Living with Contrary Convictions- an exploration in grace…

In July 2021, the Methodist Church received a report entitled God in Love Unites Us and voted on several resolutions, it was a substantial piece of work sent out for consultation in 2019, and led by the Marriage and Relationships Task Group, which was drawn from people with a wide variety of theological stances and experiences.

At the Conference in July 2021 one of the resolutions that was passed was that Methodist Churches in England and Wales may apply to register their buildings for same-sex marriage from Monday 20 September 2021. Some did so immediately having hoped and anticipated the outcome of the report and prepared well in advance, others did not and will not due to their own, and their minister convictions. We are living with difference. Living with contrary convictions. It is not easy, it never has been, but this is the choice that the Conference made.

Since that point there have been a number of marriages of same sex couples conducted and celebrated in our churches, I have been privileged to participate in offering both marriage and blessings for those seeking this. All of the churches I currently serve are registered to celebrate marriage for all people, it was something that was important to me when I moved Circuits last summer, not necessarily that the churches had already registered, but that there would be acceptance and affirmation not only for me but for anyone from the LGBTQI+ community seeking marriage or just a safe place to worship. I need to be safe too, because I have not always felt safe, recently, particularly through the God in Love Unites Us conversations ( more debates really) when it felt as if my very being was being assaulted. It will be so good not to be an item for debate.

But. I digress, I offer the above as a background to an experience. Not too long ago I was challenged by someone before a worship service, they stated that the Methodist Church was heretical, and would not grow because it accepted and nurtured and even offered marriage to the LGBTQI+ community. There were other circumstances which I won’t go into that led to his challenge, but enough to say that just before a worship service, which was a service where communion was to be offered, it left me shaken. I pulled myself together as best I could, but was still shaking when it came to the time to offer the sermon, I felt undone and exposed in that place.

I did make it through the sermon ( apparently it was powerful!- God works in mysterious ways), and went on to the intercession and so to the communion. I am pretty low church in my theology of the eucharist, I do believe in the real presence of Christ through the elements, but struggle t see them as more than symbols, for me it is the space that the coming and receiving at Christ’s invitation creates that imbues it with holiness. That said as I said to a friend yesterday, there are times when I have to consume the elements that are left at the end of the service, and that too is a God thing.

So, here I am a Methodist Minister, a queer Methodist Minister, offering an invitation to what I firmly believe is an open table, any who come are welcome, any who wish to receive can receive, including children, for who of us really understands what we are doing, other than responding to a story of ultimate, unconditional, love once again, and if ultimate, unconditional, love cannot be for all, then it is neither ultimate nor unconditional.

In Wesleyan thinking:

• All need to be saved
• All can be saved
• All can know they are saved
• All can be saved to the uttermost

Note the word ALL, none are excluded, and John Wesley described communion as a converting ordinance.

“All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome” in this place we sang; in that moment I knew that there was more that united us than divided us, while I knew my views, and could back them up theologically, this was not the place for division but the place for unity, unity does not mean conformity, nor does it mean agreement. The dictionary defines it as the state of being united or joined as a whole. Here at the table, with various understandings and depths of understanding we are joined, joined in the Christ who welcomes each one. It was both a humbling place, a levelling place and a hard place to be. By grace, by the grace I know as it includes me we are one, for this I remember the baptism liturgy which contains the wonderful words “all this for you, before you could know anything of it” – these follow an account of the work of Christ, coming among us, living, ministering, dying and rising, and all points to the God who goes before us. This is prevenient grace, it is an enabling grace which helps to believe.

I need the God who goes before me and continually opens my understanding of Godself, in that I have moved from using exclusively male terminology for God, to using both male, female and other ways of naming them, counsellor, source of my being, lover, friend, guide, creator, and more. It is in this grace that I finally came to know and love myself, a long journey that is still ongoing in so many ways. In his book Black Sheep and Prodigals, Dave Tomlinson says:

God…. will not be boxed in by our stereotypical familiar notions, or pinned down by rigid doctrines and creeds. God is continually appearing where we least expect- Gotcha! (pg 130)

“Gotcha”, God whispered to me, as I broke bread that morning, all means all, a slogan I often hear used when speaking with the LGBTQI community, and so I shared bread with my challenger. That does not mean to say that I was not shaken, nor hurt, it took me the rest of the day to recover from shaking, and I shared the experience with others who have care for me. I will continue to work for an open table where all are truly helping, and I know of the deep wounds that have been inflicted on those who have had their humanity challenged and too often been excluded.

We live in a world where it is not safe to identify as Gay ( or anywhere else in our rainbow expression), a world where hurts are not simply verbal, but can end in beatings, death threats, and even is some cases the death penalty being the punishment for being out and proud. We live in a world where censorship is once again being applied to literature and legislation, it is deeply troubling to hear of what is happening in the USA at the moment, particularly in Texas and Florida.

In offering bread I was not dismissing or minimising my pain, nor would I want to minimise anyone else’s