head banging

I was at a meeting recently. One of those meetings where a gay person is invited to 'try to explain' how the church might change.

We'd been talking for a while, when the guy who was in charge said something that I presumed was an innocent mistake - the kind of theological comment that unthinkingly reduces gay people to something less than full humanity. So I stepped in and did a bit of explaining as to why I got what he was saying, but perhaps it might be useful to understand how that actually affects LGBTQI+ people.

When I stopped, the guy in charge looked over at someone else and said - 'Hmm. Perhaps we ought to try and find some queer theology on this.'

I wondered what he thought I'd been offering. I wondered if he'd heard anything I'd said. I wondered if it would have helped if I'd run up a rainbow flag or played disco music while I spoke. It felt like banging my head against a brick wall, because clearly nothing was going to change as a result of that meeting that day.

And then a few days later I was chatting with my good friend Stanley Underhill. Stanley, in his 90s, is a retired Anglican priest who recently published the story of his life as a closeted gay man. It is a horrific look at what people of his generation had to face. He has a terrific video of a conversation about the book which is well worth 50 minutes of anybody's time. He and I spoke together for a feature in the Church Times last February.

Time with Stanley reminds me of the grace of being forty years his junior.

And then last week I received a letter from a retired priest in his late seventies, telling me his story. Not even immediate members of his family know that he is gay. Just a very few close friends.

And suddenly I felt the enormous privilege of being in rooms where I can bang my head against walls from the inside.

This is not a battle to be won, a fight where there is a winning side. This is a story of the people of God becoming more fully the people of God. In the body of Christ, when one part is wounded, the whole body is sick. For LGBTQI+ Christians to be wounded, less, not accepted, seen as a problem, needing to try to explain why we should be in the same room on the same terms as anyone else, the whole body is sick. When we get this right - everybody becomes more fully the people of God. Everybody gets better. Nobody loses.

Time was, Stanley and the chap who wrote to me last week didn't get to be in this room - the room where I get so frustrated I want to bang my head against the wall. But here I am. And so are others. So many amazing others - people I know and love like Jayne Ozanne and people I've never met but admire enormously like Vicky Beeching. And I guess listening to the voices of those older than me reminds me that I am not here for fun; I am here because I am called to listen and to speak and to love and to stay around and to use all the bandages my poor bleeding head needs because if I do so -

Then I too play my small part in making sure that those who are a generation younger than all of us may never know a time when we had to try to explain how the church might change.

Trystan Owain Hughes puts this sentiment beautifully in his blog as he reflects on the fire at Notre Dame. There is a struggle to reconcile the speed with which money is given to fix a building while the world's greater problems are left uncared for. Those younger than those splashing their cash around look on with blank incomprehension. But surely we don't walk away from the old order that makes so many mistakes: we hold its hand and show that we care too. And that caring is exactly why those who give so freely to stones and glass should also help with the planet's essential needs. Trystan imagines speaking to his grandchildren, saying: 

“Yes, we rebuilt the wonderful Notre Dame for you, so you can visit to be filled with the grandeur of God’s glory. But we also did much, much more to show you the meaning of Easter Sunday and the resurrection. We fed the hungry, we freed the oppressed, we defeated racism, xenophobia, and all forms of discrimination and hatred, we brought comfort and hope to those who mourn, we offered peace to those who suffer, we gifted good news to those who feel despairing and hopeless, and we lived out the Easter promise of new life for all creation… and so we left for you clean seas full of fish not plastic, clean air for you to breathe, clean water for you to drink, and green and healthy forests brimming with foliage, animals, insects and birds.”

There seems to be something of this sentiment in the ether at the moment. US Democratic Presidential hopeful Pete Buttigieg expresses his faith in these terms: "Scripture is about protecting the stranger, and the prisoner, and the poor person, and that idea of welcome. That's what I get in the Gospel when I'm in church." It's not about me, it's not about winning - it's about humility and it's about the whole community of faith. There has to be a raising up of everyone or no-one is raised up.

I don't know that Trystan will see his arguments prevail over money around Notre Dame - though it would be wonderful. I don't know that Mayor Pete will prevail in the long road to 2020's US election - though I'll be amongst those rejoicing if so. 

I do know that the hope that underlies both is exactly the hope that sometimes gets dented but which always brings me back to another room, another conversation, another attempt to make a difference. 
I guess my head can take it.

Romans 8.24-5:

For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not have, we wait for it patiently.