St Bartholomew, Brighton Pride Sunday 7.8.22

Described by The Guardian as “the country’s most popular LGBT event,” the Brighton & Hove Pride Festival is a vibrant celebration of all that is wonderful about our city’s diverse community, with visitors from across the globe enjoying its spectacular celebrations. Some of you might have been in yesterday’s parade, others are wiping tired eyes this morning after a night out at Preston Park. Others in the congregation this morning will have made their way to St Bartholomew’s to keep their Sunday obligation in a church famed for the sort of colour and drama our city is all about. To one and all welcome - and I say it at a season when the Anglican Church is getting unwelcome publicity through unwelcoming actions of some of her members towards the LGBT community about which I beat my breast.

I say to them what the Gospel says to us all: ‘There is no need to be afraid’ Luke 12:32. I say to us all, especially those in the congregation who are gay, there is no need to be ashamed. The gay pride movement counters shame about the way we are made and its roots are profoundly Christian. We all need to wake up to our dignity, whatever our sexual orientation, through orienting ourselves more fully to God who made us, loves us and wants our company now and forever. 

‘There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom’. When we look through the Bible we read that phrase ‘fear not’ in one estimate no less than 365 times. It's as if God would say to us each day of the year - there is no need to be afraid. As St Paul writes: ‘nothing… can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Romans 8:39). And St John: ‘God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them… there is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear… we love because God in Christ first loved us ’ (1 John 4:16, 18-19). On Pride Sunday we’re here, just as we’re here every Sunday, to take pride in the love of God and his pride in us even though all of us sin and fall short of him. At Mass we pray for deliverance from every evil and peace in our days ‘that, by the help of God’s mercy, we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress’. As human beings we get distressed so much we get chips on our shoulders. Why should I have to bear this? An astronomic rise in my fuel bill. A relative with dementia. War day by day on TV. Yes, on Pride Sunday, being in a minority with my sexuality. Or being in a Church so divided. We bear stress as human beings, but we do so as Christians looking to the love that surrounds us into which we are lifted day by day, Sunday by Sunday, at Mass.

Ronald Rolheiser in his book ‘Forgotten among the Lilies’ writes: ‘Perhaps the most useful image of how the Eucharist functions is the image of a mother holding a frightened, tired and tense child. In the eucharist God functions as a mother. God picks us up; frightened, tired, helpless, complaining, discouraged and protesting children, and holds us to her heart until the tension subsides and peace and strength flow into us’. Such is the intimacy we are privileged to share this morning and day by day in the Lord’s Presence. ‘There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom’.

Over the last year I’ve been working on a book to be launched at Bart’s in the next month or so. ‘Thirty Walks from Brighton Station - catching sights and sea air’ is partly celebration of the diversity and inclusion characteristic of this great city broadcast on Pride Sunday. My walks pay attention to sights linked to minority groups. They pass the city’s first Mosque founded in the late 1970s as well as Coptic, Anglican and Baptist Churches and a memorial in St Ann’s Garden significant to the gay community. The LGBT suicide tree there recalls the tragic consequences of homophobia. Whereas in many parts of the world minorities tolerate one another Brighton & Hove at its best aims at a respect for those who live differently going beyond tolerance. Respect, for example, given to Muslims, in the attendance here by many non-Muslims in the daily breaking of fast during Ramadan. This weekend’s Pride Festival, internationally famous celebration of respect and diversity, is led by the LGBTQ+ community but attended by people from all walks of life.

Loving your neighbour in Jesus’s book doesn’t mean loving some but not loving others. It means loving all. We are as Christians seeing the vital relevance of God’s pride in us and our pride in ourselves to the xenophobia - hatred of strangers - sweeping through the world. Can there ever be outsiders so far as God’s concerned? Can we trust a nationalism that falls short of the deep British sense of fair play and inclusion, itself built from 1500 years of Christianity?  We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. Building respect though is costly in time and trouble. It refuses to pass by on the other side especially passing by those disadvantaged to be in a minority. 

‘There is no need to be afraid, little flock, for it has pleased your Father to give you the kingdom’. 

Lord, we prepare to welcome your embrace in this most holy sacrament. We take pride in you and thank you for the pride you take in us as we approach your mercy. Make good the chips on our shoulders by your embrace. Orient us, whatever our sexual orientation, to your unfailing love so we lose ourselves in you and gain fresh energy to establish the kingdom you have given us, ‘a kingdom of truth and life, a kingdom of holiness and grace, a kingdom of justice, love and peace’.                                                                                    Picture: Brighton Station

St Bartholomew, Brighton Epiphany 5 Seasoning the world 9th February 2020

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? Matthew 5:13a

As on many occasions we wrestle with Our Lord's imagery in this passage from the Sermon on the Mount. Trained as a physical chemist I find it hard to imagine that most stable of compounds, sodium chloride, losing its taste other than when removed from solution by a high energy desalination plant! However I do see how Christians can lose their flavour and I know that happens in my life many a time.

In today’s first reading we’ve got additional wisdom on how Christians are called to season the world.  The passage from Isaiah, often used in Lent to highlight the value of fasting, thrills with a passion for justice that’s been inspiration to many. Share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house… then…your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rearguard. (Isaiah 58:7-8).  Many Christians are joining with other folk of good will to make a practical response to the world’s unprecedented refugee crisis. As we respond to the needy, again and again we sense God going with us, not just in the feel good factor but in the ripple effect of any unselfish act of service. God… our vindicator goes before us, the glory of the Lord is our rearguard.

The mystery of why so few citizens of Brighton & Hove worship on Sundays is tied in with the mystery of the choices of God. We are no better than those who aren’t called, those some of us have left at home this morning, but in the loving providence of God we are being put to a special use in his praise and service. I do not know why God called me as a Christian and as a priest – I am no better than others - but God has called me and what an awesome privilege that is, to be called into situations where God takes me, uses me and is my rearguard, covering my inadequacies and provoking thought of him in what comes to pass in such engagements.

As believers and disciples of Christ we many times find ourselves in situations not of our choosing that have the hand of God upon them. If we are praying, worshipping and studying God’s word we should expect to impact the world in such a way as to get people pondering. Like our immense building we point above and beyond ourselves, inasmuch as God has chosen us to be his pointers.  As we do so Paul’s words are very apposite, where he speaks of weakness… fear and… trembling and yet being given words that are powerful instruments of God. You know those occasions, when you’re given words that unblock things for others, including opening their eyes to the reality of the living God.

You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored?

Being salt is about instrumentality, about giving up our own ambitions, the desire to make our mark on others, in the name of collaborating with God and others to season the quality of the common life of the world. Day by day a selfless team of volunteers makes St Bartholomew’s accessible to thousands a month. Another much smaller team led by Fr Martin Morgan seasons the life of our Primary School. Through that partnership of teaching staff and volunteers a real difference is made to the life of the children of our locality.

What might God be saying to you this morning as you hear Jesus say 'be salt'? 

How is he speaking to where your life is currently bound up in marriage, family and workplace and how in those several engagements you can season things? Or how you might be salt through the organisations within the orbit of St Bartholomew’s? 

The ministries of the Church – welcoming, catering, serving, church cleaning, flower arranging, choir, music, PCC, deanery synod, service booklet production and so on – serve and savour the life of the Christian community as it overflows in service to others. One of these ministries might contain the Lord’s invitation to you at this time, as the pastoral vacancy continues. Losing a chief pastor has strained us but it's never meant loss of the pastoral care gifts within this worshipping community called to season the life of our church and our city. As the enormous Midnight Mass congregation demonstrated we are Brighton’s Church in the sense at least of being the Church they don’t go to Sunday by Sunday. They know we’re here, though, and here for them!

God has called you, and if he has called you, he will not fail you! God’s work always brings with it God’s provision.

In the passage from 1 Corinthians set for today but omitted to shorten High Mass Paul enthuses: What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,   nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him’ - these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one comprehends what is truly God’s except the Spirit of God.  In other words, to be a Christian is to have insight into the depths of things - just as our spirit senses our depths the Holy Spirit searches… the depths of God who is God of our life and that of all that is, capable of linking our passion for him to his passion for all. 

We only have one life but as folk called by God our limited being finds repeated applications that help change the world. We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. 

The so-called spirit of the world is exemplified in a degree of pessimism and fruitless pondering over the state of the world. When we see the world apart from God we see a great deal of self-interest and blindness towards what Isaiah calls the homeless poor. The Spirit of God in contrast cares for all that is just because it is, and more especially those in God’s image who are cast to the margins. Through spiritual discernment, what Paul calls understanding the gifts bestowed on us by God we’re empowered to invest our time, talents and money in making a difference where we are. I believe time spent in intercession for world leaders at this junction is one gift God is calling many into. 

God who has called us is God of the world. He is preparing a bride for his Son, the company of the faithful we call the Church, by purifying Christians to be part of that Bride destined to be enthroned at the marriage supper of Christ who is the Church’s husband to be. One part of our purification is a loss of anxiety about the future and laxity in prayer for the kingdom to come. Earthly rulers and kingdoms fail – but what we’re about as Christians seasoning the world can never fail, as expressed in the great hymn of The Revd Sabine Baring Gould: Crowns and thrones may perish, kingdoms rise and wane, but the church of Jesus constant will remain. Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail; we have Christ's own promise, and that cannot fail. 

We have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God. That spirit cannot fail. It is salt that savours the cosmos. 

The church’s humanity fails, yes, but its divinity will prevail as sure as the Spirit of God prevails. In our Christian calling within that of the Church, Gates of hell can never gainst that church prevail; we have Christ's own promise, and that cannot fail. 

God has called you, he will not fail you! God’s work as you discern it will always brings with it God’s provision to season the life of this ambiguous world.

Seek what the Lord requires of you and cheerfully accept that requirement, Give and it will be given to you - for God is no one's debtor!