Episcopal Church... migrants, trans individuals at 'center of the Gospel story'

Jessica_Rose · February 04, 2025, 04:26:41 AM

Episcopal Church leader says migrants, trans individuals at 'center of the Gospel story'

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/episcopal-church-leader-says-migrants-trans-individuals-at-center-of-the-gospel-story/ar-AA1ymaa6?ocid=windirect&cvid=8915838e57dc416c8d3d5d61be43216d&ei=102

Story by Michael Gryboski (3 Feb 2025)

Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe gave a sermon on Sunday at Washington National Cathedral as part of a service recognizing his official seating as head of the mainline Protestant denomination.

"We struggle with how to make sense of what all that means," he said. "Because we are beset by the powers and principalities of the world that don't see it the way Jesus does. We're told by the kings and the rulers of the day that the rich shall be first."

"That, somehow, compassion is weakness. That fealty to political parties — and here I mean either one or all of them — is somehow paramount. That differences of race, class, gender identity, human sexuality are all divisions that must somehow separate us. And that we should regard migrants and strangers and those among us whom we don't understand with fear and contempt."

The presiding bishop asserted that "those divisions are not of God" and they don't reflect "a Kingdom about which Jesus speaks of" in which "the last shall be first."

"In God's Kingdom, immigrants and refugees, transgender people, the poor and the marginalized are not at the edges, fearful and alone. They are at the center of the Gospel story," he stated, pausing as he received applause.

"Those who have been considered at the margins are at the center. They are the bearers of the salvation of the world. Their struggles reveal to us the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom about which Jesus speaks is upside down. It's reversed, it's inverted, it's counter-cultural."

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Episcopal Church... migrants, trans individuals at 'center of the Gospel story'

Jessica_Rose