One of the loneliest things I believed as a young queer Christian was not that I was the only one. I knew there were other queer people in the world, and I knew there were other Christians trying to make sense of their lives. What I struggled to imagine was a faithful way to hold those things together. I had been taught, in countless ways, that there was one right path, one faithful posture, one acceptable kind of life. Anything else felt like departure.

Years later, I began discovering people the church had rarely spoken about. Aelred of Rievaulx and his profound writings on spiritual friendship. Perpetua’s extraordinary vision of herself transformed before entering the arena. Hildegard of Bingen’s deep and affectionate relationship with Richardis. Historians debate what some of these lives mean, and I think that honesty matters. We should not claim more than the evidence allows. But we should not pretend the evidence is silent either. Again and again, I found people whose lives, relationships, and witness resisted the tidy stories I had been given.

That changed something for me. I was not looking for proof that Christianity had always affirmed people like me. I was looking for company. I was looking for ancestors in the faith. People who prayed, loved, doubted, suffered, and followed Christ before I ever existed. Whatever language they would have used to describe themselves, they reminded me that queer Christians did not suddenly appear in the twentieth century. We have always been here.

Over these four Sundays, I have reflected on Jesus crossing boundaries before the institution was ready, the Spirit moving faster than the church, Pentecost celebrating difference rather than erasing it, and now the witnesses we were rarely told about. Together they point me toward the same conclusion. The church has often struggled to recognize what God was already doing. Yet the story has always been there for those willing to look. And for those of us who once believed we were alone, that is more than history. It is grace.