This is a very exciting weekend for St. Thomas', and for the gay and lesbian community in Washington, and for the whole church.  (The parade was wonderful, and we have great hopes that the blessing ceremony this afternoon will be a time of deep joy and wonder for all of us.)

Hallelujah!  (Take time just to experience the joy.)

We said in the Collect this morning, "O God, grant that by your inspiration we may think those things that are right, and by your merciful guiding may do them."

It is right to celebrate gay and lesbian and bisexual and transgendered people as God's beloved people, beloved not because they are gay or lesbian, but because they are human, part of God's amazing rainbow creation, of which God said, in Genesis, "It is good.   It is very good."

...but maybe they *are* also loved *because* they are gay and lesbian .. and bisexual and transgendered .. and because they have throughout their lives been made to feel, in one way or another and in far too many ways, like outcasts.

There's a story that was told during the civil rights movement about an African-American woman sitting on a bench outside church during church time.   And Jesus comes and sits down beside her.   She asks him, "Why don't they welcome me into that church?"   And Jesus shrugs and says, "I don't know.   They don't let me in either."

Jesus sits beside the outcast, and is himself that outcast.  Remember Mary's song? - "God has cast down the mighty from their thrones, and has lifted up the lowly.   God has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich have been sent empty away."

God is on the side of the poor, the hungry, the maligned, the needy .. and ..don't we all find? -I know I do - that  it is often those times when I am most hungry, empty, needy  that I am  most open to God's presence, most apt to realize that Jesus is sitting on the bench, right next to me.  It's no accident that in a time of famine  Elijah the prophet is sent to a woman who has nothing -the poor widow of Zarephath.  It's not a mistake that God asks someone who has reached the bottom of her capabilities to be the one to share herself.   There is something about emptiness that - if it doesn't destroy us - can open us to the richness of grace .. and there's something about fullness (being mighty and rich - the haves in a world of  have-nots) that can close us down and separate us from life itself, and what's really going on.

What's really going on is that this is God's world and there is so very much to celebrate in it.-joy and wonder and incredible beauty and the miracle of  people being made whole again.   But there is also, here in God's world,  too much that is ungodly -far too much hate and fear and separation.  The struggle for justice and for  full participation in the blessings of creation for gay and lesbian people is part of a larger struggle - the struggle for justice and inclusion for all people.  God makes us whole.  God feeds the hungry and raises the dead,  God calls the outcast to be the very sacrament of love - and we aren't going to know the full meaning of Gay Pride until everyone is marching in that parade, until all the chains are lifted and all the walls broken down, and the whole world knows what Archbishop Tutu of South Africa said - that the only way to be human is,  to be human together.