Unsung Heroes: Rev Troy Perry - Sermon from July 14, 2019

When I gave the opening remarks at the Pride service at Main Beach last month, I acknowledged those folks on whose shoulders I stand. The primary one is someone most people haven’t heard of: Rev. Troy Perry, founder of Metropolitan Community Church, or MCC,  the first denomination with a positive outreach to the LGBTQ community, so many of whom had been spiritually and emotionally damaged by church and its teachings.

When I came out to myself, and then my family, having grown up Southern Baptist, I wasn’t 100 percent sure that God still loved me. One of my then husband’s friends, a lesbian, told us about her church, Christ Covenant MCC in Decatur, and invited me. The acceptance I found there, and a theology that said that not only was I not going to hell, but I was loved just the way I am, was the foundation for my journey into ministry. That MCC church was where I was first ordained.  And I have Rev. Troy Perry and the denomination he started to thank for all that has happened since then.

MCC was founded in LA in 1968, a year before Stonewall. Rev. Perry said he always knew he was gay, and he also felt called to preach, but in the Pentecostal church where he was raised, being gay was a sin. When he told his pastor about his attraction to men, he told him to find a good woman to marry. At age 18, he married that pastor’s daughter. Together they had two children, and he became a pastor in the Church of God in Santa Anna California. When he was outed to the church council, he was immediately fired, and his wife divorced him.

When his first same-sex relationship ended, he attempted suicide, and the love from friends and neighbors and strangers that he received during his recovery made him realize that he was loveable just the way he was. And he started a church so that others like him, who had felt hopeless enough to want to end their lives could also feel loved and cared for. His first church service was in his home.  9 friends and 3 strangers came. When the congregation got too big to continue there, they took whatever free space anyone offered them. In 1971, a building at 22^nd and Union in LA went up for sale, and Troy decided they were going to buy it. For weeks, he brought in large trashcans to pass for the offering. They raised the money to buy the building, and a thousand people attended its dedication. His mother was their first heterosexual member, and she became a mother to all those who had been rejected by their own mothers and fathers. As the LGBTQ community across the nation heard about a church where they could be loved and accepted for who they were, Troy began receiving letters asking to start one like it, and a denomination was born.

He also became active in the fight for equal rights for gays and lesbians.And when some folks in the gay community wanted him to tone down his rhetoric, he quoted  Jesus in Luke 4:18,

 “Where I find oppression, I am going to bring deliverance” and added, “We can’t sit around waiting for someone else to deliver us. We have to do it.” Although New York gets the credit for having the nation’s first Pride Parade, to celebrate the first anniversary of Stonewall, Troy and his congregation actually held the first one, in LA, a few hours before New York’s. The theme was “Unity in Community,”and 50,000 people showed up to participate and watch.

 In 1973, when the church was destroyed by a fire “of suspicious origins.”  Troy convinced his angry and heartbroken congregation to have church in the street in front of the burned building, saying, “No one can chase us away.” In 1978, He went on a 16 day hunger strike on the steps of the federal building in LA to raise money to fight Proposition 6, which would have banned gays and lesbians from working in California’s public schools, a fight won after the initiative failed to pass. And in 1979, he joined with lesbian activist Robin Tyler to lead the March on Washington for the LGBTQ community.

When AIDs arrived in the 1980’s, Many MCC churches were holding a funeral a day. And when Jerry Falwell declared that AIDs was God’s judgment on homosexuals, Troy Perry went on every television and radio show that would have him to declare that, ‘No disease is a gift from God,’

and he and  his member churches walked through that awful valley of death together.

You might have noticed that I mostly refer to him as Troy, rather than Rev. Perry. That’s because he said to everyone he met, “Call me Troy.” With everything he has accomplished, he has remained humble, choosing to empower others rather than make a name for himself. He embodies these words, often attributed to Harry Truman, “You can get a lot of good done in the world if you don’t mind who gets the credit for it.”  The documentary about his life, which is on Amazon Prime, is entitled, Call me Troy. 

In the early 2000’s, when mainline churches began accepting gay and lesbian members and then pastors, MCC saw many of its churches choosing to leave to join these larger denominations,  primarily the United Church of Christ, as our church in Decatur did, and where I was also ordained. Many denominations have come a long way since the days of telling gays and lesbians that they were going to hell.  And that’s a wonderful thing.  Being a part of a church with a diverse membership like ours, gives us all the opportunity to support and learn from each other. I am very proud to be a UCC’er.  But without Troy Perry and MCC, I don’t think there would be so many open and affirming mainline churches today. He was the first to reach out to gay and lesbian people and convince them that they were who God created them to be and therefore worthy of God’s love and care. One of those was me, and I am forever grateful. May we honor our unsung heroes like Troy Perry and draw on their courage to continue working for justice and equality for all God’s people.

Amen. 

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Our reading  is from the invocation at the National March for Equality in 2009, given by Reverend Troy Perry, founder of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches.

As we gather in the shadows of the U.S. Capitol,
let us, together, invoke the spirit of those who came before us, and the spirit of all who prepared us for the journey toward justice and equality.
who in the early 1950's for the first time
gave a public face to the transgender community
raised consciousness around transgender issues
and taught us to recognize gender as well as sexuality.
the World War II veteran who in 1961
became the first openly gay person in the U.S.
to run for political office
as a candidate for mayor of San Francisco;
the openly gay African American
who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Dr. Martin Luther King
and who organized 1963's March on Washington.
who died too soon at the hands of anti-LGBT violence,
and all whose lives have been touched by anti-LGBT hate crimes;

I invoke the spirit of Christine Jorgenson,

I invoke the spirit of Jose Sarria,

I invoke the spirit of Bayard Rustin,

I invoke the spirit of each of our brothers and sisters,

In this moment of history, and in the history of this moment,

– surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses,

– surrounded by the spirits of all who prepared our path,

– and joined by that Spirit who unites us as one,

We reaffirm our commitment to work for that day

when justice rolls down like rivers,

and righteousness like a mighty stream.