DIETRICH BONHOEFFER wrote during the Second World War: “Choose and do what is right, not what fancy takes, not waiting the possibilities, but bravely grasping the real. Not in the flight of ideas but only in action is their freedom. Come away from your anxious hesitations into the storm of events, carried by God’s command and your faith alone. Then freedom will embrace your spirit with rejoicing. Come away from your anxious hesitations into the storm of events.”
And, from the letter to the Ephesians this morning, “Speaking the truth in love, grow up in every way into Christ.”
I’m going to take one particular example of the storm of events and preach on this scripture in particular, because all of our neighbouring parishes will have read this same scripture this morning. In every Church of England church, this letter to the Ephesians is being read over these weeks.
There has been a service held at a church not far from here which has effectively set up its own recruitment, training, and commissioning — although they plan for it to be ordination — of men to lead churches who will resist the Church of England’s recent decision to bless same-sex relationships [News, Comment, 2 August].
I watched the video that has been released by the Rector of St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, in the City of London, three miles east from here: the church that hosted the service, which was supported and attended by our next-door parish of All Souls’, Langham Place, one mile north from here, and also by Holy Trinity, Brompton, a church two miles west from here, the founders of the worldwide phenomenon that is the Alpha course.
In the whole of the video, the words “sexuality” and “gender” are not mentioned. But it is on the basis that women must not lead (adhering to the headship principle in the New Testament), and that the blessing of relationships between people of the same sex is now allowed by the Church of England, that this breakaway system has been set up.
This may seem as if it is the Church talking to itself; perhaps it is. But, in spending just a little time understanding what has just happened, and spending time with the scripture for this morning, we cannot, we must not, remain politely silent in the face of this.
St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, is well-funded, and has, as the Rector says, about 1200 members online and in person, a large proportion of whom are under 40. Our immediate neighbours, All Souls’, Langham Place, and Holy Trinity, Brompton, as part of this new coalition, say that the Bishops, in allowing the blessing of same-sex couples, albeit in restricted circumstances at the moment, have betrayed what they would say is biblical teaching, to the extent that they’re now fighting for the soul of the Church of England — not by leaving, but by setting up their own recruitment and training processes, and placing these leaders in the church-plants that they already have, effectively forming a new Province within the Church of England that will conform to the headship principle with regard to gender, and will not permit the blessing of same-sex relationships.
The Rector’s video sets out the future as he sees it, which is that generations of men will be commissioned and, in future, ordained to grow these church communities, and, along the way, ensure that no LGBTQ+ relationships are blessed or affirmed. He confirms that his church, and some of the other churches involved, have now withdrawn their financial contribution to the diocese of London, and urges supporters to send funds to St Helen’s, to make this structure stronger and resilient for long into the future.
WELL, you may say, “So what? Let them.” Church politics is anything from tedious to irrelevant in a society in which many people walk away from the Church. I’m afraid that, in this circumstance, this cannot do.
This isn’t about “disagreeing well”, as the phrase goes, a principle that the Church of England is committed to. This is embedding in church structures afresh a determination to build church communities that many people will find crushing and debilitating. It is embedding in church structures, under the label of being traditional, an inequality and injustice that, I want to suggest, in the light of the letter to the Ephesians, is contrary to the gifts of the Spirit, and this will be done, is being done, in the name of the Church to which you and I belong.
Well, you may say again, “So what?” The Church, especially the Church of England, has a highly compromised past and present; after all, it is only one generation, 30 years, since the ordination of women was allowed at all; St James’s, Piccadilly, was built, almost certainly, in part with funds from the transatlantic chattel slave trade in the 17th century; and it is only in the past year that the Church of England has said that it is possible to bless relationships between people of the same gender. It is a human institution, you may say, and, if I don’t agree, I’ll just ignore it; I’ll go to St James’s, or St Martin-in-the-Fields, or another church where I like what they say, and we’ll do our own thing.
In the light of this scripture, gathered here today, I’m afraid that this also cannot do. All church endeavours take risks; but I don’t think that the greatest risk is that the institution disappears. We’re not in the business of self-preservation for its own sake; I don’t read that in the Gospels.
I want to suggest that the greatest risk is that churches become communities of the homogeneous and comfortable, convinced that we are right about everything, which looks like strength; and quite often — because it feels nice, honestly, to be with people who are certain about things — lots of people come. The greatest risk-building any of our churches take is that it becomes a rigorously controlled set of codes of behaviour where real mistakes — dare I say it, sin — or real differences of humanity, such as the lived experience of people who are gay, are met with certainty that Jesus is on our side, and Jesus says “No.”
I WANT to be part of a Church that is the gathering of the shaken-to-our-core at the harm that we have caused, and continue to cause, people and the planet; the distress and despair that we have engendered by historic teaching regarding, for example, women, who are the majority of humanity; people of colour, who are the majority of humanity; and people in the minority who find themselves outside the parameters of the majority heterosexuality.
With the gut-wrenching compassion of Christ, at the heart of our faith is a pattern for our living and dying that is shot through with a conviction that our interpretation of Christ’s life has, in some cases, been wrong; and a return to, a reassertion of, this historic prejudice is, I want to suggest, neither biblical nor faithful. This is not about identity politics, nor is it about church politics: it is a struggle over fundamental Christian teaching and belief about the nature of love, the exercise of power, and the use of money.
St James’s, PiccadillyThe Revd Lucy Winkett
Before God, we are equal; we’re created, blessed, forgiven equally, without exception, including, of course, all the many people who belong to those beloved parishes. Being faithful to this scripture means that we are called to grow up in faith when we see that we are now understanding more and more about the variety of human beings whom God has made. Our simplistic binaries won’t do any more. Christians are learning, along with everyone else, the glorious variety of God’s creation.
The reason we can’t let this go unchallenged, then, is that this new system in our Church is intent on building church communities that, among all the good that they will undoubtedly do, will perpetuate the hidden suffering of millions of people who have lived and died because of the preaching of the Church, believing that something is fundamentally wrong with the way they have been made.
This goes way beyond a parish payment to a diocese, or a video challenging a bishop. It is the lived experience of many of you here who sit in church, wanting to pray, wanting to connect with God, hoping against hope that the preacher won’t say something devastating. And I repeat: this is about the majority of humanity — women — as well as a minority of humanity: people who identify as LGBTQ+.
AND, in the mean time, we cannot let St James’s remain precarious, so that we’re living hand to mouth, coping in unsuitable buildings, keeping our church alive, creative, and active just about, because we don’t take seriously what it costs to keep this place open and safe every day, and run the inclusive programmes with the energy and commitment it takes to keep going in such challenging times.
I want to suggest that, if we do not find a way to embed and strengthen the values of inclusive Christianity in the transformation represented by our Wren Project, or the partnership with St Pancras’s, Euston Road, amplifying the voice of Inclusive Church, or joint working across earth justice or interfaith partners; if we don’t find a way, we will have been guilty of the most terrible complacency in our generation, where prejudice and division grows and embeds, not only in the violence of the streets, but in the character of our Church.
Many of you here — and I have, over the years — will have had many reasons to give up on the Church. The influence of the Church is diminished in society, and some of you might think that is quite a good thing, given all that has happened in the past. Many of you know that my own journey over the past decades has meant that I have, many times, hung on by my fingernails. But, somehow, I believe in the messy, diverse, and compromised collection of communities that will always want to try again together, as we follow Christ, as we imagine the world to be different, as we act to make it so, and pray without ceasing for the life of this hurting world.
I am not asking you to agree with everything that I have said, and the pulpit is not always the place for such strong words about a particular circumstance. But I am saying, for myself, as your priest, and as a leader in the Church, that we, as a Church, must not allow this misinterpretation of scripture to stand: that will not let women lead, or that, whatever language it is couched in, condemns to isolation people who fall in love with someone of the same gender.
Every Christian, every preacher, is susceptible to making mistakes; it’s part of the danger of taking risks in faith — and the thrill of it, too. But I beg the Christians who are attending those churches, who, as they have said themselves, are happy because they are embedding a recruitment, training, and deployment process that, well-funded as it is, they pray will become the Church itself; I beg you, in the words of the English Civil War leaders who contemplated the violence before them, “I beseech you in the bowels of Christ to think it possible you may be wrong.”
A FINAL word here. In all the noise and divisiveness that swells around, in the grief and rage of a violent and fearful society, in the light of the atrocities in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and many other suffering places of the world, our calling as a Church is not to shallow optimism, or, indeed, toxic positivity. But it is to joy — the sort of broken-hearted joy that is found in the heart of God and at the heart of all creation.
Our calling as a Church in troubled times is to the joy that knows the despair of loneliness and isolation, the humiliation of crucifixion; a joy that has faced the dereliction of the desert where no prayer makes any sense, where there is nowhere to go and nowhere to be. The joy in a human life, irrigated by the Spirit of God that never denies or evades the grief that comes with growing up as an adult in the world, but faces it, inhabits it, learns how to lament, and is ready to celebrate always.
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit; it is communal, resolute, and has to be guarded and protected. This sort of joy is found here at the altar of both grief and celebration — joy that is irreducible and undefeated. And it is this joy, expressed in being alive in this moment: joy in the love of life, love of God, and love of each other — and the privilege of being the Church in this generation — it is this joy and grace that alone will heal, forgive, and set all of us — all of us — free. Amen.
The Revd Lucy Winkett is the Rector of St James’s, Piccadilly, and Priest-in-Charge of St Pancras’s, Euston Road, in London. This is an edited extract from a sermon preached for the Tenth Sunday after Trinity (4 August) in St James’s, on Ephesians 4.14-15.