🏳️‍🌈 Happy Pride, and welcome to the very first installment of “One from the Vaults” — a recurring segment of The Musical Midrash Podcast where we revisit earlier sermons with fresh eyes and sacred context.

This week, we open the vault and travel back to 2017. The Trump administration was seven months in. Transgender military service members were under attack. And I was a 34-year-old talent agent — not yet an elder, not yet imagining ministry — preaching my very first sermon in a small but fiercely loving congregation in Seattle.

The passage: Ephesians 6:10–20, the “armor of God.”

The theme: what it means to stand — not in violence, but in courage.

The call: to come out, not only as queer, but as Christian.

Originally broadcast live on Facebook, this sermon was meant to be both a spiritual act and a public witness. The video quality is grainy. The intro was lost to time. But this episode includes a full restoration of the manuscript and a new reflection on what this moment meant then — and what it might still mean now.

While this isn’t a sermon about musical theatre, it lives in the spirit of La Cage aux Folles, and was originally paired with a performance of “I Am What I Am” sung by my husband, Jeffrey. We also visit Marie’s Crisis Café in a moment of post-Obergefell celebration. Theatricality. Testimony. Transformation. It’s all here.

📌 Highlights

– Reflecting on queer Christian witness in the Trump era

– Wrestling with the battle imagery of Ephesians

– Stonewall, ACT UP, and the spiritual discipline of standing

– Facebook Live as a pulpit

– Why sometimes it’s harder to come out as Christian than as queer

📖 Scripture: Ephesians 6:10–20

🎭 Musical Reference: La Cage aux Folles – “I Am What I Am”

📍 Location: Woodland Park Presbyterian Church, Seattle, WA

🧡 Wherever this finds you — may you find the strength to stand. May it be so. Thanks be to God.