Sermons

Sermon for Pride Sunday - June 28^th 2026 - Genesis 1:1-2:3

Pray

Picture this for a moment and together let’s travel back a couple of millennia. Your home nation has just lost a war and now you are deported. You had lived in ancient Israel your whole life but your people were crushed by the military might of the Babylonians. You and your family, at least the ones who survived, are sent away from the only home you ever knew. You have lost everything and feel powerless to fight back. Around the fires at night, you hear your captures and enemy tell one of the oldest stories in the world. The story of Creation. Their story goes something like this…

In the beginning there were two God’s, Apsu and his partner Tiamat. Together they have offspring, younger God’s, except war breaks out. The younger God’s kill Apsu and make a dwelling out of his body. Tiamat then fights back by creating 11 horrible monsters to destroy her children but her children slice her in two. From her eyes flow the Tigres and Euphrates rivers. From her body they make the heavens and the earth. Other lesser God’s who were on the losing side are killed and from the loser’s dead blood humanity is made. Created to be subjects or servants to the winning Gods.

You are an ancient Hebrew, and your conquers creation story is about conflict, violence, power, and domination. You have no army to fight back but you have a different truth to offer so you testify to one another a different story. One that goes something like this…

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…” No chaos in this account. Instead, peace, structure, order and declarations that it was good.

“Then God said, let us make human kind in our image, according to our likeness.” No violence or death in this testimony but life and creation in the image of God for all of humanity.

“So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because God rested.” No domination or subjection but the gift of rest.

Our creation story in Genesis is not meant to be historical fact. This is poetry. Not a scientific step by step how creation came to be but an exploration of who. The first chapter of scripture describes God as creator, creation as good, and humanity as made in God’s image. These are truths testified to as an act of resistance. Our creation story stands against Babylon’s and against the powers of this world today that still worship violence, chaos, and subjugation. Defiance declared not with might makes right but with truth of God who without strife gives life.

Thus, there is painful irony that scripture is all too often used and abused by those who identify as Christians but whose actions more closely match the God’s of Babylon. How are we to respond? Should we give up our faith or abandon the bible? No, on this pride Sunday we participate in a poetic resistance that is thousands of years old. Today we reclaim scripture by not being afraid to be intellectual. Friends your brain does not need to be turned off when you step inside of church. Today we reclaim the truth that cisgendered or trans, gay or straight, however we identify we are a part of God’s creation  declared good and we are made in God’s own image. Turn to a neighbor and testify, tell them, “you are created in the image of God.” Turn to the other neighbor, “You are created in the image of God.” You are telling someone who may never have been told this truth before.

A truth we all need to hear, for while we are not held captive in Ancient Babylon, that does not stop evil from whispering or shouting lies. Lies that say there is something wrong, broken or sinful about LGBTQ+ folks. Deceptions like your value comes from your work or what you produce. Deceits such as needing to feel guilty when you rest. Falsehoods that declare some people are better than others or fabrications that its fine for humanity to take advantage of the environment. We reject these claims and join the poetic resistance thousands of years in the making by remembering we are created in the image of God and hearing again the call for us be the image of God’s love for life in this world.

We reclaim this story in order to testify to love.

For one man reclaiming the story meant reclaiming a song.

 

 

 

Michael Passons was a part of a Christian Pop group Avalon. One of their biggest hits was released in 1997, titled “Testify to Love.” However, in 2003 in an unloving and deeply hurtful action, Michael was kicked out of the group, fired for being gay. Just last month he rereleased the song. Over 20 years later he says he is not merely reclaiming a song but is reclaiming himself. He said, “Even if only ten people heard it, I wanted something out there that says who I am and the person I have become.” Here are some of the lyrics, written and sung before Michael was out and proud…

“All the colors of the rainbow
all the voices of the wind
every dream that reaches out,
that reaches out to find where love begins
every word of every story
every star in every sky
every corner of creation
lives to testify!”

A refrain throughout the song “For as long as I shall live, I will testify to love”

What had been a painful memory is now reclaimed by LGBTQ affirming Christians to testify to love. Scripture has been used to inflict pain on marginalized groups but we will reclaim this old old story to testify to love. For unlike the Babylonians, we have an old, old story that declares violence, dominion, and evil do not get the first or the last word. We tell a different story, we testify to love.

This morning let our testimony be that God is bigger than binaries. For the God who created the land and the sea made the sea shore. The one who made day and night also created dawn and dusk. God is greater and more and their Creation is Good.

Let our proclamation insist God is not a watchmaker who created the world and walked away but in Christ, God lived, died, and rose so that we might know loves redeeming power.

Let us tell of a story that begins with creation, blessing, and promise. One that declares you are made in the image of God and you are good.

This day and every day, may we embody poetic resistance, for as long as we shall live let us testify to love. Amen.