Dear Substack Community: Each Sunday, I send my sermons out after I preach at Union University Church. The audio is available along with the text. Telling the truth is what is necessary to destabilize the logics of supremacy culture that are embedded in every institutional framework, including the church. I’ve been preaching on the Jewishness of Jesus and Counting the Omer, so I’m looking intensely into the Jewish traditions that Jesus used to footprint his work. It is turning on my Wonder Switch, that Harris III teaches me! Enjoy!
Paz, —RCE+
Here is my reflection that I shared for Mother’s Day.
A Reflection for Mother’s Day
Today, we pause to honor mothers, femmes, and all birthing people.
And—borrowing from the wisdom of adrienne maree brown—we remember:
“There are so many mothers, so many kinds of mothers.
We act like they are all one way.”
But we know better.
We know that mothering is a practice, not just a title.
That love can be fierce, and sometimes it fails us.
That some of us ache today with absence,
and others are overwhelmed by presence.
So we gather the full tapestry:
the birth mothers, adoptive mothers, chosen mothers,
those who mother communities, and those
who carry the grief of mother-loss or mother-wounds.
We hold space for the ones who could not become mothers
and those who chose not to—out of calling, necessity, or resistance.
We remember that every form of care is sacred.
That every act of tending to another—body, spirit, or soil—
is a kind of maternal offering.
Today, in this church,
we do not flatten motherhood into a single story.
We bless the complexity.
We honor the contradictions.
And we say to each one of you:
You are beloved.
You belong in this story.
🕊️ Sermon Title: The Gate of Care: Shepherding in the Shadow of Empire
Texts: Psalm 23 & John 10:1–10 (NRSVUE)
Theme: Liberating leadership, sacred protection, and the politics of care in the age of dismemberment
🌿 Sermon Introduction: The Gate of Care (Expanded)
Friends, I need to begin today by telling the truth—not just about Scripture, but about where we are right now as a church, and where I am as your pastor.
In January On Inauguration Day—Laurel Buckwalter, chair of the Board of Trustees, called to tell me the church couldn’t make a budget for the coming year. I told her then that I would begin discerning other jobs. Her response:
“If that’s what you think you need to do.”
Two weeks later, Lana Meissner, then chair of the board of elders, came over to help smooth things out. She said, “The Trustees have no imagination.”
She wasn’t wrong.
I texted Larry Casey around the same time, asking when my paychecks would stop so Erin and I could plan our future. His reply:
“Your paychecks won’t stop.”
But then in March, I learned twelve people had decided to stop giving or to leave the church. Amie Acton even said, out loud, that this wasn’t just business—it was personal. She stood here and prayed for the offering that day, and did you know she was also praying for the next pastor?
So I ask you honestly:
Did you pray for the next pastor?
If so, what did you pray?
Amie prayed for an activist pastor. A pastor who would do something in this village.
And let me tell you: I am that pastor.
I came into this knowing what I was walking into. I was told by a trusted source that during the search, the other candidate said this church was dead.
But I see what is possible.
Because as a Trans, Queer, Neurodiverse Latino theologian, I am what is possible.
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🧠 This Is Narrative Intelligence. This Is Sacred Work.
Harris III teaches us that the stories we believe shape what we think is possible.
Kate Harris reminds us that budgets are moral documents—they reveal what we value.
Michael McRay says truth-telling is an act of resistance. And I believe that too.
So let me tell you more truth.
Stan Mitchell—who has mentored pastors for decades—said:
“Never hire a pastor until you’ve done the transitional work. Otherwise, you’ll crucify the one you call.”
That’s where we are.
And I’m asking you now:
Do you want a hospice chaplain or a midwife?
Do you want a historic building or a community church?
Do you want a death doula or a visionary?
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🔥 The Gate Is Here. The Choice Is Now.
There is so much secrecy in this church.
Decisions being made in upstairs rooms and car rides to Rochester.
People being marginalized because of ability or disability.
This is the most anti-democratic, anti-Christian dynamic I’ve seen in a long time.
We are a fractal of what is happening in this country.
But also—we are a body that is becoming.
People are coming back.
Unitarians are joining.
The village is watching.
Because I am not trying to preserve tradition—I’m trying to embody transformation.
And I don’t need a pulpit to do that work.
I’ve done it in Berkeley, with intercommunal justice work.
I did it in Nashville, over food and radical hospitality.
I’m doing it here—through coffee, mocktails, poetry, and prophetic presence.
And I am being asked to only focus on members for the next 6 months.
Asked this privately, with a witness.
Let me be clear: if that’s what I’m being asked, then what you want is a hospice chaplain.
But I came here to take this church to the future.
Church doesn’t look like this in other places.
Community Churches are relational, not transactional.
They exist for the whole village.
They exist to be alive with people, story, and purpose.
⸻
🌱 So I Ask You Again: What Kind of Church Do You Want to Be?
You’re about to vote on a 6-month budget.
And I need you to know: Budgets are moral documents.
They don’t just fund ministry—they tell the truth about what we believe.
Do we want to make decisions out of fear or faith?
Do we want to preserve scarcity or plant abundance?
The Shepherd is still calling.
The gate is still open.
But we must decide:
Do we want to survive as an institution—or be reborn as a body?
That is our work today.
And it starts at the gate of care.
🌬️ Threshold Transition into the Sermon Proper:
So I’ve told you the truth—
not just my truth, but our truth.
The kind of truth that’s heavy to carry
and holy to name.
And I know it’s a lot.
But this is the only kind of church I want to be part of—
a church where we don’t hide from the shadowed valleys.
Where we tell the truth
and still walk forward.
So now, let’s turn to the text.
Because these Scriptures—the ones we read today—
they weren’t written in comfort.
They were written in the shadow of empire.
Psalm 23 is not soft. It’s defiant.
It says: Even here—even in this valley—I will not fear.
Because I am not alone. Because God walks with me.
And John 10?
It’s Jesus calling out the thieves and false shepherds.
It’s Jesus standing at the gate saying:
“I came that you might have life. And have it abundantly.”
So let’s walk through that gate together.
Let’s listen again—to the Shepherd, to the Psalm, to the call to become something braver, deeper, freer than we’ve known.
Let us begin.
⸻
🪨 1. “The Lord Is My Shepherd” Is Not Sentimental
Psalm 23 is not a lullaby.
It is resistance poetry.
“Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil.”
This psalm was not written from safety.
It was sung from the underside of empire—
by people who knew exile, occupation, hunger, and grief.
It is a fugitive song, not a framed cross-stitch.
It says:
Even in death’s long shadow,
even when Caesar rules,
we are not alone.
The Lord is my shepherd—
not Pharaoh, not Rome,
not the marketplace, not the algorithm.
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✡️ 2. Jesus the Jew: Not a New Story, but a Living One
When Jesus says in John 10,
“I am the good shepherd… I am the gate,”
he is not inventing a new metaphor.
He is reaching back to the sacred story of his people.
To David. To the psalmist. To the shepherds of Israel.
To a tradition where leadership means protection, care, and intimacy—
not domination.
And he says this not in a meadow—
but in occupied land,
surrounded by Roman guards and religious gatekeepers.
Jesus speaks of shepherding not as comfort alone—
but as confrontation.
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🔥 3. The Shepherd Stands at the Gate
“I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved…
I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Now this line has been twisted—
turned into a theology of exclusion.
But Jesus, in his Jewish wisdom, is not building fences.
He is naming the difference between care and coercion,
invitation and invasion.
In John’s Gospel, the shepherd is the protector of the vulnerable.
The one who sees the sheep as whole beings, not commodities.
The one who knows them by name.
The one who doesn’t climb in another way to exploit or devour.
Jesus says:
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.”
Who are the thieves today?
• Those who profit off the disconnection of our bodies
• Those who strip the earth for gain
• Those who turn sacred community into brand loyalty
• Those who gatekeep God and monetize hope
⸻
🧠 4. Loneliness Is a Valley Too
We walk today through a different kind of valley.
A lonely one.
According to Gallup (2024), 1 in 5 U.S. adults feels lonely every single day.
The U.S. Surgeon General says loneliness is as deadly as 15 cigarettes a day.
Loneliness is not just absence.
It is the dismemberment of belonging.
Empire thrives on loneliness.
Capitalism demands isolation.
Supremacy systems want us to compete, not connect.
But the shepherd calls us back.
“I know my own. And they know me.”
Not by our job titles.
Not by our flaws.
But by our name.
By our belovedness.
This is not a sentimental shepherd.
This is the politics of care.
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🌾 5. Shepherding as Liberating Leadership
Let us be clear:
Shepherding is not soft. It is revolutionary.
To shepherd is to:
• Lead with presence, not control
• Protect without possession
• Risk yourself to restore the vulnerable
• See people as sacred, not strategic
This is what Jesus the Jew was doing—
reclaiming the role of shepherd from kings and priests
and returning it to embodied care.
What if the church reclaimed shepherding
not as spiritual authority—but as communal responsibility?
We are not here to climb over each other into stolen power.
We are here to open the gate, to tend the field, to guard one another’s dignity.
⸻
💸 6. Budgets Are Gateways Too
In two weeks, this congregation will vote on a budget.
Not a yearlong one—but a six-month one.
A moment of pause. A space of discernment.
But let’s remember:
A budget is not neutral.
It is a moral document.
It tells the story of what we value.
Jesus said:
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
So we must ask:
• Does our budget reflect abundance or anxiety?
• Are we resourcing welcome, wonder, worship, and witness?
• Are we tending the lonely, the curious, the young, the elders?
• Are we investing in the shepherding work that nourishes and protects?
A six-month budget isn’t just about caution.
It’s an invitation to imagine, to listen, and to lead with care.
Let our spending tell the story of our shepherd.
Let it reflect the gate of courage, not the fence of fear.
⸻
🌈 7. Abundance Is Not Wealth, It’s Relationship
“I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”
Abundant life is not excess.
It is enoughness.
It is the restoration of mutual care, of sacred limits, of right relationship.
Abundant life is:
• Meals shared with intention
• Rest honored without guilt
• Elders heard and held
• Trans kids protected
• The earth tended
• The lonely re-membered
Abundance is not what you hoard.
It is what you nurture, together.
⸻
🕊️ 8. The Shepherd Is Still Calling
Beloveds, we are walking through many shadows—
but the shepherd still calls.
Can you hear your name?
Can you let yourself be known?
Can we shape this next season—
not in fear,
but in faith?
Let the empire climb its false ladders.
We will walk through the gate of care.
We will gather our scattered limbs.
We will sing the psalm again.
We will re-member that love is a shepherd too.
Amen.
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