Sermon – 2 July 2006

If you read a newspaper printed in England, or listen to the news from the BBC, you cannot be unaware that there is a huge row going on in the worldwide Anglican Church over the appointment of Bishop Gene Robinson in the USA and the events at the recent General Convention of the American Episcopal Church. If is good to welcome friends from that church here this morning. We’ve been praying for you over the last couple of weeks.

Issues of human sexuality have been simmering just below the surface for quite some time. This week they seem to have come to the boil – open warfare seems to have broken out. Bishops are fulminating and ex-communicating one another left, right and centre. The papers and the news broadcasts are full of it –  everyone loves a row, don’t they?

 

This morning, I am not going to preach a sermon denouncing the bigotry that is being displayed in the church by bishops who should know better. I believe that ultimately making mock of tyrants is our chief weapon against corruption and abuse of power, whether we find it in civil life or sitting on a bench in the House of Lords wearing purple. However, I am not going to make mock of the hierarchy of the Church of England in my sermon this morning, however tempting that might be.

Rather, I am going to preach on one of the bible passages which comes up in our lectionary today – the story of David’s grief for Jonathan and Jonathan’s father Saul.

It is instructive to look at this passage, at this time, rather carefully indeed.

For what I want to do this morning is illustrate some of the reasons why this huge row has broken out in the church and say just a little bit about why this issue has become a fault-line in the Anglican communion.

The argument which is so violently raging about homosexuality in so very many quarters of the church is basically one about the way in which we read the bible.

It is a debate between those who would claim that the bible can be read literally as God’s word to his people today and those who want to read God’s word and interpret it amongst God’s diverse people.

The first might seem quite compelling – offering immediate answers to how we should live – usually justified with proof texts which can show us, and give us a definitive answers how we should live and move and behave. The second is more nuanced and is a little harder for it means taking the bible a good deal more seriously.

Let me illustrate this using the very controversy that we face at the moment over the question of whether an honest gay man can be ordained as a bishop. (there have, after all been plenty of gay bishops before him).

Immediately, the biblicists will announce that it is wrong because the bible says so. And they can justify it clearly with texts from Leviticus and from Romans – the argument is clear, they say – there is proof positive in the bible that homosexuality is wrong. The bible says so.

And then along comes a liberal and tries to argue with this by throwing out the example of David and Jonathan which we have this morning. Were they, after all not a same sex-couple. Were they not two men in biblical times who loved one another with a passion that rings down through the ages? Does David’s wailing grief not tell the real story.

And there are other proof texts that can get hurled in from either side.

Does this get us anywhere? Does this tell us how to live?

If the Leviticus condemns gay relationships, then I have news for you – it condemns the eating of whelks or bacon sandwiches with just as much force.

And if Paul takes an anti gay stance (something which can be questioned in itself), so too does he take a stance against women appearing without hats or speaking in public discourse.

By and large, the church, by which I mean ordinary people who come to church, not the hierarchy, the church has come to terms with modern life by using common sense and not by being brainwashed into biblicist bigotry. And that has meant thinking responsibly about all kinds of things that the bible talks about – not just silly questions such as whether you can eat whelks or not (for whelks are not kosher) but real questions –

·       can human beings own slaves? As it says you can in the bible?

·       Is divorce forbidden in all circumstances?

·       Should women and men be treated equally before the law?

·       Is contraception an option for Christians?

Even the most hard-line Bible-abusing preachers have made some accommodation on these questions.

God’s gifts to us include the divine gift of common sense.

So is the bible relevant? Yes, of course it is. My sadness is that it is often the most extreme kinds of religious people who want to study the biblical texts and look into the bible for words which will prop up their prejudices. But the moral minority cannot be allowed to steal the bible from the rest of us.

God’s majority – God’s diverse people. God’s many people must claim for themselves the right to read the word of God in their own context.

They too, thank God, will find much for their comfort.

Take this text about David and Jonathan. How shall we read it in our own context. Is this about gay relationships or isn’t it.

Well the answer is not that simple though it is clear that these two warriors loved one another very deeply.

What gives the game away to me is not the description of their love, but the effect that their love had on Saul, Jonathan’s father. He responded to David and Jonathan with blind, violent rage. His rage seems all too familiar. It seems all too familiar in a world where gay teenagers are more likely to try to harm themselves. More likely to commit suicide. More likely to be homeless. More likely to be thrown out of the family home because Saul just cannot cope with them.

David and Jonathan pose many questions to us. They continue to pose many questions to me when I meet them in the course of my work as a priest in God’s church.

It seems to me that David and Jonathan these days are to be encouraged to do the best they can to live lives of faithfulness, compassion and love. Injunctions which fall just as readily on everyone else.

And Saul. Saul is the one who needs our prayers. For he is unable to cope with human life and he lashes out with violence and rage.

Saul lives on. His violence and condemnation are sadly, alive and well in society and even more uncomfortably in the hierarchy of God’s church. [And probably in every hierarchy that there ever was].

Saul lives on, and his rage has been turned on Gene Robinson, Jeffrey John and upon countless others in the church trying to live lives worth living responding to Jesus’s call – “Come, follow me”.

David wept for his friend Jonathan. And he wept for his friend’s father who had tried to kill him.

The time has come in the church when we must pray alongside David and Jonathan and go on lamenting and praying for Saul.

I know that some of you would prefer not to read these kinds of debates in the newspapers, never mind have the Provost raise them on a Sunday morning. Yet you know what happens when good people bury their heads in the sand. You know what happens when good people choose not to know, and choose not to care. When good people turn away and walk by on the other side of the road, people get very hurt indeed.

Talking of walking on the other side of the road… last night I heard th
e beat, beat, beat of angry drumming and the toot, toot, toot of the fifes. An Orange Walk was passing by my window reminding me that not everything about Glasgow is great and glorious. My response was to slip on my shoes and hurry along to St Columba’s, our Roman Catholic neighbours. I arrived in time to join in their Vigil Mass and to share the peace with them.

I am sure, and I hope that you are thinking that life would be a lot easier if people just got on with one another. You are probably thinking that the world would be better if only people were nice to one another.

And that is true. Charity, care and compassion are pathways in this world’s labyrinth which lead us surely and certainly back to God.

Back to the God who made us each in the Divine image.

Made us carefully and lovingly.

Precious, special and named and holy.

And each one alight with the spirit. And each one blessed with God’s grace. And each one, David and Jonathan and even angry Saul are included in the circle of God’s love.

AMEN