Pride Sunday
Dear Park Avenue Church Family,
This Sunday, we will gather—as we always do—in the name of Jesus, to worship the God of love, truth, and grace.
As part of our worship, we’ll celebrate Pride Sunday, a time to joyfully affirm God’s love for all people, including our LGBTQIA+ siblings, and to honor the beautiful diversity within the body of Christ.
For more than a century, Park Avenue has been a community shaped by good news: that God’s love is wide, deep, and for everyone. Over the decades, Park has become a community where people of different races, ages, socioeconomic backgrounds, and religious backgrounds come together to worship and grow in faith. In recent years, we’ve also taken intentional steps to publicly welcome LGBTQIA+ siblings as beloved and essential members of our church family. We believe this is part of our calling to follow Jesus—creating a church where every person can belong and flourish.
This Sunday, we’ll reflect that welcome in several ways—including our use of gender-expansive language for God in parts of worship. For example, during the Doxology, both traditional and gender-inclusive versions will be shown on the screen. You’re invited to sing the version that feels most meaningful to you. This practice honors the truth that God is beyond any one gender and invites us into deeper awareness of the mystery and richness of God’s being.
For many, inclusive language opens up new ways of connecting with God. For others, it may feel unfamiliar. Wherever you find yourself, you are welcome here. The Christian tradition has long drawn on a wide range of images for God—from Rock to Midwife, from Lord to Wind and Fire, from Father to Mother.
Way back in the early church, Christians who spoke Syriac—a language similar to what Jesus would have spoken—referred to the Holy Spirit as She, seeing the Spirit as a mother: comforting, protective, and life-giving.
Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century English mystic who spent years in solitude writing about her visions of God, once wrote, “As truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother.” Perhaps she was echoing the prophet Isaiah, who recorded God’s words in Isaiah 66:13: “As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,” says the Lord.
So if you hear Christians refer to God with female pronouns, they are in good company—with a major biblical prophet, early followers of Jesus, and a medieval mystic whose theology was shaped through deep prayer and solitude.
In keeping with this expansive tradition, you’ll see language in this week’s Sunday worship service that moves beyond male and female pronouns. These words are not meant to erase what is familiar but to widen the circle of understanding so that more people can hear God calling them beloved.
This Sunday, we’re also honored to welcome guest preachers Jean Carlos Diaz, Director of Neon Wesley Foundation at the University of Minnesota, along with a UMN student storyteller.
As always, our prayer is that worship at Park will be a space of holy encounter—where we meet God and one another, wrestle with faith, and grow in love together.
With joy and hope,
Rev. Jennifer Ikoma-Motzko
Minister of Spiritual Care and Formation