‘For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world’
Sermon preached at All Hallows by Lesley Ashton on 6 August 2006
Lesbian and Gay Liberation Sunday
Readings:
Ephesians 4:1—16
John 6:24—35
Jesus said ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.’
I am glad to be here with you this morning to preach and to preside on Lesbian and Gay Liberation Sunday. Many of us have struggled and staggered towards liberation within the world, within the Church and for ourselves. Many of us are scarred, many of us have been wounded. Liberation has been and still is costly, but it is far far better than living with internalised oppression, with invisibility, with fear and with silence.
Part of our liberation comes when, as James Alison says, ‘We know what our body has long known.’
What I say this morning I say directly to those people who identify as being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. However I hope that I will also speak to those who are heterosexual and to those who struggle to name their sexual identity. I believe that we all, whatever our sexual orientation, have journeys to make in relation to our sexuality, not only in relation to our identity but also in relation to the great links there are between our sexuality and our spirituality
I believe that those of us who have struggled with our sexuality in any way have had to grapple with our understandings of intimacy, desire, vulnerability and passion, to name but a few. We have often dared to step beyond the boundaries that have been put in place by many agents, including the Church and we have risked exploring those areas of ourselves that are deeply intimate.
This journey may have been painful and difficult, but for many of us the journey itself and our findings have been ones of liberation. Liberation in relation to self understanding but also liberation that has taken our spiritual lives into depths beyond our wildest imaginings. In our explorations we have also been able to expose ourselves more fully to the desire, intimacy and passion that lies at the heart of God’s love for his world and we have glimpsed a little of God’s vulnerability made known to us through his presence in Christ in the world.
It is into these footprints of Christ that we are called to tread and many of us give thanks that it has been through the exploration of our sexuality that we have taken our first tentative steps further into the knowledge and love of God.
This journey many of us have made is also in itself part of our liberation. We are freed from the expectations placed upon us by society, by family and by the Church. It is a journey of courage, for we have dared to explore rather than deny the messages of our bodies. When we have bodily understanding and body knowledge, when we can rejoice in and honour our own bodies, it is then we can more fully enter into the bodily nature of our faith.
For the language of the body is at the hub of our Christian faith. God became incarnate through the body of Christ, we are Christ’s body here on earth, through the Eucharist we enter into that mysterious place of bodily exchange. Christ is bread and wine consumed by us. It was in the body of a woman that God was pleased to dwell, it was bodily resurrection that secured Christ’s victory over death.
Those who seek to make or call the body of a LGBT person a place of sinfulness deny them these connections because they deny our body and the sense of bodiliness that we have. They name as sinful those deep places where we have made intimate connections with our God, they deny the sacrament that dwells within our sexuality. A sacrament that is available not only to gay people but also to each person who dares to make the connections between their sexuality and their spirituality.
Perhaps we need to understand more fully that what lies behind the prejudice, bigotry and hate of those who condemn us, When we name the connections between our sexuality and our Christian faith, we are speaking of a God who enters into the bodily intimacy of our beings and who is present in the sexual as well as the spiritual dimensions of ourselves.
Those who denounce us are perhaps responding to an unconscious recognition that we have dared to journey where they fear to tread and their response is to try and destroy those who have made the journey they cannot yet do themselves. And the journey that they fear is I suggest, not only in relation to sexuality but to the fact that God is present and waiting to meet them in that place of deep vulnerability and intimacy.
So, to return to the gospel reading:
The bread of God made known in Jesus Christ gives life. Those things that are life-affirming, those things and people who bring the news of Jesus Christ will bring you life. The things and people that are of God do not destroy life, but create, sustain and liberate life.
They create, sustain and liberate each one of us, they do not seek to destroy the person whom God created, but affirm His presence in each one of us. A good yardstick to use whenever we are confused or defeated by what others say to us is to use this litmus test question:
‘Is what is being said or done in the name of God affirming the presence of Christ within me?’
In fact it is a good litmus test for anything that is done or said in the name of God that affects the world and those things that are created by God.
Jesus said ‘whosoever comes to me will never be hungry and whosoever believes in me will never be thirsty’. This is our insurance policy; it does not have any opt-out clauses, nor does it demand any excess be paid before it delivers. Jesus did not say ‘whosoever comes to me except those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered’, he did not say whosoever comes to me and if they happen to be LGBT then they must become heterosexual and then they will never be hungry or thirsty.
Through Christ, we are accepted by God, because the life, death and resurrection of Christ has opened, for all of us who believe in him, a new and living way. We are all liberated through the Cross. We are liberated not only from sinfulness and death but also liberated into eternal life, that begins in the here and now of today. We have in this life a foretaste of the heavenly banquet where one day we shall feast together and where the trials and tribulations of this life will be no more. I really and truly believe that when we are in the full presence of God then those things that have divided and separated us here on earth will simply fall away. We will be in the presence of such holy love that the things that have seemed to be so important to us and that have taken up our time and attention will seem as nothing. In the presence of God we will recognise our wholeness, the integration of each part of us not only individually but also as the body of Christ.
The challenge to us today is to truly believe in the knowledge of our salvation and liberation and so to live out lives that embrace this knowledge.
There is much talk about sin in relation to LGBT people but I wonder if the sin we really need to address and to repent. is the one of not loving ourselves as Christ loves us. For not having enough sense of our belovedness to God that we fail to be out and proud of who we are.
We are people who are made in the image of Christ, people who are seeking to grow more into the likeness of Christ, for as we spend time in his presence we are being transformed into his image and we reflect his glory in the world.
I sometimes feel that we fail to claim our rightful place to sit at God’s table, to be present at his heavenly banquet. It feels sometimes that we wait for the Church to give us permission to claim that which is already our gift in Christ. We do not need to come with a begging bowl or to sit and catch the crumbs that fall from the table, we are invited to the feast.
We are brothers and sisters in Christ and through our baptism we are members of Christ’s body the Church. We do not need to ask to be included. We must claim our just and equal place with all other members of the Church and get on with living the life that God intends for us.
This is another step in our liberation, to know ourselves as equal members of God’s family, members of the body of Christ, journeying in faith, open to all that God calls us to be and to become. Simply really getting on with our faith and not being held back by forever explaining ourselves and justifying our existence to others..
Thirdly and lastly I want to speak a little about our liberation from our wounds.
Jesus said that he is the bread of life. In Matthew’s Gospel when talking about the practical meaning of his message Jesus said: ‘Who among you, if your child asks for bread, would give a stone?’ As God’s children we are offered the bread of life in Jesus Christ; but those of us who name ourselves lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered have sometimes been given stones by others who are part of the Body of Christ.
In fact we have not only been given stones, we have had them hurled at us and often they have felt less like stones and more like boulders as they have come hurtling towards us.
We have been wounded and scarred by these stones. There have been stones hurled at us by our accusers, vile words, derogatory statements, exclusion and persecution. We have been scarred by those we thought were our allies when they have sat on the fence, when they have not spoken up in our defence, when they have gone back on their word.. And perhaps most painfully we have wounded each other by keeping silent, by hiding in the closet, by taking our frustrations out on those with whom we share so much.
The place of woundedness has often felt to be the place which feels most familiar and the danger for us is that it can become the place that we feel most at home, almost a place of safety, for the feelings in this place are known. The place of woundedness can become our comfort zone, the place we fear to move away from.
The place of woundedness can also be the place where we are the most self-indulgent and self-seeking. We draw attention to ourselves and we display our pain and anguish in ways that border on narcissism.
I suspect that some of us wait for the next stone to be hurled so that we can embrace the pain and continue to moan about our lot.
The place of woundedness can also be the place where we have met with Christ in a deep and intimate way, that place where our suffering is known and understood by the one who knows what it feels like to be marginalized, to condemned, to be despised and rejected. The place of our pain can be the place where we have found our greatest blessing and we fear that if we move from this place we will lose our intimacy with Christ.
I don’t want to deny the wounds and I also want to acknowledge that we are all at different places in our journey but I also want us to look forward, away from ourselves and towards the journey we are called to embark upon with Christ.
The great social reformer Joan Butler who worked with women said this: ‘You are women and a woman is always a beautiful thing. You have been dragged deep in the mud but still you are women. God calls to you, as he did to Zion long ago, “Awake, awake! Thou that sittest in the dust, put on thy beautiful garments.” You can be the friend and companion of him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. Fractures well healed make us more strong. Take of the very stones over which you have stumbled and fallen, and use them to pave your road to heaven.’
Well, Joan Butler was talking about women, but what she said I believe is true for us today, so let us reframe the quote.
‘You are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered and you are a beautiful thing in God’s sight.. You have been dragged deep in the mud but still you are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered. God calls to you, as he did to Zion long ago, “Awake, awake! Thou that sittest in the dust, put on thy beautiful garments.”’ You can be the friend and companion of him who came to seek and to save that which was lost. Fractures well healed make us more strong. Take of the very stones over which you have stumbled and fallen, and use them to pave your road to heaven.’
Yes, our wounds need to be healed, and we need to remember this and find ways and people to help this to happen. But when they are healed, then let us move on and awaken ourselves to the work God has called us to do.
Let us show that Christ is alive and working his purpose out in each one of us.
Let us be witnesses to his healing grace, let us use our understanding of being wounded to help others to be healed, let us point them to that place of blessing that we have known.
Let us move from telling and retelling our stories to telling the Christ story.
Let us take the stones that have been hurled at us and let us use them to pave our road to heaven.
Let us claim our full and joy-filled liberation by being and becoming all that God calls us to be, so that we might also, in the name of Christ, bring life to the world.
Amen.
Copyright © 2006 Lesley Ashton
This page was last updated on Monday, 14 August 2006
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