Transformations

Sermon: Transformations

Alison Li, Lawrence Park Community Church, June 8, 2025 — Pentecost

Scripture: John 4: 5-14

In 1966, Louise Ergestrasse marched into the office of Elliot Blackstone, the police community-relations officer to the gay community in San Francisco. She plopped down a copy of the just-published book The Transsexual Phenomenon by Dr. Harry Benjamin and demanded he do something for “her people.”

This book was the first major work to define trans identity in clinical terms and to argue for compassionate treatment for people whose internal sense of gender did not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.

Trans historian Susan Stryker says it caused a “sea-change” in the perception of transgender identity not only for medical professionals but for trans people, their families, and the public. Blackstone was ready to learn and he came to take a leading role in reshaping the police treatment of transgender people.

Good morning. My name is Alison Li and I am honoured to speak to you about my work as a historian of science and medicine.

I have written a book called Wondrous Transformations, which is a biography of Harry Benjamin, a physician who had a pivotal place in the early development of gender-affirming healthcare for trans people. This morning, I would like to tell you why I think this history matters very much today.

Benjamin was born in Berlin in 1885 and studied medicine in Germany but ended up settling in the United States just before the First World War.

As a doctor, he used the science of hormones to deal with problems of aging. During the 1920s and 30s, he had a thriving practice on Park Avenue in New York, treating movie stars, opera singers, and millionaire businessmen. But he always had an interest in the science of sex.

In those years, he made regular visits to Berlin where his friend Magnus Hirschfeld had established the Institute for Sexual Science, the first in the world devoted to the scientific study of sex.

Hirschfeld was a doctor and activist for the rights of queer people.

Trans people, of course, have been defining themselves and making lives for themselves in many cultures and times through history. Many gender-non-conforming people have no interest in medical transition. But what began to happen in the early twentieth century was that some trans people began to seek the help of doctors to better understand their experiences and to use the tools of medicine such as hormones and plastic surgery to facilitate their transitions.

At Hirschfeld’s institute, trans people were able to find acceptance and employment. One of the earliest people known to have had surgery for gender transition in the 1920s was Dora Richter, a housekeeper at the institute.

Lili Elbe, who you might recognize from the movie The Danish Girl, was also treated at the institute.

But as Rev. Milton shared with you last month in his blog post “Burning and Banning Books,” the important work of the institute came to an abrupt end in May 1933 when it was sacked by students backed by the Nazi Party and its library thrown to the flames. Hirschfeld died in exile two years later and his work seemed to die with him.

Back in New York, in the years that followed, Dr. Benjamin had few opportunities to meet trans people. His practice was in gerontology and he was mostly concerned with working with aging patients.

But in 1949, just as he was beginning to think of retiring, a young person we know by the pseudonym Val Barry arrived at his office. Barry was assigned male at birth but had, from childhood, lived as a girl with the full support of her family; now as a young adult, she desperately wanted to change her body and get rid of any male characteristics.

Benjamin listened carefully to Val Barry and recognized her suffering. Thanks to the influence of Hirschfeld, he was able to view Barry differently than most of his contemporaries. Most other doctors assumed trans people had a psychiatric problem and thought it was a doctor’s job to change their minds to match their bodies.

Benjamin concluded instead, that it would be wiser and more humane to treat Barry’s body to match her mind. He gave her hormone treatments, advocated for her, and helped try to find a surgeon; she eventually went to Sweden for surgery. Word of Benjamin’s sympathetic stance spread by word of mouth through trans networks. And so, instead of retiring, Benjamin spent the next few decades becoming a physician and leading advocate for over a thousand transgender people. And he would do so in the face of fierce criticism and disapproval. His work would become pivotal in the development of transgender medicine.

By the early 1960s, anyone who was interested in transgender care would probably have found their way to his office. Benjamin's patients, whether aging or transgender, always remarked on his calm and compassionate manner. Many trans people had previously experienced only fear, disdain, and disbelief from their doctors. So being looked in the eye and treated with respect by a person in a white coat was a revelation to them.

The distinguished writer and foreign correspondent Jan Morris, then a husband, father and former-soldier, arrived at Benjamin’s office in 1964, wearied by a long and secret struggle; Benjamin said “You believe yourself to be a woman? Of course, I perfectly understand. Tell me something about it—take it easy, take it easy.” For the first time, Morris felt truly understood.

One young physician who was invited by Benjamin to sit in on his weekly clinic for trans people observed how Benjamin gave each patient his full attention and was concerned for them as if they were family. Benjamin came to epitomize for him the ideal doctor-patient relationship, one characterized by closeness and caring. Many of Benjamin’s patients became life-long friends.

Our scripture for today tells the story of Jesus’s encounter with a Samaritan woman. To the disciples, she would have seemed an outsider both as a Samaritan and a woman. She is apparently even an outcast in her own community since she has to draw water at noon, alone, in the hottest part of the day; women would normally have drawn water together when it was cooler.

But it is this woman, an outsider by every count, who will be entrusted with a remarkable revelation. Jesus asks for a drink of water. The woman is naturally surprised, not only that a Jewish man is speaking to her, something that would have been considered improper, but that he is willing to be defiled by drinking from the vessel of a Samaritan. There was a long hostility between Jews and Samaritans who each considered the other to have a corrupt religion.

But the woman is not timid. She is curious, she pushes back. She says, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” Jesus explains: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Jesus then asks her to call her husband. When she replies she has no husband, he says she has told the truth: she has had five husbands, and the man she is with now is not her husband. “Sir,” she says, “I can see that you are a prophet.” Jesus takes this unnamed, uneducated woman seriously and engages in a profound theological dialogue with her. He tells her of a time that is coming, and indeed has already come, when true worshipers would worship not in a particular place but in the Spirit and in truth. She says, “I know that Messiah…is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Jesus then makes a stunning declaration: “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” This is a singular moment. This is the first time Jesus voluntarily describes himself as the Messiah. Imagine the surprise of the disciples to find their teacher having this conversation. Or perhaps not. Jesus was always doing surprising things like this.

What is significant is not only what Jesus says, but what he doesn’t say. He doesn’t say, “sin no more” as he will a little later to the man he heals at the pool of Bethesda, and as he does to the woman who is caught in the act of adultery. This is significant because many commentators suggest the woman’s morality is at issue. But maybe this reflects our own pre-occupations rather than those of the gospel writer. One could just as easily understand Jesus’s remarks not so much as a condemnation of her lifestyle, but rather, a demonstration of his ability to see her fully for who she is. She too seems to understand his words not as a criticism, but as proof of his prophetic powers. “I can see that you are a prophet,” she says.

Today, we mark Pentecost, the great birthday of the church, but we can see that the Samaritan woman was the first evangelist. That day, she was transformed. She left behind her water jar to run back and spread the good news to her neighbours. Many came to believe because of her testimony; joy bubbled up like living water.

You will know that these are troubling times and the hard-won rights of trans people are under attack; lies and distortions about trans people and trans medicine are rampant. The study of history tells us trans identity and trans healthcare are not just a recent phenomenon. Trans people have been here in many cultures and times and gender-affirming care goes back over a hundred years. History gives us a way to fight disinformation and despair; it shows that the way things are is not how they always have been, and offers hope that this is not the way they will always have to be.

Dr. Harry Benjamin thought so too. At the age of one hundred, he looked back over his life and concluded that the individual could indeed make a difference, and that a few people, through courage and hard work, could lessen the suffering of many.

The dreams, goals and lived experiences of trans people are as many and varied as there are trans people. And perhaps the greatest prize is simply the freedom to get on with their lives so they can offer the full expression of their gifts to the world. Benjamin had his faults, but what I found most inspiring about his story was his willingness to listen, learn, change his mind, and try to see people for who they really were.

Pentecost marks the start of the age we live in, when through the work of the Spirit, we share the good news of a God of abundant love and grace, freely given. A God who sees, knows, and accepts us fully. Perhaps it is we who have such difficulty with this knowledge, so much so that we want to set up rules and walls, guidelines about who is in and who is out. To try to make sense of how to be deserving of this prize. Anything, but accept that all we have to do is ask.

Over the past decades, feminists have helped us to acknowledge and celebrate the feminine qualities of God. At my own church last month on Mother’s Day, a young mother named Alyse Ediger Martin shared a beautiful story of carrying her sleepy daughter in from the car. Perhaps some of you can remember doing something like this too. Imagine a warm, soft child’s body melting with perfect trust into her mother’s arms. Alyse said this is what she imagines heaven is like, “sinking into God’s embrace,” “utterly safe and cherished.”

You are a beloved child of God. Let us sit with that a moment. It is in daily trusting and deeply accepting this unmerited grace that we can live into the sometimes-challenging truth that every other person, no matter what their views, their deeds or their life experiences, is loved the same way.

Let us also reflect on what we are now being asked to learn from our trans and non-binary siblings: wisdom and insight about how we use language and imagery, how to live authentically. Theirs are the prophetic voices breaking down the walls that divide us, pointing us to a vision of God beyond gender.

I close with a prayer that you will truly know God’s love for you just as you are, that you will see Christ in the face of everyone you meet, and that everyone you meet, will see Christ in you.

AMEN