That We All May Be One
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Easter 7, June 1st, 2025
This week-end marks the beginning of Pride month and the Episcopal Church is celebrating it in a variety of ways, all across the country. Yesterday, the Episcopal churches here in Arlington joined together to sponsor a table at Arlington Pride, with a lot of support from Saint Georgians, and this afternoon we’ll host a Pride Evensong, highlighting LGBTQ+ composers and offering prayers that speak to God’s all-embracing love for humankind. Expressing our affirmation, support and love for our LGBTQ+ siblings is so important, especially right now, when there are so many attempts to roll back the progress that has been made over the last many years in our country toward full inclusion.
The Episcopal Church has been formally welcoming and affirming LGBTQ+ people since 1976, when General Convention adopted two resolutions stating that (and remember this is the language of 1976) “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church, and that they “are entitled to equal protection of the laws with all other citizens. So affirmation both as Christians and as citizens of our country.
Today, almost 50 years later, the Episcopal Church continues to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and LGBTQ+ people now serve as lay leaders and as clergy; deacons, priests and bishops. God’s work is the work of justice, both inside and outside the church. In today’s Gospel Jesus prays that “ we all may be one.” And in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we see one example of what that looks like.
The Acts of the Apostles is such an interesting book. It is actually a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Luke, we hear about Jesus life, death, resurrection and ascension, just like the other Gospels, but in Luke, there is a particular emphasis on Jesus’ ministry to the poor and marginalized. The writer of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. So scholars today refer to Luke-Acts, as one book with two parts, the first about Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation, and the second about the early evangelists, who continued Jesus’ mission to the marginalized and oppressed.
In today’s story, we hear about the healing of a slave girl who was being doubly abused by the people who thought of themselves as her owners. First because she was enslaved and second because she was being used to make a lot of money for her owners with her fortune-telling. The girl’s owners are angry when their lucrative money-making scheme is interrupted, so they take Paul and Silas before the civil authorities and accuse them of disrupting the peace. It was unlawful for Jews to make converts of Romans. They are flogged and then thrown into jail, but even in jail they continue to witness to their faith with prayers and hymn singing. They are in prison, their bodies battered and bleeding, but their spirits are free and unharmed. It’s hard to imagine singing songs of thanksgiving to God after being beaten, locked up and shackled, but they knew that they had a choice about how to respond, and their response was to trust in God as they endured this horrible injustice. But they didn’t let this injustice go unchallenged. Immediately after our reading, the magistrates send word that Paul and Silas should be released, apparently thinking that they had probably learned their lesson, but Paul tells them that he is a Roman citizen, which meant that he had been unlawfully treated, because Roman citizens were protected under the law from being flogged. One of the themes throughout the Acts of the Apostles is trying to establish that Christian faith should be tolerated in Roman culture. And that one could be both a faithful Christian and a Roman citizen, seeking justice within the Roman legal system, knowing that God’s perfect justice would one day come to fullness.
As we celebrate Pride this week-end, we are reminded that we too are called to pray and to trust in God’s provision, while also speaking out against injustice in the world. One of the little-known but hugely important pioneers in helping us understand the importance of activism outside and inside the church was Pauli Murray. The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray lived from 1910 to 1985 and was one of those people who seemed to have lived more fully in one life than is possible, and suffered so much hardship and persecution that is difficult for us to imagine. Murray was a human rights activist, legal scholar, author, labor organizer, poet, multiracial Black, and was also most likely transgender before that language for her/his experience existed. She/he was the first Black person to earn a law degree from Yale, a founder of the National Organization for Women and the first Black person perceived as a woman to become an Episcopal priest. Murray was ordained to the priesthood at the National Cathedral when she/he was in her/his 60s and lived here in Arlington during that time. Murray had this to say in her/ his autobiography about ordination.
“All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner, I had already been called poet, lawyer, teacher, and friend. Now I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female – only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness.”
Murray was echoing our Lord’s prayer today when he prayed that “we may all be one”. The slave girl in the story from Acts was freed, even though she may not have known that she needed to be freed. The jailer almost killed himself because he knew he was responsible if Paul and Silas escaped, and yet he was healed after they shared their faith with him and he saw that he no longer had to be afraid once he chose to follow Jesus too. And they, both the prisoners and the jailer, were reconciled, the jailer washing their wounds, and Paul and Silas washing him in the water of baptism. And then they shared a meal together, a eucharistic celebration, rejoicing in the freedom that only God can give.
I leave you with the collect for the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s feast day, which is July 1st.
Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
https://trinitychurchnyc.org/stories-news/episcopal-saint-remembering-pauli-murrays-life-and-work
https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/who-is-pauli
