Pride Sunday at St Edward’s. Readings: John 3:1-17 and 2 Cor 5:11-21
Intro…
People sometimes ask me why as a church we are so vocal about being inclusive. Why do we have signs out the front saying LGBTQIA+ community welcome? Why do we host a pride service? Why do I walk with Christians at Pride at Brighton Pride?
And before I answer that let me say, being an Inclusive Church is not just about being inclusive for the LGBT community, it means being inclusive for everyone. For example as a PCC we’ve made a commitment to improving our accessibility to the building, we’re looking at how we can be more welcoming to those who are neurodivergent, our worship has been shaped with all our different preferences in mind. But today we are celebrating our LGBTQIA+ siblings. and the reason why is because 1) God loves everyone and 2) the LGBTQIA+ community is disproportionately discriminated against in the church, and worse, this is often justified with use of the Bible.
I personally know people who have been told to leave long term committed relationships, simply because they are gay. Who’ve been told that having a long term partner or being married to someone of the same sex is sinful and of the devil. I know people who have been told then can’t even do a reading in church because they are queer. I know people who have been told their whole lives that if they are attracted to a person of the same sex they must deny those feelings and remain celibate for their entire lives. I know people who have been made to leave teams in church when they came out, or worse, leave the church entirely. I know a family whose daughter on coming out as trans was told they had to leave their church. They would not be welcome. I know those who were told they were inherently sinful and made to undergo conversion therapy – pray the gay away.
Maybe some of you here will have experienced things like this, and if you have I want to say sorry, on behalf of the church. These things should never happen.
Now just for a moment, let me speak to those of us who are straight or cis gender – ie comfortable with the gender we were assigned at birth.
Can you imagine for a moment being told you had to step down from a team in church because the church leader decided you were a sinner. or that you have blue eyes and blue eyes in that church were a sign of not being Godly? Imagine moving to a new area and choosing a church to go to, you just want to gather with others to worship the God you love but, you can’t just assume you will be welcomed, you can’t assume that at some point you might be able to use your gifts to help at that church. You can’t assume that you can introduce your partner or children to others and that would be perfectly fine and normal. Imagine having to explain to the church leader about your sexual preferences or identity before you can come to church. I mean it might seem absurd but that is what it is like for our LGBTQIA+ siblings.
When a church like ours stands up and says you are welcome, we’re an inclusive church, it speaks volumes. It still might not be the right church for someone, choice is still allowed!! but at least when people come they know they will be fully welcomed and can hopefully feel less anxious about just coming to worship.
So that’s why we are so vocal about all this.
Now that was a bit of lengthy intro but if I can’t reiterate all that today then when can I!?
What I want to talk about today is dialogue, communication. We are in an era where difference is becoming a weapon. Where diversity is not something to be celebrated and welcomed but for some is a threat. And much of this comes from a place of fear. And I am going to talk a bit about how we dialogue together but I want to give a caveat at the start. I know for some of us engaging in conversation with those who are different to us might be triggering or unsafe. I am not encouraging that. We need safe spaces to talk. even Jesus told his disciples to shake the dust off their feet where they are unwelcome (Matt 10:14). So please just bear that in mind while I speak.
I think as a nation, if not the world, we are often swayed and informed by the loudest voices in our lives, most likely our media and our social media. And these voices thrive on fear. They tell us that the person different to us is a concern, a threat, will challenge our way of life. And because of that we become unable to hear those other’s voices.
In Jesus day it was not dissimilar. Jesus was seen as a threat by the Jewish teachers, and by some to Rome. They thought he came to overthrow the government, to challenge the Jewish way of life. His very life was at risk.
He was different, he was teaching a different way, he was challenging people to think for themselves not just to follow the pharisees without question. and I think the pharisees were afraid. So they tried to catch him out – set tests for him, lied about him, didn’t listen to what he was saying, they just wanted to turn people against him and keep their stability, their own way of life secure and unchanged.
But there were some who did listen, who wanted to know what he had to say. Nicodemus who we heard about in our John reading was one of them. He was intrigued, he had questions. He knew this man was of God (John 3:2) and clearly he wasn’t the only one because he says ‘we know that you are a teacher… of God.’
But even so he came at night. He was a pharisee, a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin – the ruling body if you like. He was a man of authority and influence. So he didn’t come and ask his questions in the open because he knew what recrimination might come upon him, there was not a safe space for him to listen and to find out more.
But he came, and he asked, and he listened.
And Jesus says to him you need to be born again of the Spirit to enter God’s kingdom. ie you need a spiritual awakening, you need to rethink what you believe about God. Jesus challenges him – look Nicodemus you have heard us (presumably disciples) speaking about our experiences – our testimony – and you don’t believe it. How can I get through to you? you need to listen and to really hear what we are saying.
I just think this sounds so familiar.
We are told by those who are vocal in the media and on socials that trans people are a threat to us and our children, for example,that we shouldn’t even be in the same bathroom as a trans person! That our children will be brainwashed. But we don’t listen to the voices that can tell us what it is really like to be trans or to be gay or queer or non binary. Or to listen to the voices of gay Christians, trans people of faith when they tell us of their own experiences of Christ. If you came to our talk last Wed you will have heard Tina, Ash and Rebecca sharing their own experiences as being trans. Just like the pharisees some use the scriptures to say that people like them are sinners, they are liars, deceived, they are leading people astray, they are not Godly.
Last week I was invited by the diocese to go to a conference in Coventry, it was run by an organisation called Reconciliation Initiatives. They have a vision for how the Church can contribute to addressing inequalities and strengthening relationships in divided societies. And the conference was all about being missional today and the main theme was dialogue.
In pairs speakers were invited to look at 3 key questions based around difference and change. At the start two 2 keynote speakers kicked us off with a conversation in which author and Priest Al Barrett said:
mutual curiosity is better than disagreement
Rev Dr Al Barrett
I like that. Mutual curiosity, so what does that look like?
How can we be mutually curious about those different to ourselves rather than oppositional or looking for difference? That is what Nicodemus did, he was curious about Jesus. and I think we might say Jesus was curious about him – he asked questions of him, challenging maybe, but questions nonetheless.
And we know that Nicodemus was genuinely open to what Jesus said because he changed as a result, in John 7:50 he openly defends Jesus to the pharisees who are seeking to arrest him, and later he is at the crucifixion and attends to Jesus’ body with Jospeh of Arimathea.
I’ll be honest some of the conversations at the conference were really interesting and challenging, but the most interesting I think were where it was very clear that the 2 speakers had very different views and opinions. There was tension in the air. in one case I felt one of the speakers was rude to another. But they were willing to engage from their difference, in this process of listening and seeking to hear what the other was saying and in doing so drawing us, the crowd, the listeners into their dialogue and enabling us to reflect on both their views.
The conference was held in Coventry Cathedral which has since WW2 become an example of reconciliation, it is their cornerstone. After the city was bombed relentlessly over 24 hours during the war, apparently because Hitler had said he wanted a British city destroyed, the old cathedral was set alight with incendiary bombs, just the walls remaining today. Famously a few weeks after the bombing the Provost Dick Howard gave his Xmas Day sermon from the ruins, saying
..with Christ born again in our hearts today we are trying… to banish all thoughts of revenge.. and we are going to try and make a kinder simpler, a more Christ child like sort of world in the days beyond this strike.
Provost Dick Howard, Coventry Cathedral
In the face of destruction, attack, evil, he said we need to be kind, he wrote ‘father forgive’ on the walls of the ruin.
But he also said: ‘we are bracing ourselves to finish this tremendous job of saving the world from tyranny and cruelty…’
Now he said that in the face of the very real fear of death, of the fighting of war actually invading this land, in the aftermath of hundreds of people dying in his city and thousands of homes and buildings destroyed. He knew they were facing evil and he was not to be swayed from the truth of who Jesus is.
As I say reconciliation became a theme for Coventry Cathedral and has shaped their ministry ever since. In our 2 Cor reading we heard Paul say that the love of Christ urges us on and that Christ died for all. That God reconciled Godself to us through Jesus giving us the ministry of reconciliation (v18)
The chair of RI says that in that way:
Any proclamation of the good news of a renewed relationship with God through the work of Jesus, needs to go hand in hand with living lives at peace with each other, marked by mutuality and justice…
Paul says (v20) we are ambassadors for Christ, to encourage all to be reconciled to God.
If the media is to be believed we are facing tyranny from our LGBTQIA+ siblings and yet the only cruelty on display is from those persecuting them in the wider world and in the church barring them from full access to worship and ultimately to God.
In John 3:16 that famous verse we heard earlier, ‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life’. Everyone who believes in him, it’s as simple as that. I wonder if we are being ambassadors for this gospel as Paul says, drawing people into a relationship with God, or are we being gatekeepers? or are we the ones dropping the bombs causing untold hurt and pain? or are we like Nicodemus seeking to genuinely know more?
If we want to be true ambassadors for the gospel we need to listen and hear those different to ourselves. I like to think we are doing that quite well here at St Ed’s, we are all vastly different as I’ve spoken about before and yet we are united in our love of God and this church. But even within that there will be things we find difficult to understand. You know I was saddened that not many from our congregation came to our trans teaching evening. Most people were guests from elsewhere. It was a real opportunity for many of us to listen, to hear and to understand more from those different to us.
Being a person who shares God’s love is not easy, it’s costly, sometimes we have to become vulnerable, we have to put away our own prejudice and opinion and listen just as Nicodemus did. Not all listening means we change our minds like Nicodemus did, but hopefully it means greater mutual understanding and compassion. Listening and good dialogue is the antidote to fear.
I put something on my FB this week saying we need more spaces for good dialogue and someone called me up and said what did you want to come of that post? what did you want the outcome to be and I said, wouldn’t it be amazing if we could facilitate spaces where people can talk and share safely and openly? They said to me we need the ‘oxygen of healthy dialogue’ and even wholesome disagreement. The oxygen of healthy dialogue – that floored me! Oxygen which we need to exist, just to breathe. It is essential to who we are. What if good dialogue is essential to who we are?
In a way Jesus modelled it – he went to those who others’ spurned, he listened to them, spoke to them. Some of whom responded and changed and some didn’t. But he also said as I mentioned to shake the dust of our feet where we are not welcomed. He was also pretty challenging when he needed to be – think turning over tables in the temple. There are different ways we need to communicate at different times but I think as a church, perhaps as a nation we need to be much better at listening and hearing from one another in our difference.
Without anger, or malice, without an agenda, with the right heart attitude, places where we can get things wrong but where we are mutually curious about one another, not quick to be offended, but quick to listen and seeking to understand.
As Christians who are called to be ambassadors for Christ, a God who loved the world that he died for it, should we not be people who listen in love?
2 Cor 5:14 says it is the love of Christ that urges us on, or in the NIV ‘compels’ us…
Surely it is the love of Christ that urges us on, not fear of the other, or the fear of difference.
So let’s all seek to be more mutually curious, to be more Nicodemus.
Amen
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