MCCNY
June 22, 2025
I want to start by reminding us of the Ezekial passage just now. Here’s what it says again: As I live, says God, your brother Sodom and his sons (I’m not having that misogyny nonsense today on top of everything else; live with it) your brother Sodom and his kids have not done as you and your children have done. This was the guilt of Sodom: they were arrogant. They had abundance and easy prosperity, but they did not empower the poor and needy and make them strong. That’s what the word means translated by so many bibles as “help.” It’s not alms or pity help or white saviorism. It’s not condescending or even genuine, generous condescending. They had abundance and easy prosperity, but they did not empower the poor and needy and make them strong. They were arrogant and did not abide by my laws. So I removed them.
God said that. Hold that thought.
I’m tired and out of sorts. I may never have needed to swear in a sermon more than I need to swear in a sermon this week. I feel like I’m living in The Running Man, and not in a good way. If you don’t know the reference, shame on you. It’s peak Richard Dawson.
Today is Stonewall Sunday. Next Sunday is the 56th anniversary of the Stonewall riot. June has for decades been committed to Pride emerging and exposing itself, sometimes literally, in marches and parades and corporate pretendo allyship shilling for queer and genderqueer dollars. Over time, we got safer. We did more parades and fewer marches. Maybe we got comfortable. Maybe we started to think we were post-queer.
This year, this month, they’ve undone the name of the U.S. Navy Ship Harvey Milk, named for a queer, executed city council member and national pro-gay activist. They’ve redone the names of confederate forts Pickett, Hill, and Lee that we’d changed because those guys were traitors and they were committed to preserving human trafficking and enslavement. They decommissioned the suicide hotline dedicated for queer and genderqueer callers; and people will die. When they did it, they removed the T from the acronym, our acronym – our acronym! I have such mixed feelings about our acronym and the conflation of sexuality and gender and the bogus false inclusion of trans folks in name only and the weird way the full acronym is used as an adjective. Like how a February NYT headline reads “Nearly one in ten adults identifies as LGBTQ.” I doubt that very much. I’d be surprised if a single adult anywhere identifies as “LGBTQ.” The bland thoughtless use of those letters makes me nuts the way some people get worked up about the Oxford comma. Okay, I’m one of those people, too. It’s a frustrating acronym, but it’s our acronym. *Our problematic friend. And we, we will decide who will and won’t be bogus false included in name only.
This month a Minnesota state senator was assassinated, her husband murdered, another senator and his wife shot, their families threatened in their homes. Violent murder in their homes and a two-day killer at large in the state, but Minnesota was mocked and its representatives mocked and blamed and laughed at like they were women disclosing rape in the 90s.
The Supreme Court this week affirmed a state’s right to deny harmless, reversible, best practice, science-driven gender-affirming healthcare wanted and needed by some trans kids *and their parents, with their parents’ permission, and people will die. The House made deep cuts to Medicaid and they’ve shut down AIDS and cancer and other disease research and vaccination, and people will die. They’re supporting a war against starving children. They’re supporting a war against people defending their own national sovereignty. They’ve started yet another war over control of middle east wealth and assets, and people will die.
What’s the sin of your brother Sodom? This is it, these are Sodom’s sins. Arrogance, abundance, and not sharing. Not resourcing and building up folks who are sick, disempowered, who don’t have enough. It’s here, it’s happening right now. I could really use some Sodom-era divine justice fire and brimstone. I don’t even believe in hell, but I could use some of that OG retribution right now. Not drowning the whole world or burning a whole city; I’m with Abraham on that, but certainly let’s have some Reed Sea close over some selective cohorts after the good guys have passed through. Definitely let’s have some zapping like God did at those two guys trying to catch the ark from tipping over.
Seems like if two guys can get zapped for trying to keep the sacred ark from falling over and getting busted, there could be a lot more zapping right now for all the deeply on-purpose evil acts against the sick and poor and disempowered. I’d like to see a large number of pillars of salt that used to be all these people looking backward and longing for the old days of enslavement and klan rule and trans erasure and mediocre white men in charge. I’d be cool. A little casting into outer darkness and gnashing teeth. Where’s Armageddon when you need it.
I’m joking.
I’m not joking.
Where’s divine justice.
Where is it.
This next sentence is going to feel obvious. I don’t want this to be a feel good sermon, and not just because of naming all the evil in the country this month, this year. I don’t want us to leave here feeling good about ourselves. I don’t want us to leave here feeling Pride month proud. I don’t want us to leave feeling good enough.
Please stay with me on this; I love us. I love you.
We aren’t bad; we aren’t bad. And we’ve got to move past encouraging and feeling good about ourselves for not being bad. I love us. I love you so much; we are existentially good. And we have got to move beyond affirming our existential goodness. Yes yes yes, Sodom wasn’t torched, even in the parables, even in the fables, Sodom wasn’t torched for being homo.sexual. Those guys raped and broke faith with a traveler and were treating their own disadvantaged neighbors similarly. We know this, and if anyone here doesn’t know it, please check in with one of us for the bibliography. We aren’t bad, Sodom wasn’t gay, God loves us. The end. But not the end. That’s not the goal, it can’t be. Pride isn’t the point.
Pride is the point. Pride is our power, our empowerment. And it’s not the end, it’s just the beginning. We can’t stop there. We can’t just work enough to get ourselves through the door, and then close it behind us. That’s what Jesus is mad about today, it’s what he has advocated and acted against again and again. It’s what he’s demonstrating against today.
I want us to feel strong and empowered. I want us to reject shame and blame. I want us to move through the world heads up, eyes up, shoulders back. I want us to claim our promise, our birthright, claim our goodness and divinity. But that’s just not enough. It’s not enough. I’m not sorry for saying it; Jesus said it.
You are enough. And knowing and living our enoughness is not enough.
We are called to act for justice, for distributive justice. To hold accountable. Anything less is falling short of the glory, baby.
Knowing what racism is and does isn’t enough. We are called to countermand and dismantle it. Knowing what sexual consent is isn’t enough. We must share power and practice consent in all of our interactions with one another, and name it and hold each other accountable when we don’t. And if anyone thinks sharing power is weak or “woke,” I’ve got a donkey-riding king to show you and a messiah who went open-eyed so to speak toward arrest and execution. It’s not enough to know the definitions of colonialism and cultural extraction and mass incarceration. Knowing that homos.exuals and transes are in every era of history and geography, we are, isn’t enough. Knowing that we’re in the bible stories as exemplars and saviors, we are, knowing that we are as holy and wise and righteous as anyone, we are, is not enough. It’s a lot. It’s amazing. I want it for us. And we must go beyond our Pride; we must strengthen and build up the poor and sick and disempowered.
Jesus said it and demands it of us. That’s what’s happening in the temple today. Every gospel has this account of the temple civil disobedience. Any gospel in the canon that isn’t completely made up pairs it with the street action of the palms procession for a two-part indictment. Any gospel in the canon that is completely made up uses the two acts of public civil disobedience at the beginning and the end of Jesus’s ministry to bookend his life and work, to highlight acts of discipleship, of direct action, and its cost. These actions are almost certainly very actually probably why Jesus was executed.
It’s really important to know what he was criticizing. I’m not one hundred percent sure what Jesus is specifically targeting in the temple, but he’s not attacking Jewish faith, or necessarily temple structure or even the high priesthood. Probably yes, though, he may be targeting specific priests and lampooning specific governors and administrators yesterday, and maybe even other messiah types, with the donkey cabaret. I believe he is criticizing current practices, current legislators so to speak, current policies and structures so to speak, associated with the way the temple was currently operating. Who it was serving and who it was taking for granted. That he was highlighting and condemning these people and what they were doing to prop up the *system,” to support and grease the faith machine that “practices faith,” that “has faith” but doesn’t do justice, that “performs faith” and enacts ritual and allows the poor and sick and disempowered to participate but does not “help” them, doesn’t strengthen and build them up. In our own terminology, Jesus is probably definitely criticizing the operation of the church for giving the superficial impression of doing church but not, in fact, doing God’s work.
That’s what he means by quoting “den of thieves” from Jeremiah. The church is the refuge. It’s being used as cover.
Probably the Mark gospel made the house of prayer reference for its own purposes forty years later, but probably historical Jesus quoted Jeremiah. Jeremiah was talking about leaders who robbed or exploited the poor and sick and disempowered and then used the temple as cover. It might be like what the Southern Baptist Convention did, also this month, curse them, and any other body calling for harm and disenfranchisement of queer and trans folks in the guise of religion. It’s not exactly the same, but it’s similar, and people will die. Jeremiah says, your churches are pirates’ lairs. Your churches are bunkers. They are fundamentally rejecting, Jeremiah is, Jesus is, the veneer and machinations of any faith that doesn’t do its work of strengthening and building up the poor, sick, and disempowered. They are saying what Amos (5), and Hosea (6), and Micah (6), and Isaiah (1) all say: Your hands are covered in blood.
This is what I’d like us to think about today, but not as the victims of the violence. Not just as the victims of violence. This is how I’d like us to think of our Pride this year and ever, our church, our streets this year and ever. Not just for us. Not just for homos.exuals and transes. Not as a time and place to bolster ourselves only, to let ourselves through the door just to close it behind us.
That would make us the thing Jesus is condemning and demonstrating against today. To use our Pride, use our faith, use our inclusive churches, use our Pride month as a cover, as a beard, for celebrating ourselves and raising up ourselves and looking good and doing the appearance of justice and equity but not doing the work of justice or equity. The work of empowering the poor and sick and beset upon. We can’t just feel good about being queer and genderqueer. Please stay with me with this; I love us. I love you.
You might be thinking, but we are the beset upon, and we are. But we aren’t a monolith. The Jews under Roman control in the first-century land of Jerusalem were not a monolith. It’s one of the things that bothers me so much about the acronym, *our acronym! and its conflation of sexuality and gender and the bogus false inclusion of trans folks in name only and how people use it. I’m going to just say and hope we can acknowledge together that, yes, we are all beset upon, and that trans and genderqueer folks this year especially, this year uniquely, are profoundly experiencing a different level of violence and erasure, legislative and communal, in sport and healthcare, in identification documents and how that affects us moving in and between public spaces. That the numbers of our Black and brown trans sisters have never gone down, not once, at Transgender Day of Remembrance.
I hope we can acknowledge together that the newish anxiety and fear in this country of authoritarianism, or fascism, or totalitarianism or whatever words you’re using is not new or newish to our Black family and neighbors, that these or similar terms generally and broadly could be described as Black experience in this country always. Always. That our Latine family and neighbors are being literally hunted, literally hunted in their homes and cars and workplaces, hunted in the courts and offices needed to conduct their legal pleas for residency.
There aren’t sides. No things are a monolith. It’s not enough to be indignant. It’s not enough to be indignant about what the “other side” is doing and be proud of not being Them. It’s not enough to know what’s wrong, and it’s not enough to be in another political party than the one doing the deeds. There are people doing terrible, violent things. There are people aiding that harm, or looking the other way. There are people interrupting and shutting down business as usual, throwing blood on the draft files. And all those people are all along the political spectrum. This isn’t about being registered Democrat any more than being anti-racist means just not being klan.
I am so resistant to saying any generous thing about Liz Cheney, who voted something like 96- or 98% in line with her party eight years ago. But she is entered into evidence that they aren’t a monolith. Blue politician Gavin Newsom is defending his handily blue state from legislative and economic attacks, and he is beleaguered, and – and I still remember this – last year he said transgender lives and rights were expendable and should be sacrificed for his party success.
There aren’t always sides. There aren’t monoliths. Last Wednesday, Nezza sang the pre-game anthem at Dodger Stadium in Spanish para su gente, even though the Dodgers club administration said sing it in English. And some Dodger fans called for a boycott, and someone from the Dodger club maybe told Nezza she wasn’t welcome back. But Puerto Rican baseballer Kik3 Hernandez, Dodger utility player and currently in a bit of a batting slump, had posted to Instagram last weekend that he “cannot stand our community being violated,” and is “saddened and infuriated by what’s happening in our country and our city.” And yesterday those of us who get NYT notifications on our phones about the LA Dodgers got one that the Dodgers administration closed its parking lot to ICE agents and announced it is fronting $1 million and partnering with the California Community Foundation, the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, and other organizations to continue providing aid to immigrant families.
I don’t want us to leave here today feeling good about ourselves. I’m worried when I preach about our responsibility how many folks afterward seem to keep only hearing me say that whatever you do is fine. Whatever you do isn’t fine.
Whatever you do is fine. If you do something. Whatever you do is fine if you do something. It’s not me saying it; it’s Jesus. If the church isn’t doing God’s work, shut it down. If Pride isn’t doing Justice’s work, it’s not enough, shut it down. Do something. There is plenty, large and small, something for everyone. Some people turn over the moneychanger’s tables and get executed. Some people go around the corner and untie the donkey and the colt of a donkey. (Just kidding, there was only one donkey.) Nezza sang in Spanish para su gente even though she was scared. Safeway workers are striking. Millions of people protested and marched and put their bodies in danger for No Kings. The NAACP won’t invite a sitting president to its national convention this year for the first time ever in its 116 years. That Swedish kid that rode in a boat to the climate summit rode in a boat to Gaza with food and medicine. Boston has declared itself a sanctuary for immigrants and trans folks. People donate to the ACLU and Lambda and The Abortion Project.
There is a lot to do, different kinds of things to do, and it is not enough to perform faith, or Pride. We have got to do the work. Jesus said so; he said it, not me. He said, you have to do something. Jesus didn’t die for us so we don’t have to; someone else told us that. Someone who wanted us to sit down and look away. Jesus said I’m going to do stuff they’ll kill me for; follow me. And in case we spiritualized that, like how we did for hundreds of years, he said, Take up your cross and follow me. We still spiritualize it.
I love you, Compton people. Folsom Street people, I love you, Stonewall people. I love us. You’re good; you’re so good. Happy Pride, family; Let’s get to work.
Peace.
Rev. Miller Hoffman 