you are no friend of Caesar! Anyone who makes himself out to be a king is anti-Caesar!”
When Pilate heard this, he led Jesus outside and sat down upon the Judgment-seat in the place called the Pavement...
It was preparation day of the Passover and it was now getting on towards midday. Pilate said to the [crowd], “Look, here’s your king!”
At which they yelled, “Take him away, take him away, crucify him!”
Am I to crucify your king? Pilate asked them. “Caesar is our king and no one else,” replied the chief priests.
And at this Pilate handed Jesus over to them for crucifixion.
Reflection by Rev. Dr. BK Hipsher
CLICK HERE for Audio of "Pro-Caesar is Anti-Christ"
Just when you thought that American politics could not get any stranger, former National Trade Council Advisor in the Trump administration, Peter Navarro, accused the former Vice-President of the United States of America, Mike Pence, of being a “traitor to the American Caesar of Trump.” Yes. That happened this week just as we make our way to Pilate’s Governor’s quarters in Jerusalem where we find Jesus in the process of being humiliated by the agent of the Caesar in power at the time, Tiberius Caesar Augustus.
You may not believe this but times have not changed so much from then. Evangelical so-called “Christians” in the United States elevated Trump to the level of Caesar, convincing themselves that loyalty to him would get them the things they wanted… power, prestige, and most importantly the power of the government to legislate their version of morality.
In Jesus’ day, the religious authorities were not much different. They manipulated the general public by using religion to shame or scare people into doing what Caesar wanted them to do. In exchange the religious elite were allowed to keep their offices as High Priests, places of honor and respect.
In both cases the religious authorities who propped up these “Caesars” told their followers and in some cases themselves, that holding their nose and following a brutal authoritarian government was a reasonable trade for getting their own moral agenda enacted. The more things change, the more they stay the same.
It’s no accident that Vladimir Putin orders daily murders, torture, and destruction ofa peace loving democratic country in the name of “saving the church” or “de-natzifying” the country with a Jewish president. Religious zeal has been used as a tool of manipulation of people since well… the beginning of religion!
In our gospel Jesus is humiliated by the soldiers in Pilate’s palace courtyard. He’s beaten, whipped, and a crown of thorns is placed upon his head making fun of the name the people have called him, “The King of the Jews.” They put a purple robe on him and harassed and made fun of him. But he did not strike back. He did not take the bait. And he did not capitulate and agree to stop making what John Lewis would call “Good Trouble.”
Just as Alexi Navalny returned to Russia after narrowly escaping death by poisoningonly to find himself jailed for decades, Jesus returned to Jerusalem for the Passover knowing what would happen to him there but also knowing that capitulating to evil and power does not bring about the realm of God on earth.
And so the people, manipulated by propaganda and disinformation, cried out for Jesus to be crucified. Imagine… just one week previous they had laid their cloaks and palm fronds on the ground as he rode into Jerusalem, not on a mighty steed, but on a donkey colt. They laid these things on the road ahead of him as a sign of respect and honor and yet, by Thursday they are screaming in the streets, “Crucify him!”
Some people try to make Pilate out to be the good guy in the story saying that he kept saying, “He’s no criminal as far as I can see!” But he did not release him. He did not set him free to live his life and continue to preach God’s good news of love. Rather he manipulated the people into thinking that he would have let Jesus go were it not for the High Priests and the people shouting for his execution.
We must be careful as we live each day at this time in history. Propaganda and disinformation is all around us. We must continually refuse to listen to what people say and instead look at the fruits of what they do. We must judge people by their actions, not their words.
I leave you today with a verse from the bible. I ask you to memorize it, hold it in your heart, speak it from your mouth, write it down, keep it, put it on a post it note or as a pop up on your computer. Keep it close at hand to you in this treacherous time so that you can remain focused on the most important thing. The verse is Deuteronomy 30:19….
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live
The choice is ours. Will we follow the crowd and take the bait put out by propaganda and disinformation campaigns? Will we grow weary of war and turn away? Will we tell ourselves that taking in and taking care of refugees is not our job? Will we hoard our privilege and refuse to share our good fortune? Or… will we choose life, understanding that whatever we do for the least of our brothers we do for the sake of the Christ!
Choose wisely. Ken Yehi Ratzon Let it be so. Amen
For a list of music suggested to meditate on for this service click the link below:
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