A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 12, 2023 by Revd Dr Clare Herbert
Once, working here at St Martin in the Fields, I lived on Sydenham Hill. A major advantage of living there, was the beauty of Dulwich woods which we overlooked. But serious drawback was that a very steep slope met me on all sides. Particularly, leading to my most convenient station into town there was a long steep path, not favoured by women after dark, because it was edged by a high fence on one side and deep woods on the other, and attacks had taken place from time to time.
One night I was leading an evening service here. It had snowed and frozen over that week, and I had left it a bit late to leave the house. By a quarter of my way down the hill I was both slipping and alone on a dark path. By halfway down the hill, I was fearful. Coming up towards me was a tall muscular young man wearing a hoody and carrying something in his black gloved hands. I slithered on feeling the sweat of nervousness rise on the back of my neck. As we got nearer each other he seemed to lunge forwards to meet me – I took a gasp and thought that’s it! He pulled back his hood revealing a wide toothed smile, and said – you ok sister? looks like you are slipping a bit. Can I help you down to the bottom of the hill?
You should have seen the pair of us – like a soft shoe shuffle, arm in arm, he was much taller than me so it was a bit awkward, sliding down the hill, but we made it. When I thanked him, he said no worries miss – you’re a bit like me mum when it comes to snow.
How we project onto others our deepest suspicions and insecurities, letting them gather around groups in society whom we consequently fear, and try to exclude from our day-to-day life. You’re a bit like me mum – He had projected mumsy-ness and vulnerability on to me – I had seen him only as male, young, hidden, and therefore deeply menacing. He was not dangerous in any way, but I had projected threat onto him and by the time he reached me was almost sick with fear.
One of the reasons that Jesus was killed was that he acted as a scapegoat – one who carries the burden of being a disrupter of society’s norms.
The very Passover he decided to walk into and challenge Jerusalem, the religious authorities were looking for a criminal to die for the people, rather than Rome punish them all, for their violent uprisings. They had their eye on Barabbas – he would do – but this prophet Jesus whose popularity had irked them for so long, was an even better fit. He could easily be killed off, and their grip on things re-established, if they could but nab him on the quiet.
As our friend and theologian James Alison has so ably shown us, Jesus not only acted as a scapegoat, but he also continually pointed out to the religious leaders who circled around him that their images of God and their understanding of God’s will with its harsh purity codes and financial demands was actively creating disrupters and scapegoats on a massive scale! – adulterers, Samaritans, lepers, ill people generally, widows, the poor, shepherds, women – they were all treated as lesser beings, useful as such, but to be kept outside the power structures of family and village and synagogue and temple. Jesus came striding through all this, touching in all this, speaking in the middle of all this gathering in not separating out.
On a criminal’s Cross, outside the city’s walls, before the Sabbath begins, this innocent One is nailed on trumped up charges by a paid rabble and a frightened governor, and in that moment shows up the scapegoat system for what it is – evil, to be lived beyond, if our society is ever to become just.
We all know that queer folk people have been scapegoated for their living personification of apparently aberrant sexual behaviour on the one hand, or their non-binary gender identity on the other, for a very long time. Political parties tend to scapegoat others for their problems when they are insecure, desperate to win the populist vote – thus Mrs Thatcher with Clause 28, and Rishi Sunak with his “common-sense view” of gender and sexuality. And notice how both these political leaders were very skilled at reversing the order of who is being victimised! Somehow, in their impassioned speeches it’s the victims of homophobia and transphobia who are doing the bullying! Clever stuff, it’s the other way around – it is we who are being bullied.
And the same thing happens in times of stress in the Church of England – unable to hold together as a global communion due to complex factors to do with missionary identity and colonialism; unable to accept and face the enormous strides made in biblical hermeneutics over the last century; unable to put a priest in every parish; insecure, some church leaders and members both lay and ordained may fasten on a group of people they consider godless to blame and scapegoat for the changing landscape of their society and church.
This scapegoating is painful to bear, when all I desire is equality of regard within the church, and to have the holiness of my most vital relationship recognised, supported, and celebrated as marriage. I don’t want to simply “fit in quietly”, hiding and silencing vital parts of myself to do so. I want authentic belonging, for us all to experience authentic belonging within the Church, in all our wondrous diversity, moral courage, integrity, strength and vulnerability. Is that so much to ask?
Jesus said to his would-be disciples – Come and See.
So how does our faith in that Jesus help us when we are living through a time like this in the Church? It helps by placing us in the stream of truth and love which is God, known in Jesus of Nazareth, and experienced by us in the Spirit, who tells us that we and our relationships are signs of the way God wants our becoming, our development, our joy, our fulfilment, our growing in self-giving love.
It helps us be clear that nothing short of the sacrament of marriage will do as the description and public acknowledgement of the holiness of our long-term faithful intimate relationships. Though the new public prayers of blessing are of course a small step forwards, in challenging homophobia. nevertheless, to not acknowledge for same sex couples’ equality with heterosexual marriage is to continue the injurious history of treating our relationships as somehow lesser, and so furtively perhaps even unknowingly supporting the silence and imagined otherness of us. And that othering of us nurtures the seeds of continued violence and discrimination.
Thank Goodness, though, our faith in Christ helps us to see how God’s Spirit of holiness works outside the institutions of religion to bring compassion, tolerance and freedom, where non-religious people do not harness themselves up to the arrogant pretence of apparently knowing and declaring what is universally right for all people. They live trans lives with integrity. They marry in openness and joy, and their freedom and love will one day bring about just change, even in the Church.
But lastly and more painfully, yet joyfully too, all at the same time, our faith energises us not to become bitter, or to victimise those who oppress us. It offers us the image of the invisible God, the first fruits of all creation, seen in the rejected stone which became the Cornerstone. The way which we follow is His way and it is one of humility, love and above all understanding, wherever we encounter difference – to quote Alison again, we move forwards with hearts close to breaking. And as Malcolm Johnson once said in a never to be forgotten by me Good Friday address “We, as followers of Christ, must let the buck of hatred and persecution stop with us – not pass it on”.
My partner is a Quaker and one of the joys of my retirement is to discover, with her, the freedom I sense as I walk into a Friends meeting house – the Society of Friends recognised same-sex relationships as marriage even before the equal same sex marriage Act became law in this country. I retain my priesthood in the Church of England and celebrate locally, but it is among the Society of Friends that I encounter my own authentic belonging.
There she and I recently co-convened a meeting to discuss the changing language involved in describing sexual orientation and gender identity. One person who came, visibly moved, said at the end: “thank you, for allowing me to drop my mask” another said – thank you for creating this safe space. It doesn’t feel very safe to be who I am out there.”
God is coming out, in honesty, compassion, diversity and love. It’s about time the Church of England became less afraid of God. After all it is the stone which the builders rejected that has become the chief Cornerstone. This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvellous in our eyes.
