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

Rusper & Cuckfield (15th of Year) Luke 10.25-37 14th July 2019

It’s hard to love.

This morning (evening)’s readings set out the vision, task and equipment for love found in Jesus Christ. 

The first reading sets out something of the vision, the Good Samaritan reading the task and the second reading how you get equipped for the task of love.

Let’s start with the vision of love in Moses’s farewell discourse in Deuteronomy 30:9-14 set for our first reading. It refers to obeying the Lord your God by observing his commandments and decrees that are written in [the] book of the law but goes on to announce a new facet of such visionary obedience. Like Jeremiah, who prophesied near the time of the writer up of Moses’s discourse, we’re told of law beyond the Ten Commandments written on stone. The law of love is something that seeks to be written on the heart. The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe. This thought or vision of love, last line of today’s Old Testament reading, is pointer to the enactment of love set forth in today’s Gospel. 

There are few bible passages as familiar as Luke 10:25-37. In the story of the Good Samaritan we need to know that touching a corpse led to ritual defilement so that the priest and Levite were doing right by the ritual law. The Samaritan who wasn’t a Jew followed a higher law, that of love. His action illustrates love as a task. It’s not just benevolence let alone tolerance but doing concrete acts for people in concrete need. Our Lord turns the lawyer’s question who is my neighbour? back on him by the question which of these three was a neighbour, or in another translation, proved neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers? 

Loving your neighbour in Jesus’s book doesn’t mean loving some but not loving others. It means loving all, good and bad. This teaching was acted out when Jesus died outside the walls of Jerusalem. The Christian vision of love links to a God of love who acts concretely to serve and save outsiders so that Jesus Christ’s last conversation was with the thieves crucified with him outside Jerusalem. To the generous one he said words we all hope to hear on our deathbed. Today you will be with me in paradise. Luke 23:43

I must leave you to work out in your own situation the relevance of today’s scripture to the xenophobia evident in our nation through the Brexit debate. 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? On the issue of Islamophobia I can’t understand how people can deride people of Muslim belief without whose courteous service the NHS in Sussex would collapse. 

We want a society that doesn’t just tolerate difference but which respects those who’re different. As Christians we’re also nowadays among those who’re different. We are also losing respect in society. Once or twice I’ve had to say to someone ‘Whilst I respect your views, I am intolerant of your intolerance of my views’. [Badges from Ian Hislop’s I Dissent exhibition 2018-9]

Building respect is costly in time and trouble. It refuses to pass by on the other side, especially when it comes to the disadvantaged. The Samaritan exemplifies this in the concrete tasks he took on. When he saw him, he was moved with pity. Then, from the heart’s motivation, followed these concrete tasks. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, having poured oil and wine on them. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, “Take care of him; and when I come back, I will repay you whatever more you spend.”  

The vision, the task, and thirdly the equipment for love. The first reading set out the vision, the Good Samaritan Gospel reading shows us the task now we look at the second reading which touches on how we get equipped for the task of love.

Paul writes to the Christians in Colossae of his prayer that they be filled with the knowledge of God’s will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding   to lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as they bear fruit in every good work and… grow in the knowledge of God. He adds May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and… be prepared to endure everything with patience. (Colossians 1:9-11). The vision of love leads us into the task of love, that is, good works, that require the strength that comes from God’s glorious power that serve endurance.  

We come to Church to join the angels, as the Glory to God and Holy, holy, holy chants affirm, in looking forward to the certainty of heaven. Our Sunday celebrations lift us up beyond the changes and chances of life, the hardships we bear in love, to the certain, all embracing love of God that will be ours in heaven with the angels and saints. In so doing the Eucharists we celebrate bathe us in heavenly love.

We come to Church primarily to worship God but through word and sacrament, prayer and fellowship we are also edified, built up, equipped. Church is a temple more than a place of edification but it is both. When we hear the word, offer ourselves in Christ’s Sacrifice and receive his body and blood we are better equipped to love. The Holy Spirit comes again and again in prayer and worship. 

Through reading the Bible day by day we’re further strengthened because there’s no word of God without power. To experience such empowerment we need to know our Bibles, to be familiar with the promises of God, bringing these to bear in the situations we face day by day. That last sentence of our second reading is awesome if you can see it addressed to you personally and put it in the singular. He has rescued me from the power of darkness and transferred me into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom I have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. The darkness that descends upon us periodically in life loses its power for one confident they can never be taken out of Christ’s kingdom and love. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and staff they comfort me. Psalm 23:4

It’s hard to love – in our own strength. It’s hard to persevere through tribulations small or great. The readings today set out the vision, task and equipment for love found in Jesus Christ. They awaken us to God’s vision of what it is to love, far more than the Ten Commandments inscribed on church walls, a vision to be written on our hearts. The Gospel reminds us of the task of love and how respect triumphs over tolerance in Christianity. Lastly we’re reminded how the commandment to love brings with it love’s supply in abundance through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.