coping with bad news: a trans day of remembrance reflection

Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch… [who] had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in their chariot, they were reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard them reading…

Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture he proclaimed to them the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” They commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized them. (Excerpts from Acts 8)

Righteous TK Hill was a 35-year-old Black trans man who founded the only full-service hair salon in Atlanta dedicated to serving the LGBTQ+ community. 

Meraxes Medina was a 24-year-old Latina trans woman who worked as a makeup artist for Universal Studios in Hollywood.

Liara Tsai was a 35-year-old white trans woman who was an activist and crisis counselor and had just moved to Minnesota.

Vanity Williams was a 34-year-old Black trans woman who was an Air Force veteran, who had just started nursing school, and who dreamed of opening a med spa.

Pauly Likens was a 14-year-old trans girl who lived in Pennsylvania and loved music, nature, and shopping.

If we know these names and stories, it is probably because we have heard them in the context of bad news. The bad news that each one of them had their life taken from them, whether by a hateful stranger, a threatened intimate partner, or a harassing neighbor. 

Bad news. Sometimes it feels like bad news is everywhere we look. Sometimes it feels like we cannot take any more bad news. And sometimes I simply feel resigned to living in a bad-news world.

Yet I am a pastor, a pastor who is supposed to believe in the Gospel–a word that literally means “Good news.” As a pastor, I am supposed to preach this good news every week. Good news is my job.

But sometimes I wonder: Does this Gospel, this good news, actually hold up to the overwhelming bad news of the world we live in?

Good news. This is what Philip, too, is tasked with: Philip, one of the leaders of the early church sent out to proclaim Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. One day God nudges Philip: Leave town and go out into the wilderness, onto a deserted road, in the overwhelming heat of the day. It is the least likely place for Philip to encounter a crowd who might want to hear good news. But still, he goes.

Strangely, in the haze of the desert sun, Philip sees: a beautiful, gilded chariot, trotting along at a decent speed, with a person seated in it reading a scroll. Philip, suddenly certain of where God is calling him, runs to catch up. When he arrives at the chariot, panting and out of breath, he finds a small, dark-skinned person seated there–an Ethiopian eunuch, a person who looks neither male nor female. 

A eunuch: not a term we use today, but an ancient term for a person who doesn’t fit society’s gender norms. Perhaps they were born intersex; more likely they were a person born male and castrated by oppressive political systems. If they were castrated before puberty, they developed differently than other adults around them, with smaller bodies and higher-pitched voices; they were not respected as men, and were dismissed as effeminate and weak. 

So this eunuch is a gender non-conforming person–maybe not in the way we would understand being trans today, but certainly in a way that made them an outsider and left them vulnerable to harassment and violence.

I wonder, reading this story again, how the eunuch must have felt–to see a strong man chasing down their chariot, yelling. I wonder if their heart raced as they tried to decide whether to urge their horses faster or to slow the chariot down. I wonder, in that moment as this stranger Philip approached them, if their heart rose to their throat, if they held their breath as they waited for the familiar look on Philip’s face: the confusion, first, the slow gaze up and down the body, the recognition, the morbid curiosity and disdain. 

Those of us who are trans or gender nonconforming know what this feels like. To be evaluated by every new stranger. To have a glance turn into a stare, to watch their thoughts pass over their face as they try to categorize us. 

In the Bible, this is the closest we get to having a story of a trans person of color, who make up 77% of the trans lives lost in 2024. It is the closest we get to the stories of the Black trans women who make up 53% of the names we remember today.

This Ethiopian eunuch knows what it means to be a social outcast. Perhaps they, like many Black people, faced others trying to keep them out of places of worship or business or community. Perhaps they, like many queer people, have had people verbally harass them in the street. Perhaps they, like many gender-nonconforming people, have been the target of physical violence emerging from hate and fear. They know, painfully, frighteningly, that the world around them thinks they don’t belong.

Here they are, riding through the desert, without anyone around for miles. They have just left the temple in Jerusalem, where they just wanted to worship their God, but were surely greeted with stares and whispers that let them know how unwelcome they were. Now they have unrolled the scroll of an ancient religious text, looking for meaning, looking for comfort. Squinting through tears, they are trying to find themself represented in their tradition, to remember that God wants them too, to remember that they do belong.

It is in this moment that Philip reaches the carriage. And surely there is a moment of bated breath; surely there is a moment where Philip realizes that this eunuch is socially other. But then, with no questions, no condescension, no fanfare, Philip plunges ahead and asks the eunuch: Do you understand what you are reading? 

I imagine the eunuch pauses. Breathes a sigh of relief and wipes the tears off their cheeks. Says: I want to understand it. Will you help me?

Together they read a passage from Isaiah, one that describes exactly the experience of gender nonconforming people throughout time: “In his humiliation justice was denied him... For his life is taken away from the earth.” 

And Philip tells the eunuch about Jesus, who also experienced violence and injustice so brutal it killed him, who defeated the power of death. A Jesus who knows and understands the eunuch’s experience of injustice and powerlessness. And the eunuch, elated, sees water along the side of the road, and exclaims:

“Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?”

Surely the eunuch–and Philip!--know that there is a whole list of things that could prevent them from being baptized. Their racial difference. Their sexual difference. Their gender nonconformity. The fact that eunuchs, according to Deuteronomy, weren’t allowed in the temple. Also the fact that the eunuch has not learned all the doctrines, has not made a statement of faith, has not uttered a specific prayer.

What could prevent the eunuch from being baptized? Any of these things could lead Philip to say that the eunuch doesn’t belong. Surely there is a part of the eunuch that thinks: This might be another moment where I am turned away. Where I am told, this good news does not extend to you. 

But instead, Philip and the eunuch hop out of the chariot, and run down to the water, and Philip baptizes them right then and there. No questions asked.

This is the good news of the Gospel. That for those of us who are used to being discriminated against, to being misgendered, to being told we aren’t wanted–in God’s house, we are wanted. There is nothing that can prevent us from entering. From belonging fully, as we are.

The good news of the Gospel is that it throws wide open the doors to all who have been locked out. It welcomes in those who have been told they don’t belong–trans people, and queer people, and people of color, and women, and immigrants, and foreigners. It says to those who have been victims of violence: you are not alone; Jesus suffered violence too.

If we’re honest, this can be difficult to remember and to feel in a bad-news world. It can be hard to remember that we are wanted and we belong when so many voices are saying the opposite. And especially right now, those voices have been given a megaphone, with a presidential campaign that relied heavily on anti-trans propaganda.

Now we are surrounded by the loud voices of many on the far right who feel empowered to speak hatred in public and to dehumanize those who don’t look or think like them. It is painful, and if we’re honest, it doesn’t stop being painful no matter how many times we hear it.

Like the eunuch, we too might feel like we are in the desert alone, squinting at our Bibles or our phones through tears, looking to see if God does actually want us. Trying to remind ourselves that our lives do matter.

Yet God does not leave us in the desert alone. God sends others to come sit beside us, to see us and accept us as we are, to help us find ourselves in the story of God’s good news once again. Just as God sent Philip to the eunuch, to chase him down even in the heat of the desert sun, God will surely send friends and companions to chase us down too. 

And we will be these friends and companions for each other: to find one another in the places where we feel most alone and most uncertain of our place in the world. To remind each other of the good news: We are loved, and we are wanted, and we belong, exactly for who we are. Nothing less.