Transgender Good Friday
Rev. Danny Bradfield, Pastor of Bixby Knolls Christian Church, an Open & Affirming Congregation in Long Beach, CA, sent us this article he wrote for the church newsletter after attending the Transgender Ally Training at the Long Beach Gay & Lesbian Center
Let me share an incident from my childhood. I was at a restaurant, and the friendly waitress was taking orders. When it was my turn, she looked at me and said, “and what would you like, young lady?” Her mistake was, I suppose, understandable; I hadn’t yet hit puberty, and had a head full of blonde, curly hair. But I was still embarrassed and humiliated.
Fortunately, that was an isolated encounter with a person who didn’t know me. Imagine what life would be like if, every day, people identified you by the wrong gender, even people who knew you well; even your own family. Imagine that somehow your own body got this wrong, that somehow you got placed in the wrong body, one that did not match the gender that, in your heart, you knew you were.
On Good Friday, I attended a Transgender Ally Training at the Long Beach Gay and Lesbian Center. This training was led by two remarkable and courageous young people who experienced something similar in their lives to what I’ve described, and have worked hard to present themselves as the gender they identify with, not the gender that society or even their own bodies declared them to be.
Perhaps this is hard for you to understand. I myself still wonder about it sometimes. But one of the facts shared with us at the training helped put it all in perspective: among transgendered persons, 41 percent have attempted suicide.
Clearly, being a transgendered person is not something one does for fun or attention. Hearing this startling statistic, I couldn’t help but make the connection – sitting there on that Good Friday – between the deaths, attempted deaths, and despair of countless individuals, and the death of Jesus on the cross.
Jesus was all about bringing hope to the hopeless, freedom to the oppressed, and wholeness to those who lived in brokenness (Luke 4:18-19). He died because he identified with those poor and oppressed, instead of with those who would oppress them. He most certainly died for those who have so little hope, that ending their life seems to them their only option.
Bixby Knolls Christian Church identifies itself as an Open and Affirming congregation. We “welcome and affirm all God’s children,” including God’s transgendered children. We do this in the hope that they and all people might find wholeness in their world of brokenness, hope in their world of despair, and life in their world of death.
By living out our identity, we can help other people live out their identity. The love we share will take people from death to new life. It will be a demonstration of our faith in the resurrection.