The head of The Episcopal Church has stated that he believes immigrants, refugees, and trans-identified individuals are “at the center of the Gospel story.”
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe gave a sermon on Sunday at Washington National Cathedral as part of a service recognizing his official seating as head of the mainline Protestant denomination.
Rowe preached on the Gospel account of the presentation of the infant Jesus at the Temple, which was described in Luke 2:22-40. He talked about how Jesus’ ministry advanced an “upside-down world order.”
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“We struggle with how to make sense of what all that means,” he said. “Because we are beset by the powers and principalities of the world that don’t see it the way Jesus does. We’re told by the kings and the rulers of the day that the rich shall be first.”
“That, somehow, compassion is weakness. That fealty to political parties — and here I mean either one or all of them — is somehow paramount. That differences of race, class, gender identity, human sexuality are all divisions that must somehow separate us. And that we should regard migrants and strangers and those among us whom we don’t understand with fear and contempt.”
The presiding bishop asserted that “those divisions are not of God” and they don’t reflect “a Kingdom about which Jesus speaks of” in which “the last shall be first.”
“In God’s Kingdom, immigrants and refugees, transgender people, the poor and the marginalized are not at the edges, fearful and alone. They are at the center of the Gospel story,” he stated, pausing as he received applause.
“Those who have been considered at the margins are at the center. They are the bearers of the salvation of the world. Their struggles reveal to us the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom about which Jesus speaks is upside down. It’s reversed, it’s inverted, it’s counter-cultural.”
Rowe went on to warn against incivility, telling the congregation that “the enemy is bound and determined to sow division among us, to make us forget who we are and what kingdom that we belong.”
“We need to greet with a sign of peace those who voted for the candidate we couldn’t stand and to be in the communion line alongside people who don’t live like us or look like us or even love like us,” he continued.
Last month, during the National Cathedral’s Service of Prayer for the Nation, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde garnered national headlines when she directly addressed President Donald Trump, who was seated in the front row of the sanctuary for the service.
“In the Name of our God, I ask you to have mercy upon the people in our country who are scared now,” Budde stated. “There are gay, lesbian and transgender children in Democratic, Republican and independent families. Some who fear for their lives.”
“The people who pick our crops and clean our office buildings, who labor in poultry farms and meat-packing plants, who wash the dishes after we eat in restaurants and work the night shifts in hospitals. They may not be citizens or have the proper documentation, but the vast majority of immigrants are not criminals.”
Budde asked the newly sworn-in president “to have mercy” on the people “in our communities whose children fear that their parents will be taken away and that you help those who are fleeing warzones and persecution in their own lands to find compassion and welcome here.”
Budde’s sermon received mixed reactions, with some arguing that she wrongfully politicized a religious service while others believe that she prophetically spoke truth to power.
For his part, Trump took to his Truth Social account shortly after the service ended to demand that Budde and the cathedral issue a “public apology” for her words, claiming that the “service was a very boring and uninspiring one.”
“The so-called Bishop who spoke at the National Prayer Service on Tuesday morning was a Radical Left hard-line Trump hater. She brought her church into the World of politics in a very ungracious way. She was nasty in tone, and not compelling or smart,” Trump posted.
“She failed to mention the large number of illegal migrants that came into our Country and killed people. Many were deposited from jails and mental institutions. It is a giant crime wave that is taking place in the USA.”
