An Open Door
An Open Door
The Time Is Now: A Sermon for Pride Sunday
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The Time Is Now: A Sermon for Pride Sunday

Jesus upends social and religious order in the name of liberation. He says, in no uncertain terms, that the time to follow is now.

I preached this sermon on Sunday, June 29, 2025, for Pride Sunday (Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 8, Year C), at All Saints’ Episcopal Church, Brooklyn, New York. The lectionary texts cited can be found here under Track 1.


Good morning, All Saints’—and Happy Pride!

I’m Rev. Brendan Nee. I’m the Associate Rector at St. Ann & the Holy Trinity in Brooklyn Heights, and I was so delighted when Fr. Steve and Fr. Joseph invited me to preach, preside, and worship with you today.

As a queer and trans person, it’s the joy and honor of my life to be able to serve as a priest in this Church; and to worship on such a spectacular Sunday with a gracious and welcoming group of people really gives me a thrill, and cements my own ministry and faith. Thank you for welcoming me today.

Sometimes our lectionary is so serendipitous it feels like the framers perfectly anticipated our present moment … and today is not one of those Sundays, but we’re going to draw the Good News from these readings anyway.

Our Gospel passage begins with what is called the “travel narrative” in Luke. Jesus is starting his journey toward Jerusalem. We’ve read, these last few weeks, about Jesus’ ministry around the Sea of Galilee. Now with “his face set toward Jerusalem,” he is already prefiguring his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension.

Jesus is gathering up followers—and it’s clear he hasn’t received any media training. The mounting urgency leaves little room for niceties, it seems, or even traditional ties to family.

Three people approach Jesus in this passage, apparently with good intentions: a willingness to follow, a sacred duty to bury a parent, a wish to say goodbye to loved ones. These are not selfish or trivial concerns; they’re deeply human and rooted in community.

Jesus’ responses are cryptic and sharp, and undoubtedly ruffled sensibilities in the first century as much as they do today.

Did any of these people follow Jesus? We don’t know; Luke doesn’t say. We could hardly blame them for turning back and seeking some sense of normalcy and respectability in the lives they had before.

What Jesus’ ministry reveals, through hard teachings and destabilizing miracles, is that systems cannot be relied upon. Could we go so far as to say, tradition cannot be relied upon?

Jesus flaunts filial duty. He consorts with Samaritans, tax collectors, and lepers. He is not the Messiah anyone expected, and in many cases, not the Messiah they want.

Jesus upends social and religious order in the name of liberation.

He says, in no uncertain terms, that the time to follow is now. The time to be a Christian is now. And it will cost us.

We read a similar dynamic between Elijah and Elisha. Even Paul, in his special, purity-focused way, is hammering home this message in his letter to the Galatians.

The time is now.

We will always have an excuse not to follow Jesus—perhaps very reasonable excuses, as two of our interlocutors did. We will always have reasons not to take action—especially radical action; especially action that threatens tightly-held tradition and order; especially action that leaves us with nowhere to lay our head.

But Christianity has always been a story of people who take radical steps in following Jesus in order to build the kingdom of God here on earth: from Francis and Clare of Assisi, who railed against the Church for its decadence and lack of charity; to Martin Luther King Jr., who cried, “Justice delayed is justice denied.”

The time is now.

The time is now to build the kingdom of God—a kingdom, our Baptismal Covenant tells us, where peace and justice reign, and the dignity of every human being is respected.

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During Ordinary Time, this long stretch in the liturgical calendar between Pentecost and Advent, we recognize our lives lived in the “now”: between the birth of the Church through the Holy Spirit and the Second Advent of Christ; the work of kingdom-building is immanent and urgent, immediate in our lives as we strive for justice, peace, and dignity for all.

I won’t pretend this is easy. To work for the kingdom of God is to follow the Way of Love and the Way of the Cross. This way is not easy.

But if you’re sitting in these pews today instead of spending a leisurely morning at home or at brunch—or getting a head start on the festivities in Manhattan—then Jesus is calling you, as Jesus is calling me: a message of liberation so radical, it’s consternating; a way of being that draws us onto the unstable ground of total grace; a kingdom that upends all our rules and respectability in the name of love.

I can’t think of a better lesson for Pride Sunday, really.

As Christians, we are oriented always toward hope and new life. Yet the Resurrection begins with a journey of heartbreak and struggle.

We follow Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, through the uncertainty of where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

We cannot put our hand to the plow and look back, because the work of kingdom-building is urgent; because there is a hurting world crying out for love, for justice and peace.

In recent decades, The Episcopal Church has done a remarkable job working towards full LGBTQ+ inclusion.

Are we 100% there? Certainly we’re not … we’re certainly not. But I have to tell you, it feels good to be an Episcopalian these days. I feel proud to be a queer and trans priest serving in this Church.

Our ministry of inclusion is more vital than ever with the rise of vicious and dehumanizing attacks—both legal and physical—against the LGBTQ+ community, especially transgender, nonbinary, and gender non-conforming people.

As the gathered Body of Christ, Episcopalians have faithfully grappled with Scripture and tradition. We know that living out the gospel, truly following Jesus, can be uncomfortable and confounding. It can be frightening.

I know some of the stories here at All Saints’, not as many as I would like. But I can say with confidence that you know the urgency of kingdom-building. You answer the call to follow Jesus now.

You know the cost of discipleship: the cost of living into the fullest expressions of ourselves, that God created us to be, in a world where power feeds on shame and degradation.

You know the cost, and you still answer the call.

You fight for racial justice, you welcome refugees, you open your doors to all our LGBTQ+ siblings. You do this, I sense, because you know the transformative power of the Spirit. Christ is alive here, and Christ brings life to the struggle, redemption to the heartbreak. Christ holds our uncertainty and our grappling.

At All Saints’, you’ve done hard, hard work, and you’ve laid a strong foundation for these days to come.

For too long, and still today, queer and trans people have had no place to lay their heads—but in The Episcopal Church they do; at All Saints’, we do.

We followers of Jesus practice radical welcome and extravagant belonging because our God sees no stranger. We travel with Jesus, who left no one outside his healing embrace. We know a peace that the world didn’t give and the world can’t take away.

We put our hands to the plow and we do not look back. Our mission is too urgent for that.

So, we offer our excuses, our fears, our heartbreak to our gracious and loving God—and we do not look back. We follow Jesus in building the kingdom of God in the here and now, with liberation and belonging for all.

Amen, and Happy Pride, beloveds.

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Artwork: Swanson, John August. Rainbow, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=56568 [retrieved June 29, 2025]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/.


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