From the Pulpit: Pride Sunday at the Cathedral

It's easy to get exhausted, or to be told that you don't belong. The Rev. Charles Graves IV says the Holy Spirit can help.

Graves, the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Shaker Heights, Ohio, came to the Cathedral for Pride Sunday to remind listeners that just like the Disciples who didn’t know what to do after Jesus’ Ascension, the Holy Spirit can help keep us going when everyone else is trying to push us down:

My siblings, I know a love that is greater than fear. How can we be enslaved to fear when we come from folk who have endured so much to get us where we are? My friends, we’ve been at this a long, long, long time, and God has carried us further than we can ever dream or describe. Our forebears of every race and gender, religion and nationality, identity and orientation have fought for the holy dream that we may all be one just as God’s very self is one, because that is who God made us to be.

Yes friends, we may feel like a kid with no training wheels falling over and over scraping our knees and wondering why God had to take those training wheels away in the first place. We may feel like those lonely Disciples after the Ascension, wondering what it is we’re supposed to do, but guess what? So did your ancestors in every generation. They prayed and sang and worked and fought by the power of the Holy Spirit so that we could all live in a world they couldn’t dream to see.

I’m here to tell you, keep on praying my friends, keep singing, keep working and walking, and don’t hesitate to rest when you need to.

The Holy Spirit is still in the business of unity. The Holy Spirit is still in the business of overcoming fear and hatred and division by the unbeatable uncrushable, unextinguishable power of love.

You and I might be tired, but the Holy Spirit is not tired, so even when we feel alone and abandoned, when it feels that Christ has ascended and gone away, we are not forgotten. Our Lord said he would never leave us nor forsake us, and He still hasn’t. He still hasn’t. It’s just as true today as it ever was then.