When I first thought of doing this mini-series, I thought it was a good idea. Since then, I’ve had my doubts.

The idea obviously comes out of the current debate within the Church of England about homosexuality – the abortive appointment of Jeffrey John as bishop of Reading, and the subsequent appointment of a divorced openly gay and non-celibate bishop in the United States. That debate opens up so many issues: issues of authority (yes, it is the bible, but how do we understand the bible: who tells us what it means); issues of the role of the bishop, sexuality, intimacy, pleasure, love, obedience and identity.

I’m also aware that people, on both sides of the debate, feel very strongly about the issues. And often what people are looking for in sermons like this is approval of their own position. The vicar is OK, or the vicar is very dodgy – because he agrees or disagrees with me. I’m not here to tell you what you must think or do. My privilege in being able to speak is that you, by coming, are giving me the opportunity to advocate a case. I would also argue that that case is rooted in the bible. But it may well be that you do not agree with me.

And if you do not agree with me, I am not going to cast you off as unbiblical – and I trust that you will not cast me off as unbiblical. Either we can agree to disagree or we can agree to continue the debate. I admit now that I may well be wrong. As I have said many times, I have a deep conviction that the bible, as interpreted by all the people of God together, is the Word of God; I am far less convinced that my interpretation of the bible is the right one. (We also have to recognise that the people of God have interpreted certain things in the bible in different ways at different times (e.g. slavery). This is because we are all members of a particular society at a particular time, and we cannot entirely escape from our society’s values and assumptions.)

Some of you will be urging me to take a strong line on homosexuality – to condemn it, to say that it is wrong. I’m going to disappoint you.

 

1. The bible nowhere condemns people who are homosexual. There are references to homosexuality in Genesis 19.4-7; Leviticus 18.22; Leviticus 20.13; Judges 19.22-26; Romans 1.26-27; 1 Corinthians 6.9-11; 1 Timothy 1.10: The precise meaning of these passages has been argued about endlessly. For me, taking them as a whole, it seems that the bible is negative about homosexual practice, and places it in the same category as adultery, lying, slander, theft, and greed:

1 Corinthians 6.9-11: “Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.”

I suspect that it says something about our society and about us as individuals that we seem to focus in on just one of the things in that list.

However, if the bible is negative about homosexual practice, nowhere does it condemn a person for being a homosexual or for having a homosexual inclination.

 

2. We cannot be so selective: I do not think that picking out something that 10% or even just 3% of the population would define themselves by (depending on what figures you take) and condemning it is the approach that Jesus would have taken.

a) It is a bit too easy to condemn the sin of another person, especially if it is a sin that we will never be tempted to commit.

b) Whenever people came to Jesus to talk about another person’s sin, Jesus would turn it round and get them to look at themselves: he made it personal. Examples:

• “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me” (Luke 12.13-15)
• Tower of Siloam (Luke 13.1-5)
• Woman caught in adultery (John 8.1-11)

The problem is that we have turned homosexuality into a test case for biblical orthodoxy – which is exactly what the Pharisees and teachers of the law were doing with the woman in John 8. They were using her as a way of getting at Jesus, of proving themselves right and him wrong. As a person she was insignificant: her struggles, her reasons, her hopes, her fears were irrelevant to them. In the story she is silent: it is Jesus who lets her speak. When we turn homosexuality into a test case for biblical orthodoxy, without listening to the people directly concerned, we do exactly what the Pharisees and teachers of the law did with this woman. We use people as cases to score points.

When I was a curate in Ipswich there was a gay and lesbian film festival. Many of the clergy wrote a letter to the press saying that we felt this was wrong. I was one of the signatures, and by accident, my name was the third on the list. So the local press rang me up: I said something like, “Homosexual practice is wrong because the bible says so”. Looking back at that incident, it strikes me that we were very selective. Every day on our television and in our cinema we see films if not advocating, then at least revelling in: revenge, murder, adultery, rape, premarital sex, greed, bitterness, cruelty and hatred – and yet I do not remember ever having signed a letter about this.

Many of us have allowed ourselves to turn a strong line on homosexuality into the test for biblical orthodoxy, and we should never have done so. Because in doing that, we walk over human beings.

 

3. Simply condemning homosexuality reinforces an anti-gay prejudice that is still very pervasive in our society. It drives people who define themselves as gay away from the church where they do not find acceptance, into a gay sub-culture: where they do find acceptance.

Thirteen years ago I took the funeral of a young man. The parents were not going to tell me how their son had died. Clearly they had not been able to cope with him in his life and even less in his death. I learnt later that he had left Ipswich, gone to London and become involved in the gay scene. He died of AIDS. Because the family could not cope with their son’s sexual orientation and had condemned him, their relationship had been broken: they had lost him, he had lost them and he had lost himself.

I think of another couple in Ipswich, coming to terms with the fact that both their grown-up children had recently told them that they were both gay. They had found it very difficult, but they did not condemn. Instead they were struggling to hold on to their relationship with their children. You do not hold on to a relationship by standing over another person and condemning them.

In the past I have to confess that I have taken that line. I have condemned ‘homosexuality’. It will not surprise you that in my church in Ipswich, a church that numbered 300 people, there was not one person who would define themselves as gay – or, if there was, it was not something they were going to tell me.

Since then my views have changed. Indeed I would go further, and say that I am ashamed of the public attitude that I took; and I publicly apologise.

 

4. The Church needs men and women who identify themselves as heterosexual and as homosexual.

The Church is the body of Christ, made up of all people who confess our need for Christ, our willingness to die to ourselves and to live under his Lordship. Membership is open to everyone: whoever we are, male or female, black or white, professional or working class, and I’m going to add to that list: gay or straight.

There really is no place in the church for someone to point the finger at someone else and say, “They should not be here, they should not be involved, because they are a sinner”. I’m sorry, to use one of Dennis Byer’s phrases, “Have I missed something? Aren’t we all sinners?” The only criteria for being here is that you recognise that you are a sinner, that you want to live a godly life and that you need God!

God has put us together in the church, because he knows that you need me and I need you in my struggle and in your struggle and in our struggle to fight against sin and the devil and the world; that I need you and you need me to battle and overcome temptation; that I need you and you need me in order to become the people and live the sort of life that God invites us to live.

 

Our sex is given to us.

When God made us, he made us male and female. I did hear of a public toilet in South Africa that had three doors: one said men, one said women and the third said Clergy. But that is unusual.

We are male or female. It is part of being created. That is why, I suspect, in the Old Testament there was a law which said that men should not wear women’s clothes and women should not wear men’s clothes: it is not having a go at pantomimes. It is, in fact saying, “Accept what you have been made. Do not rebel against your created-ness”.

We cannot rebel against our createdness: it is what is given to us. I may like it or I may not like it, but it is what I am. I would love to be able to play football like Thierry Henry. I could say that it is my right to play football like Thierry Henry – it would be a very foolish thing to say – I could go to a top trainer; I could, I suppose, even take drugs: but I am afraid that this side of heaven, I am never going to play like Thierry Henry. I am going to have two left feet: it is part of what I am.

Our sex is part of what we are. The world looks at you as a woman or as a man. You look at the world as a woman or as a man. In each culture there is such a thing as masculinity and femininity. I am not sufficiently foolish or brave to attempt to define what that is – but the fact is that, in general, there is a difference. Books like “Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus” sell because basically what they say works. Men and women, as a general rule, look at the world and experience the world in different ways and usually in complementary ways.

As an aside, I am aware that there are some men who desire to be women, and some women who desire to be men. That is a separate case, and I cannot claim to have thought it through. At a gut level, I do not think it is possible. Even with the help of plastic surgery or of hormonal implants I suspect that they will always be a woman dressed up as a man, or vice-versa. We can help them as they seek to find a new identity and live a new role, but our sex is given to us. In other words, I am saying that being male or female is something that is intrinsic to our particular created nature – it does not simply depend on our wishes, nor on external appearance, nor even on the arrangement of our internal organs, nor simply on our XY chromosomes, nor on our relationships with others, nor on our role in the child-bearing process. There is something, call it maybe the sum of all those things and more, call it mystery, that make us at the core of our created being male or female.

Of course we wish to rebel against stereotypes that put people in boxes: that say, “because you are a man you are like this, or must behave in this way”. And it is right to rebel against stereotypes: each individual is unique. But in rebelling against the stereotype, we must not fall into the danger of throwing the baby out with the bathwater and try to force ourselves or others to become who they are not. The true path to freedom is not to rebel against what I am, not to rebel against my nature, but to accept it and to learn to rejoice in it.

 

Our sexual orientation is also given to us.

I recognise that some people, particularly children, may go through a phase when they are attracted to someone of the same sex; they may think they have a homosexual orientation, and only later discover that they are also attracted to members of the opposite sex. That is why children must be protected by law and given time to discover their final orientation.

But that orientation, however it comes about (and I am not going into the question of whether it is as a result of genetics or upbringing) is given. Wishful thinking is not going to change it. Self-condemnation or the condemnation of others is not going to change it.

God can, and occasionally does, change a person’s orientation. He answers prayer. And someone may pray, “God, change my orientation so that I am attracted to someone of the opposite sex”. And on occasion we hear testimonies or stories about how God has answered that prayer exactly as the person wished. But I have to say that in all that I have read and in the people I have spoken to, such cases are very rare.

It is not that God does not answer that prayer – but he answers it in a different way. For the majority of people God will answer that prayer not by changing a person’s orientation, but by giving them the grace to accept themselves as they are, even if other people do not accept them.

I know of one Christian minister, a man, who was gay. He has never made it known publicly. But on one occasion he told me that he gave thanks to God for his orientation because it meant that he could build very healthy, non-sexual, relations with other men. And God had given him an outstanding ministry among men. Many men became Christians through him.

Others can give thanks to God for being gay because it enables them to see the world in a different way: (eg. One person told me that most advertising doesn’t work for her – it is all based on making yourself attractive to the opposite sex gender specific). Some of our most brilliant artists and writers have been and are gay: maybe it is because they cross boundaries, they make links that most of us with pedestrian one-track minds do not make. Some of the most caring people in our society are gay: possibly because they have had the experience of facing prejudice and rejection: they know what it is like.

Who knows, maybe the apostle Paul was gay, and this was the thorn in the flesh that he desperately prayed for, on three occasions, God to take away. Instead he found that it was the very thing that God could use. I know it might sound far fetched, but it could be!

Openly acknowledged homosexuality is a relatively new issue (it has only been with us for the last 30 years) – not in the sense that people did not have a homosexual orientation in the past – but because the idea that someone might be attracted to a person of the same sex was so abhorrent that even if a person did find themselves with such an attraction, they would never talk about it with anyone. They would keep it to themselves – and either go into self-destruct mode, pretend and find themselves in what usually turned out to be an unhappy marriage, or become everybody’s favourite uncle.

In the same way, for those who are heterosexual, we need to see our sexual orientation as a gift from God. There has been a tendency in Christian circles to consider our sexuality, our sexual orientation (whatever it is), as a negative, a distraction from the Christian life – as something to be fought against. But thank God that more than 90% of the population are attracted to members of the opposite sex. If we weren’t we would never get on with the business of continuing the human race.

Thank God that we do find other people attractive and that we are attractive to other people: it is a gift to be used with humility and self-sacrifice and never exploited; but it is also the gift that drives so many of the things we do, and of our relationships and friendships.

The really important word here is complementarity. The complementarity of male/female is the most obvious. The bible uses it as a model of the relationship between Christ and his people. Men need women and women need men. We complement each other physically, we complement each other in the roles we play and we complement each other in the way that we look at and experience the world.

But I suggest that that idea of complementarity is extended beyond gender. It can be extended to people with different gifts, or to people from different races and cultures, with different experiences. We need each other. And if God has made people with different sexual orientation, we need people with different sexual orientation. We need each other to complement each other.

God in his wisdom has made the majority of people with heterosexual orientation; but he has also made some who have a homo (like-) sexual orientation: and we need each other. We need each other’s perspective on the world.

However, and this is the bit that is radical: if our sex and our sexual orientation are part of our created identity, and should be part of our created identity, they are not part of our future identity: They are not part of our ultimate identity. Our ultimate identity as believers, who we truly are, is our identity in Christ. Galatians 3.26-28 states: “You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

In other words, despite what society says: the most important thing about you is not that you are a man or a woman. It is equally not your sexual orientation, or how attractive you are or your sexual drive (despite what much of modern psychology since Freud might want to say). Your ultimate identity is your future identity: your heavenly identity.

In Christ we are beyond sexuality. There is no marriage in heaven, “for”, as Jesus said, “we will be like the angels”: And that is not something to be depressed about. Heaven will offer us intimacy and ecstasy beyond anything that this world can offer.

So we are not to look at people and define them ultimately in terms of their sex or their sexual orientation. Nor are we to define ourselves in those terms. We are to define ourselves in terms of our relationship with Christ, with the Father in heaven and with each other. We are to seek to define ourselves and others as unique individuals with unique things to bring, created to be in the image of God, people who are sinners, but who are forgiven and accepted and loved by God. And we are members of the same heavenly family – brothers and sisters.

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5.16-17: “So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”

 

I am finishing. In summary, what I want to say is this:

1. Be proud of who you are. God made you that way – and he can use the very thing that others may condemn, but actually they need
2. Be accepting of all people: whoever they are – whatever your own instincts or gut reactions

With hindsight I think that it is to be regretted that Jeffrey John did not become a bishop. The furore was not about him being gay, or about his lifestyle: he had committed himself to celibacy. It was rather about what he had written and spoken in the past about homosexual practice. But to many it came across as a simple rejection of people who are homosexual. It is vital, and even more so now, for us as individuals and as a church to say to our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters: we welcome you for who you are. More than that: we need you.

We’ve been struggling to build a ramp, to make this building physically accessible for all people. I would hope that St Mary Magdalene will continue to struggle to become a church that is open to everyone who can begin to admit their need for God and for Christ. We need each other.