My name is Tommy. I’m a gay man and an Episcopal priest, and my life with Jesus has not been a straight line. It’s been more like a winding path, with detours, delays, stretches of fog, and a lot of grace I didn’t think I deserved.
I share this story not because I think it’s extraordinary, but because I know there are many people—especially LGBTQ+ people—who have been told, explicitly or implicitly, that they have to choose between who they are and the God they love. My life is one small testimony that you don’t have to choose.
Growing Up With a Split Story
When I was younger, I knew two things very clearly:
I loved Jesus, and I was attracted to men.
Both of those felt deep and true. I loved the stories of Jesus. I was drawn to his kindness, his courage, his way of standing with people on the margins. And at the same time, I knew I was gay long before I had language for it.
But alongside those truths, I absorbed another message—from church, from culture, and from my own fear—that those two things couldn’t belong together. I heard, in different ways, that if I really loved Jesus, I would reject this part of myself. That being faithful meant cutting off or hiding my sexuality so well that maybe even God wouldn’t notice.
So my early faith was sincere, but it was anxious.
I worked very hard at being “good.” I threw myself into church life, into service, into doing the right things, hoping I could somehow balance out who I was. On the outside, I looked like a devoted Christian. On the inside, I carried a deep and quiet shame.
My prayers often sounded like:
- “Change me.”
- “Fix me.”
- “Make this go away.”
What I almost never prayed was, “Here I am, all of me, loved by you.”
The Voice That Wasn’t Christ
Even in that shame, Jesus was there.
I began to notice a tension between the Jesus I met in the Gospels and the way I was treating myself. The Jesus I saw in scripture didn’t seem terrified of people’s bodies or stories. He didn’t flinch at the parts of people that others called “unclean” or “unacceptable.”
He touched lepers.
He let a woman with a bleeding condition reach out and touch him.
He ate with people labeled “sinners.”
He seemed to move toward the very people who had been told they didn’t belong.
The more I sat with those stories, the more I began to suspect that the constant voice of condemnation in my head was not the voice of Christ.
There wasn’t one dramatic moment where everything changed—no flash of light on the road, no single sermon that flipped a switch. Instead, there was a series of what I can only describe as holy nudges.
- A conversation with a priest who didn’t flinch when I said the word gay.
- Friends who loved me without condition and didn’t treat my orientation as a problem to solve.
- A community that let me walk through the red doors of an Episcopal church with my whole self, and didn’t ask me to leave part of it outside.
Through all of that, there was a quiet, persistent sense in prayer that Jesus wasn’t asking me to become someone else in order to be loved. He was asking me to trust that I was already loved—and to live from that place.
Finding Healing in the Sacraments
The sacraments became a place where that trust started to grow.
At the font and at the table, I encountered a God who doesn’t wait for us to get everything “right” before offering us grace. Baptism, for me, isn’t about God finally accepting us once we’ve passed some kind of test; it’s about God naming us as beloved from the start.
In the Eucharist, I heard the words, “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven,” over and over. Slowly, something in me began to shift. I started to believe that “the Body of Christ” included my body, my story, my orientation—my whole life.
The very parts of myself I had tried to hide became the places where I experienced Jesus’ tenderness most clearly. The table where I once wondered if I really belonged became the table where I heard, in the deepest way, “You are mine. You are included. You are not an exception to grace.”
Discovering a Home in the Episcopal Church
Finding my home in The Episcopal Church was part of this healing.
In Episcopal worship, I encountered a church that takes scripture, sacraments, and prayer seriously, and that also takes seriously the call to “respect the dignity of every human being.” I met people who were willing to wrestle honestly with hard questions, to hold together faith and reason, tradition and lived experience.
I didn’t have to pretend.
I didn’t have to split my life into “acceptable” and “unacceptable” parts. I could show up as a gay man who loved Jesus, and a Christian who loved other gay people—not in spite of my faith, but because of it.
That kind of spiritual home doesn’t erase pain or undo harm, but it does offer space to heal, to grow, and to finally breathe.
Called to the Priesthood From the Margins
My call to the priesthood grew directly out of this experience of grace.
I didn’t become a priest because I have everything figured out or because I’ve solved all the mysteries of God. I became a priest because I know what it feels like to be on the outside looking in—even inside a church. I know what it is to wonder, “Is there really a place for me here?”
And I have experienced Jesus as the One who stands in the doorway and says, “You belong. Come, sit at the table.”
My vocation is, in many ways, an act of gratitude. Standing at the altar, at hospital bedsides, in living rooms and parish halls, I want my life to say:
There is room for you here. All of you.
Your story. Your questions. Your wounds. Your joy. Your identity.
Being a gay priest doesn’t mean my life with Jesus is easy or conflict-free. I still wrestle—with scripture, with the church, with my own insecurities. There are days when old messages of shame try to creep back in. There are times when I grieve deeply the harm done to LGBTQ+ people in the name of Christ.
But even in those places, Jesus meets me not as an accuser, but as a companion and healer.
Who Jesus Is to Me Now
Today, what Jesus means to me can be summed up in a few simple (but costly) truths.
1. Jesus is the One who tells the truth about God’s heart.
In Jesus, I see a God whose love is wider than our categories, whose table is longer than our guest lists, and whose heart is gentler than our harshest inner critic.
When I look at Jesus, I don’t see a God pacing the halls of heaven, irritated and disappointed that I exist as I am. I see a God who comes close. A God who sits at tables with people others avoid. A God who is not scandalized by our humanity, but who chooses to share it.
Jesus tells the truth about a God who doesn’t love us in theory, but in bodies and stories and real lives—messy, beautiful, complicated lives like mine and yours.
2. Jesus is the One who refuses to let shame have the last word.
There’s a story in the Gospels where the disciples are hiding behind locked doors, afraid and ashamed. Jesus doesn’t stand outside shouting at them to pull themselves together. He steps into the locked room and says, “Peace be with you.”
That is the Jesus I have met in my own locked places—the parts of my story I tried to bury, the parts I feared would disqualify me. He doesn’t break down the door to punish me; he comes through the door to calm me. He speaks peace where shame once screamed.
When old condemnations flare up in my mind, I return to that image: Jesus, standing in the room of my fear, saying, “Peace. You are mine. You are not a mistake.”
3. Jesus is the One who keeps calling me into deeper love.
As a priest, I see Christ in the people I serve: in the questions they ask, in the wounds they carry, in the courage it takes just to show up in church at all. Many of us arrive in the pews with stories that make us wonder if we’re “too much” or “not enough.”
Jesus keeps stretching my heart—not inviting me to lead as someone pretending to be perfect, but as a fellow traveler who knows what it is to be found. My calling is not to stand above anyone but to stand with people, pointing together toward the One who loves us both.
Claiming My Life With Gratitude, Not Apology
Because of Jesus, I know I am not a mistake.
Because of Jesus, I can claim my life—as a gay man, as a priest, as a human being—with gratitude instead of apology.
Because of Jesus, I believe that nothing in us—our past, our identity, our doubts, our orientation—can separate us from the love of God. The very things we are most tempted to hide often become the places where grace shows up most clearly.
If there is anything I hope people hear in my story, it’s this:
You do not have to choose between who you are and the God who loves you.
You do not have to erase yourself in order to belong.
You do not have to straighten your story to make it acceptable.
Jesus has already chosen to be with you, completely and forever.
My life, in all its twists and turns, is simply one small testimony to that astonishing grace. And if any part of my story resonates with yours, I’d be honored to walk with you as you listen for how Jesus is speaking that same grace into your life.
