I want to talk about three things: about the Mass as a Miracle (in the context of Sylvia’s first presidency at the Eucharist); about Matthew the Melodramatic (in the context of today’s Gospel reading) - and, in particular, about a song called ‘The Mind fought the Mystery’ (in the context of my own Pride journey); about how ‘The Mind fought the Mystery’ helps us understand the Mass as a trans-ing (transformative) miracle; about how Melodramatic Matthew challenges us to trans, to transform, in the face of Mind fighting Mystery; and about how the Mass as Miracle helps us have the power to respond to the challenges of Melodramatic Matthew. Firstly however a few personal words, in relation to this special occasion for Sylvia tonight, and in appreciation for being invited to preach…
mixed memories of my own 'first mass'
The thing is.. the memories of my own first presiding at the eucharist, my own ‘first mass’ – well, they are mixed with pain and sorrow. For, in the late 1980s, we didn’t even have the ordination of straight women. Nonetheless, after much personal agonising, I was ordained, living in my assigned male gender, reasoning that one more positive vote in the house of clergy was helpful, and, much more importantly, that God works in mysterious ways. It was a time however of deep mixed feelings, and not of easy celebration. My first mass was thus a strange affair. It was the usual parish mid-week eucharist, in a side chapel of the old borough church of Hackney, in the east end of London, close to the tombs of the Baden Powell family (including the founder of scouting for boys). There were but a handful of us, including a couple of regular attendees, the vicar, and, at the back, my wife Penny and a female friend: both deacons, but with clear priestly vocations, awaiting recognition in ordination. Clinging together during the service, their tears flowed: tears of joy, but mixed with pain and sorrow. Similarly, my heart, like theirs, was deeply torn, like a sword in the soul. And, let’s be honest, for the marginalised, that has been the Mass, the eucharist, throughout history: a place and symbol of so much joy and healing and peace, but, at times, also of profound sorrow and rejection. In it, as in Jesus’ own Last Supper, we therefore always bring together our memories and hopes, the realities of our lives and world, joyful and painful, and open ourselves to their transformation by grace.
Now I tell that story because I could not have imagined then that I would be who, and where, I, and all of us, would be today. Perhaps Sylvia, you feel a bit like that today, and perhaps others here too? Who would have thought? And if then that, and now this, what else might now be possible? For the Mass we share is a profound symbol of the transformations of our lives, of our world, and of our Church. It invites us to bring all our past and present realities, in thanksgiving and in sorrow, for celebration and for healing. Yet it also invites us into unprecedented futures, queering our expectations of time. Which brings us to Melodramatic Matthew…
Melodramatic Matthew
How do we respond to today’s challenging Gospel reading? It has often been bound up in speculation about the end times, including as an American Evangelical proof text for what they call The Rapture. It certainly has a very definite either-or, black and white, sheep and goats, good and bad: a very binary feel to it. Note the two women grinding meal together. One is taken, the other left. What a gift to the trans and homophobes! No prizes for guessing how reactionary Christians determine which women will have the sticky end of things – Sylvia, that’s you, and me, and others of us here! Such interpretations are such a travesty however, particularly looking at today’s opening verse, verse 33, which explicitly states that ‘noone knows’ the details of the end times.
Today’s Gospel text really is not such a problem if we remember that, and we also remember who is writing it, and their intention. For this is Matthew’s Gospel, which is saturated with similar theatrical features. Yes, we have some similar aspects in other Gospels. However, it is Matthew who offers the most fertile ground for those seeking texts to exclude and excoriate others. After all, Matthew gives us most of the Gospel references to hell, melodramatically pictured as a place of rejection, of outer darkness, gnashing of teeth, and burning fire. Throughout the Gospel, Matthew loves such shock and awe, painting with strong primary colours, with terrific fondness for binary distinctions, and with little taste for pastel colours (as many Anglicans prefer, at least in this capital city of our continent).
So, can Melodramatic Matthew be our friend, and even a queer ally? Well, with such reservations, yes. For today’s text is about shaking up our ordinary expectations of time and life, which, of course, is a very queer thing to do. As Australia's First Peoples also remind us, divine time is not like Western time: with past, presnet, and future all straightened out, just one thing after another. Like Advent as a whole, Matthew's Gospel challenges us to wake up; to re-imagine our lives, world, and possibilities; in other words, to trans – to transform, transfigure, transition – even to trans the substance of our existence. For, just like the Mass, we are invited by Melodramatic Matthew to share in the Miracle of God’s transforming Love: to embrace the full Mystery of life, becoming the people we most truly are, or could be. Reading with queer eyes, today’s Gospel text is thus not a prescription, a straightforward prediction of woe, as if queer people need any more of that in our lives! Rather it is a description of how life is, when times change. Matthew is not telling us what will change, but only that times will change. Our challenge is to stay awake, to pay attention, and to seize the opportunities of change however they happen. Even if you want to, Matthew is saying, you can’t hold on to what is. Instead, you must embrace the possibilities of transformation, however uncertain they may be.
the Mind and the Mystery
This brings me to the song I mentioned and to my own story. For ten years ago, I could no longer suppress my gender identity. Yet how could I come out, and also be true to my priestly vocation. At which point, I came across the American folk singer-songwriter Namoli Brennet, who is also a transgender woman. Her work includes queer anthems like ‘We Belong’ and the poignant autobiographical song ‘Boy in a Dress’. Yet what particularly spoke to me was her song ‘The Mind fought the Mystery’. In this, Namoli relates the mystery of faith as something which takes us deeper than our minds ever can. Reflecting on some of the great biblical stories, including the Resurrection, she reminds us how true life is indeed much more than we often imagine. It is full of surprise and the overcoming of seeming impossibility. For indeed, as in the Resurrection of Christ, 'the mind fought the mystery: the mystery won'.
That song went straight to my heart and soul. Hitherto, I had done a huge amount of fighting the mystery of my gender identity with my mind, telling myself it was impossible to be and live into what and who I am. How wrong I was. I am so happy now not to be a combatant against the Spirit in that way. It is simply too exhausting. soulless, and life-denying.
What about you? And what about us, as people together, and as part of the world with others? In what ways is the Mind still fighting the Mystery? It is certainly widespread in our churches and world, where the powers of the narrowed Mind are working harder than ever to suppress the Mystery. No wonder there is stress and strife. Denial of deep-down truth is destructive. Yet the Mystery that is God has this wonderful tendency to break through. It may not be today, or even next year. In some cases, longed-for transformation may never seem to come. Yet human minds and structures cannot resist divine mystery for ever. Soul-making is irresistible.[1]
being miracles
Our Mass tonight, and not least Sylvia’s part in it, are symbolic of this. For I can’t help but feel, Sylvia, that you are a kind of miracle. I say that, as someone also once said that about me, as a priest, and as others have said about female priests and others: ‘But how can you be?’ ‘I don’t know’, I reply, ‘but, by grace, we just are. Get used to it, and embrace the miracle.’ For being shaped by the the Mass, friends, is miraculous, however we understand it theologically: and, in sharing in it, all of us can become just a little bit more the miracles each of us was created to be, in every one of the rich kaleidoscopic expressions of divine love we embody. We don’t have to be melodramatic about it like Matthew - though, then again, some of us do like our bright colours and exaggerations: hey, folks, what’s a queer party without a drama queen (at least that’s what I say to myself sometimes)! We most certainly don’t have to lose our minds: that truly is the path of religious destruction! But we are invited to the inexhaustible joys of Mystery, through which we can become even more wondrous and do even more miraculous things.
coming home and hearts dancing
Let me therefore conclude with the transformation of my ‘first mass’ story, with which I began. For, such is the amazing thing about coming out as a trans priest, that I had a second ‘first mass’, as a woman: another regular midweek affair, in the chapel of St Francis theological College in Brisbane, with several fellow staff members and students. ‘Today’, I remember saying, ‘I am coming home… I preside at this eucharist integrating, with… vital parts of my identity finally united, and my heart dances.’ I wonder Sylvia: do you feel too that you are coming home, and does your heart dance tonight? I think the hearts of those of us gathered here certainly dance for you, for one another, for ourselves, and for all those in the future who will be touched by the transforming love we share tonight: our bodies, and our blood, transfigured by grace. And, in this liminal, pregnant, time of Advent, may we thereby all come home, sharing more fully in the divine dance of inexhaustible mystery, breaking open the new possibilities awake to miracles we cannot yet even imagine. In the name of the Transfiguring One, Amen.
by Josephine Inkpin, for Pride Mass at St Andrew's Subiaco, Advent Sunday 30 November 2025
[1] see further my blog post https://www.transspirit.org/blog/archives/10-2017
The thing is.. the memories of my own first presiding at the eucharist, my own ‘first mass’ – well, they are mixed with pain and sorrow. For, in the late 1980s, we didn’t even have the ordination of straight women. Nonetheless, after much personal agonising, I was ordained, living in my assigned male gender, reasoning that one more positive vote in the house of clergy was helpful, and, much more importantly, that God works in mysterious ways. It was a time however of deep mixed feelings, and not of easy celebration. My first mass was thus a strange affair. It was the usual parish mid-week eucharist, in a side chapel of the old borough church of Hackney, in the east end of London, close to the tombs of the Baden Powell family (including the founder of scouting for boys). There were but a handful of us, including a couple of regular attendees, the vicar, and, at the back, my wife Penny and a female friend: both deacons, but with clear priestly vocations, awaiting recognition in ordination. Clinging together during the service, their tears flowed: tears of joy, but mixed with pain and sorrow. Similarly, my heart, like theirs, was deeply torn, like a sword in the soul. And, let’s be honest, for the marginalised, that has been the Mass, the eucharist, throughout history: a place and symbol of so much joy and healing and peace, but, at times, also of profound sorrow and rejection. In it, as in Jesus’ own Last Supper, we therefore always bring together our memories and hopes, the realities of our lives and world, joyful and painful, and open ourselves to their transformation by grace.
Now I tell that story because I could not have imagined then that I would be who, and where, I, and all of us, would be today. Perhaps Sylvia, you feel a bit like that today, and perhaps others here too? Who would have thought? And if then that, and now this, what else might now be possible? For the Mass we share is a profound symbol of the transformations of our lives, of our world, and of our Church. It invites us to bring all our past and present realities, in thanksgiving and in sorrow, for celebration and for healing. Yet it also invites us into unprecedented futures, queering our expectations of time. Which brings us to Melodramatic Matthew…
Melodramatic Matthew
How do we respond to today’s challenging Gospel reading? It has often been bound up in speculation about the end times, including as an American Evangelical proof text for what they call The Rapture. It certainly has a very definite either-or, black and white, sheep and goats, good and bad: a very binary feel to it. Note the two women grinding meal together. One is taken, the other left. What a gift to the trans and homophobes! No prizes for guessing how reactionary Christians determine which women will have the sticky end of things – Sylvia, that’s you, and me, and others of us here! Such interpretations are such a travesty however, particularly looking at today’s opening verse, verse 33, which explicitly states that ‘noone knows’ the details of the end times.
Today’s Gospel text really is not such a problem if we remember that, and we also remember who is writing it, and their intention. For this is Matthew’s Gospel, which is saturated with similar theatrical features. Yes, we have some similar aspects in other Gospels. However, it is Matthew who offers the most fertile ground for those seeking texts to exclude and excoriate others. After all, Matthew gives us most of the Gospel references to hell, melodramatically pictured as a place of rejection, of outer darkness, gnashing of teeth, and burning fire. Throughout the Gospel, Matthew loves such shock and awe, painting with strong primary colours, with terrific fondness for binary distinctions, and with little taste for pastel colours (as many Anglicans prefer, at least in this capital city of our continent).
So, can Melodramatic Matthew be our friend, and even a queer ally? Well, with such reservations, yes. For today’s text is about shaking up our ordinary expectations of time and life, which, of course, is a very queer thing to do. As Australia's First Peoples also remind us, divine time is not like Western time: with past, presnet, and future all straightened out, just one thing after another. Like Advent as a whole, Matthew's Gospel challenges us to wake up; to re-imagine our lives, world, and possibilities; in other words, to trans – to transform, transfigure, transition – even to trans the substance of our existence. For, just like the Mass, we are invited by Melodramatic Matthew to share in the Miracle of God’s transforming Love: to embrace the full Mystery of life, becoming the people we most truly are, or could be. Reading with queer eyes, today’s Gospel text is thus not a prescription, a straightforward prediction of woe, as if queer people need any more of that in our lives! Rather it is a description of how life is, when times change. Matthew is not telling us what will change, but only that times will change. Our challenge is to stay awake, to pay attention, and to seize the opportunities of change however they happen. Even if you want to, Matthew is saying, you can’t hold on to what is. Instead, you must embrace the possibilities of transformation, however uncertain they may be.
the Mind and the Mystery
This brings me to the song I mentioned and to my own story. For ten years ago, I could no longer suppress my gender identity. Yet how could I come out, and also be true to my priestly vocation. At which point, I came across the American folk singer-songwriter Namoli Brennet, who is also a transgender woman. Her work includes queer anthems like ‘We Belong’ and the poignant autobiographical song ‘Boy in a Dress’. Yet what particularly spoke to me was her song ‘The Mind fought the Mystery’. In this, Namoli relates the mystery of faith as something which takes us deeper than our minds ever can. Reflecting on some of the great biblical stories, including the Resurrection, she reminds us how true life is indeed much more than we often imagine. It is full of surprise and the overcoming of seeming impossibility. For indeed, as in the Resurrection of Christ, 'the mind fought the mystery: the mystery won'.
That song went straight to my heart and soul. Hitherto, I had done a huge amount of fighting the mystery of my gender identity with my mind, telling myself it was impossible to be and live into what and who I am. How wrong I was. I am so happy now not to be a combatant against the Spirit in that way. It is simply too exhausting. soulless, and life-denying.
What about you? And what about us, as people together, and as part of the world with others? In what ways is the Mind still fighting the Mystery? It is certainly widespread in our churches and world, where the powers of the narrowed Mind are working harder than ever to suppress the Mystery. No wonder there is stress and strife. Denial of deep-down truth is destructive. Yet the Mystery that is God has this wonderful tendency to break through. It may not be today, or even next year. In some cases, longed-for transformation may never seem to come. Yet human minds and structures cannot resist divine mystery for ever. Soul-making is irresistible.[1]
being miracles
Our Mass tonight, and not least Sylvia’s part in it, are symbolic of this. For I can’t help but feel, Sylvia, that you are a kind of miracle. I say that, as someone also once said that about me, as a priest, and as others have said about female priests and others: ‘But how can you be?’ ‘I don’t know’, I reply, ‘but, by grace, we just are. Get used to it, and embrace the miracle.’ For being shaped by the the Mass, friends, is miraculous, however we understand it theologically: and, in sharing in it, all of us can become just a little bit more the miracles each of us was created to be, in every one of the rich kaleidoscopic expressions of divine love we embody. We don’t have to be melodramatic about it like Matthew - though, then again, some of us do like our bright colours and exaggerations: hey, folks, what’s a queer party without a drama queen (at least that’s what I say to myself sometimes)! We most certainly don’t have to lose our minds: that truly is the path of religious destruction! But we are invited to the inexhaustible joys of Mystery, through which we can become even more wondrous and do even more miraculous things.
coming home and hearts dancing
Let me therefore conclude with the transformation of my ‘first mass’ story, with which I began. For, such is the amazing thing about coming out as a trans priest, that I had a second ‘first mass’, as a woman: another regular midweek affair, in the chapel of St Francis theological College in Brisbane, with several fellow staff members and students. ‘Today’, I remember saying, ‘I am coming home… I preside at this eucharist integrating, with… vital parts of my identity finally united, and my heart dances.’ I wonder Sylvia: do you feel too that you are coming home, and does your heart dance tonight? I think the hearts of those of us gathered here certainly dance for you, for one another, for ourselves, and for all those in the future who will be touched by the transforming love we share tonight: our bodies, and our blood, transfigured by grace. And, in this liminal, pregnant, time of Advent, may we thereby all come home, sharing more fully in the divine dance of inexhaustible mystery, breaking open the new possibilities awake to miracles we cannot yet even imagine. In the name of the Transfiguring One, Amen.
by Josephine Inkpin, for Pride Mass at St Andrew's Subiaco, Advent Sunday 30 November 2025
[1] see further my blog post https://www.transspirit.org/blog/archives/10-2017
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