by Canon Richard Lamey, Area Dean of Sonning and on Diocese of Oxford’s Bishop’s Council
I am the incumbent of a market-town parish in Berkshire. A young man who joined the congregation about four years ago stepped forward to be confirmed this year. When we met to think about preparation, and talked about why he was wanting to be confirmed now, he shared with me that his discovering of God was part of his journey as a trans man.
He told me that he had not grown up going to Church but something had drawn him into a Church building as he discovered who he was. He thought about it a lot, and became convinced that if God was and God was real, then everything was connected and God loved him as he was. He started coming to services at St Paul’s and felt welcomed, included and loved- and that sense of community and inclusion made him open his Bible and learn more about Jesus, and then go on to wanting to be confirmed.
I was grateful and humbled that he trusted me with these conversations, but I was also struck by the realisation that everything we had said over the last four years in church around human sexuality and personal identity had been heard by him in a very personal, specific and profound way. Could this church be trusted? Was it a safe place? He had found God- or God had found him- but did he need the Church as well?
He particularly thanked me for putting Pride flags at the back of church for people to take home around Pride weekend over the last two years. At the time, I remember being disappointed that more hadn’t been taken and wondering why we had bothered. Now I know that it made him feel welcome and cared for, even though we didn’t know we were serving a member of our own congregation.
It was a reminder that churches are called, in Lent and every season, to live lives of the same integrity and truth as we do as individual disciples. Collectively living out what we believe and what we are called to do, whether people are watching or not.
I am not sure that we have said enough about God’s radical inclusion, welcome and love in church – I am not sure if we ever could – but I am pleased that we said something about the height, depth and length of God’s love in Jesus Christ for all creation and for every single person. I am pleased that I went on the local Pride march and was proud myself to be photographed for the local paper. I am pleased that we have a statement of universal welcome in our church porch and in our noticesheet, every week. I am pleased that people in same-sex relationships hold and have held elected office in the parish and sit on the PCC.
Speaking with my parishioner, I was glad we had done something, glad we had done enough to make him feel that this was a family he wanted to be part of, glad that he felt safe enough to share his journey of faith with me. We had welcomed him enough to let him keep finding God, the God who made him, and loves him, and delights in him, and in us all. Furthermore, through our welcome and deepening friendship, we have found more of God’s love together. We have come to see Jesus’ face more clearly.
For all the times I have offered a blessing to the congregation, it felt that I was the one being richly blessed in this conversation. I learned that one of God’s precious and unique children had been starving and we had fed them without even knowing they were hungry.
This precious conversation is a reminder of how easy it is to get this wrong, but also how easy it is to get it right, by striving to be the Church we are called to be and by not always shying away from difficult conversations, by simply being the community we are called to be, the community the Holy Spirit is bringing to life. And what is true of our individual church might, perhaps, wonderfully, become true of the whole Church of England if we remember that we are always talking about ourselves and not about others, about us and not them, about the people of God who Jesus loves fully and without reservation and not a problem to be solved or cured.
Any thoughts?