This week, Pride week, the Anglican Churches in the Diocese of British Columbia have been taking an active part in celebrating the rich diversity of sexual and gender identity which is so much a part of the Pride ethos. On Tuesday 5th July there was held, in Christ Church Cathedral on Quadra, a Pride Eucharist – where candles were lit in hope of inclusion, welcome and celebration for all people. It was a moving service, and it was my privilege to be asked to speak at it – a sermon which I kept short, and which I would like to share as my blog posting today.
I have been reading – or in this case listening, as I have discovered I quite like audiobooks – some material by the researcher, writer and educator Brene Brown. Brene specialises, she says, in the study of shame, which leads on to conversations about worthiness and vulnerability. But she talks of shame as a major part of all of our lives and an often unhelpful motivator in our relationships and the way in which we live.
Shame is, some would say, the opposite of Pride. Certainly this institution which I serve, and indeed which I love despite its flaws, has reason to bear the same - of being exclusive, unloving, judgemental, oppressive… the list goes on. Both our history, and the current experience of the life of the church gives those of us who are Christians plenty to feel shame about. We have failed – we have failed our LGBTQ members, we have failed to show welcome and embrace to those beyond our community, we have failed to celebrate the rich diversity of humanity in all its difference and wonder and beauty. We are, as the words of one confession prayer says, sorry and ashamed.
Brown says, that shame comes from a deep sense of unworthiness, and that the way to get beyond it is to embrace our mistakes, admit our vulnerability to one another and learn to rebuild our shattered selves. So we, those members of the Church that long for the full celebration, welcome and affirmation of all peoples, are doing that. We want to move beyond the mistakes and be the people who we are sure Christ is calling us to be.
For in the institutionalisation of homophobia and intolerance towards Lesbian, Gay, Bi, Transgender and Queer persons we create and/or endorse a culture where the atrocity of Orlando can and does happen. Where a same sex couple is mocked or abused or worse for holding hands. Where a Transgendered person doesn’t feel safe travelling on public transit.
It is because of this, and so much more, that we must continue to work for change, in our Church and in our world, we must make a difference to our own institution in order that we do not feed fires of intolerance and criticism and abuse. We are, as Jesus said in the Gospel of St Matthew - to be salt and light – things which make a difference, which transform, which create change. Darkness cannot resist light, it might try, but light always wins. Salt changes the nature of what it comes into contact with, preserving, altering, adding taste.
We, are called to be world changing, life changing, transforming.
So where do we begin?
We begin with the guiding principle of Christian living. Love. The first letter of John Chapter 4 verse 17 says “God is love and those who abide in love abide in God and God abides in them.” It does not say ‘those who abide in a heteronormative cisgendered form of love abide in God and God abides in them.”
We, as the Church and as individuals, fall so quickly into making things safe and putting up barriers so that we can know who is in and who is out (no pun intended). These are not acts of love, these are acts of exclusion and division. This is not love but fear, and had our Bible reading continued on one verse we would have heard in First John 4.18 ‘There is no fear in love, for perfect love casts out fear’. The fear that is homophobia, exclusivity, condemnation, judgementalism has no place within the life of Christ’s people, for it is in this body of Christ that God’s love is to be made real, visible, apparent. Likewise shame has no place in the life of the church, or in the life of any Christ follower – for shame is a product of fear, fear of what others might think, fear of the consequences of our actions. It is time to move beyond that and into a time of healing, loving, gracious engagement with the mistakes of the past, leading into a new state of being for the future.
The Church struggles, and continues to struggle, with the openness that love demands of us. As verses of the Bible are used to justify the awfulness of ‘loving the sinner but hating the sin’ – as if it were possible to separate someone from who they were, and as if love were a sin! In this coming week the Anglican Church of Canada will be debating the calling to open up marriage to all people, not just heterosexual couples. This will be a close vote, and signs are pointing to it falling. We must pray, remain faithful, continue to speak out for the marginalised and excluded and hope that the voice of the Spirit, the voice of love, the voice of welcome, will be heard.
But as I said in a sermon a few months back: The miracle of the Church is that even when we make mistakes we can still be moved forward, even when the institution seems to hold back the Spirit, love takes hold and moves us on. And if we remain steadfast, if we hold to our desire to be fully inclusive, no matter what – then one day, we trust, we have caught up with the God who is love, the God who is welcome, the God who is all.
Alastair McCollum is Rector of St. John the Divine Anglican Church in Victoria. He has a passion for the Gospel, motorbikes and bike culture, worship, philosophy, theology, guitars, single malt whisky, real ale, cinema and all things French. You can find Alastair at the church website: www.stjohnthedivine.bc.ca and on his blog: fracme.blogspot.ca
You can read more articles from our interfaith blog, Spiritually Speaking, HERE
