All's well that ends. Well?

So the hoo-ha over the Lambeth Calls continues. 

Bishop after bishop, province after province have weighed in following the publication of last week’s document. My personal favourite came from the Church in Wales. At the other end of the response spectrum, Twitter has been…itself: Self-righteous and angry. 

At times it has felt like we’ve all engaged in our favourite sport of collective victimhood. 

Which is really unnecessary. There’s enough actual pain in the world right now without adding to it. 

I mean - I’m sorry - this was a f**k up, but we do kind of reveal who we are by our response to a f**k up. 

On Monday, a communique was issued: people complained that there would be two ways of responding to the calls, and neither of them involved dissent (I agree & add my name to this call; or, I think this call needs more discerning). So a third way has been added (I do not add my name to this call). 

And the drafting team (or some of them) are taking another look at the Human Dignity section and will produce another version (of which more later). 

And yet…

People still gonna be people.

Almost every response I read talks of ‘needing to know’ how the f**k up happened. Needing to have an apology. Needing for people to acknowledge the pain they have inflicted. 

Dear friends, the world is burning. People are dying in war zones. Food is too expensive to buy, and though we’re all too hot today, in a couple of months’ time, too many people will be too cold because they won’t be able to afford to heat their homes. Our political leaders refuse to do a damned thing about any of this. 

And we ‘need’ to find who got this wrong and make Lambeth 2022 about blame and division? 

There are other sections in the Lambeth Calls document that some folk really do need to read.

Let me be clear:

I’m a gay man whose life has been blighted by a Church that taught me I was a second class human being because I am a gay man. I’m a single gay man because for too many years I lived in shame for being gay. And now I will do anything I can to change our Church and to change our world so others don’t live under the burdens I had for so long - 

But being angry and nasty and negative and failing to see that other things matter and failing to play a HUGE part in solving all of those things when (come on!) we of all people understand what suffering is and we of all people know what empathy is and because (God knows) we of all people ought to care: such failure on our part is more than a travesty and a tragedy.

We’re given the keys to life, and all we can do is say:

Give me my agenda, or give me death.

Frankly, 

Who cares who f**ked up? Thank God something is being done! Look, the world is changing! You & me are (finally) not being pushed into a corner and made the eternal scapegoats. Let’s stop behaving like victims and start owning the full humanity we all so loudly say we deserve. Let’s start enjoying our humanity.

A little generosity goes a very long way - as does the occasional moment of gratitude.

We asked for action.

We are getting it.

An appropriate response might be: thank you.

Especially as - it took another day, but when the re-written version of the Lambeth Calls was published on Tuesday, it had everything we could have asked for. All the good stuff of the original (everyone is equal, diversity is godly) plus - it states a generous version of what is actually Anglican reality (see pp14-16). There is a stating of the conservative position: some places want 1998 to be eternal reality. But also - lots of people have moved on and bless us LGBTQ+ people as fully as anyone else. For the first time, Lambeth states that equal marriage is a considered, theological, Anglican reality:

Other Provinces have blessed and welcomed same sex union/marriage after careful theological reflection and a process of reception

If no-one else is saying it - I am: Thank you. I'm breaking out the champagne. Today is a good day.

And the reality is this will, after all, all be done to us again.

And again.

We know this!

So with kindness and generosity let us make friends who want to help us, not enemies who get fed up every time they know we are going to launch our next Twitter tirade. 

Because other people are also people. Fully human. Even the ones who f**k up. Just like we do.

Just like I do.

I depend upon a God who loves me and forgives me, every time I get it wrong.

My personal agenda is much less important than that love. 

Love which, it turns out, is for everyone. 

Bishops and archbishops included.