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

Trinity 10 (18B) St Bartholomew, Brighton Pride Sunday 5.8.18

It’s Pride Sunday and St Bartholomew’s rejoices with those who rejoice in the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender community.

Brighton & Hove Pride Festival promotes itself as ‘a dazzling display of inclusivity’. I feel Pride-d out with family members attending the Pride in London Parade a month back, another platform, I quote ‘to raise awareness of issues and campaign for the freedoms that will allow the LGBT+ community to live their lives on a genuinely equal footing’.

We provide our own ‘dazzling display of inclusivity’ at St Bartholomew’s which makes space for friendships to grow between heterosexual and homosexual, married and celibate young and old, rich and poor, employed, retired, unemployed - where do you end?

St Bartholomew’s rejoices with its gay members this weekend standing by them and the wider gay community as they seek to become more fully what God has made us to be. As today’s section from the letter of Ephesians expresses it we are being equipped for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ… speaking the truth in love we must grow up in every way into him. (Ephesians 4:12-13,15)

That sort of growth - towards citizenship of heaven - comes as we grow more rooted in apostolic faith, in the soil of holy church, so we blossom not just in our humanity but in divinity, in holiness. Our sexual orientation is second to living lives oriented to Jesus Christ, loving him and aspiring to make him loved. The friendship and understanding we build among our congregation at St Bartholomew’s are vital to our mission in the secular culture of Brighton. Here is true inclusion, true life, as the Gospel affirms. The bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. (John 6:33)

To help strengthen our mission we need to build understanding across the diverse group we are so as to be ever more attractive to the people of Brighton who pass in and out of our doors.

The epistle mentions speaking the truth in love. Here are some truths of apostolic faith we might ponder in the complicated and sensitive realm opened up to us by Pride Sunday.

First all love is of God, love between friends, husbands and wives, parents and children and we all need more love in our lives so we can come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ.

Second Scripture applauds same-sex friendship as for David and Jonathan in the Old Testament and those between Our Lord and his apostles, especially Saint John.

Third the Christian tradition opposes the sexualising of friendship, in particular physical sexual activity outside of marriage.

Fourth the Sacrament of Marriage is recognised as a divine ordinance in which the delight and tenderness of sexual union between husband and wife mirrors Christ’s love for the Church and the love of the Father for the Son in the Holy Spirit.

Fifth same-sex marriage has no basis in scripture or Christian tradition which affirms marriage as the foundation of family life in which children are born and nurtured. Sexual intercourse effects life-giving love with inseparable unitive and procreative aspects.

Sixth Our Lord starts his Sermon on the Mount by warning against lust. I say to you that everyone who looks at someone with lust has already committed adultery with them in their heart. (Matthew 5:28) Our sexual preferences are incidental to the great failing of treating anyone as an object even in our hearts.

It’s those principles of apostolic faith that inform the church’s pastoral ministry. That ministry of care is shared by all Christians not just the clergy. On that account I’ll earth what I’ve said in a few pastoral examples with names changed.

I think of Steve, a young man who holds to these principles who’s been an active member of a political party. The other day he told me he was thinking of a career change because his Christian views were increasingly alien to his Party making him unselectable. He needed my care.

Then Miriam in a same sex relation with twins who in talking to me informally about their baptisms, asked me whether the church could approve their parents union. In that conversation I left the door open for the delightful infants whilst affirming marriage by nature as a physical union of man and woman. I thanked God I wasn’t her parish priest!

Joe who’s gay talked to me about his possible call to the priesthood. I advised him to be honest about his state of life in the discernment process and courageously face up to the House of Bishops guidance that, I quote, on account of ‘the distinctive nature of their calling, status and consecration’ the clergy ‘cannot claim the liberty to enter into sexually active homophile relationships’.

Sally’s a Lesbian active in her Church who has to deal with a lot of hassle from friends in the LGBT community because of her faith. A new report by gay rights charity Stonewall has underlined the bullying LGBT people face from those within and outside of their community. It’s estimated one in ten gay Christians face Sally’s trauma.

On Pride Sunday we think of such folk and the Christian principles that guide them and us. I hope my examples illuminate struggles we should be sympathetic to. Many of us may be in a different place but we’ve all got a duty of care especially to those who belong with us here at St Bartholomew’s.

I can’t resist a poke at Pride as a title which we know as the chief sin. Pride’s the sin that cuts you off from God on account of determined and aloof self sufficiency. LGBT pride’s opposite though isn’t humility but shame. It’s good there’s a movement of inclusion to counter such shame about the way you are which is why we rejoice with those who rejoice this Pride Weekend. Losing shame about how you are doesn’t absolve Pride’s followers from accountability for the way they live their lives, especially  for Christians, commitment to apostolic faith.

We all live in need of mercy. Our sense of our need of mercy is our strongest witness to those in our circle living without belonging, purpose, empowerment, forgiveness or direction to list qualities implied by the Lord’s prayer I mentioned two weeks ago.

As we welcome the bread of God… which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world we seek, each one of us before God’s altar this morning, a deeper sense of his mercy to serve our contribution to the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ… speaking the truth in love we must grow up in every way into him.