Readings: Exodus 3:1-15. Psalm 63:1-8. Luke 13:1-9. 1 Cor 10:1-13

Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.

I AM THAT I AM has sent me.

We stand on holy ground. This parish is a holy place.

I am a native of Alabama and was brought up in a devout Baptist family. As young teacher on my first job, I fled the Baptist church and was confirmed at St. Peters in Rome, [Georgia ] on October 29, 1961, and two years later I fled life behind the “Cotton Curtain” and moved to St. Andrew’s School in Middletown, Delaware. For me St. Andrew’s was a splendid closet in which I could hide from myself except in the far reaches of the night. I buried myself in the task that I loved best, teaching. For cabin fever, I would visit Octavio, a close classmate from Baylor, who worked at Walter Reed and lived on 17th Street, a minute’s walk from this parish. On many a visit I came here to St. Thomas’ to pray.

St. Thomas’ is holy ground for me. I rejoice that it is holy ground for you too, in all of your rich diversity

Later I attended Eucharists many times while Integrity met here. Again and again I have reconnected here with many people important to my own spiritual journey. Y'all have a splendid history of welcoming gay and lesbian people and everyone else as well.

This neighborhood is holy ground.

I discovered that long before I founded Integrity, or even imagined that the liberation to which God called Moses could prefigure the liberation to which God would call me, you, and so many others before us in this place.

The cry of the lesbians, gays, and transgendered has now come to me; I have also seen how the Church oppresses them. So come, I will send you to the Episcopal Church to bring my people, the Lesbians, gays and transgendered, out of their captivity.” But then we said to God, “Who are we that we should go for you?” He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when the people have come out of oppression, you shall worship God in this holy place.”