coming out from patriarchy: beyond 'the line' and 'the box'

I was invited by a neighbouring parish to kick off their service series exploring their commitment to being an Inclusive Church, with a sermon on gender & sexuality. Here's the text and images that I used this morning.

Readings: Genesis 16; Mark 14:1-9

I vividly remember the birth of my first child. The overwhelming joy, of course, of seeing for the first time a living, breathing, new-born baby. A love deeper than anything I’d ever felt, for the tiny, fragile human being I got to hold in my arms. But also something of those hours before the birth. Of a long, at times stressful labour, where our baby’s heart-rate kept on dropping every time my wife pushed. And, among many, many things about that 24 hours or so, I remember being on the edges of the action: a ‘bit-part’ at best, irrelevant to the outcome, other than in a minor supporting role, offering encouragement from the sidelines.

And my first observation, in this sermon about gender, sexuality and inclusive church, is that for some of us, that experience of ‘being on the edges’ is not an everyday experience.

Let me identify myself. I am white, English, middle-class, (relatively) affluent, non-disabled (mostly), straight (mostly), male, and – this last one might be an unfamiliar word to some of you – cis-gendered. That means that the gender I identify with now is what I was assigned at birth. So look: I tick all the boxes.

So what I can’t do, in this sermon, is share first-hand experience of being a woman, or LGBTQI+ (because I’m not). And I’m not going to give you a detailed, biblically-rooted defence of blessing same-sex marriages, for example; nor am I here to facilitate a conversation that gives space to carefully and safely listen to each other, ensuring all voices are heard. Both of those are very possible, and worthwhile, but that’s not what this space is for right now.

What I can do, here and now, is turn the spotlight around, and shine it on some of the structures and assumptions, in the world and in the church, that do so much harm not just to those who are marginalised and excluded, but to all of us. And I can try to help us listen for God’s call to conversion, for God’s invitation – to each and every one of us – to break down the barriers which divide and exclude, and to enter more deeply into fullness of life for all.

But why me? Why is someone who ticks all these boxes kicking off this series on inclusive church for you? Well, do you know what? I did an internet search for images of a ‘shrug’, and guess what I found?

These are the first four images that came up… and what do they all have in common?! Yes…!

The world is set up to be as easy as possible for people like me. For people like me to see people like me everywhere we look. That’s my second observation. And there’s more.

We’ve all been trained to pretend that it isn’t really like that. That it’s just normal.

This is by a brilliant internet site called ‘man who has it all’. It’s brilliant because it flips our normal gender rules on their head and it says out loud the bits that normally go unsaid. And it helps us begin to see how ridiculous some of the unspoken assumptions are.

And there’s more…

What do the last four Archbishops of Canterbury have in common (and indeed all of their predecessors)…?! 

The church – our Church of England – is just as bad on this stuff, and often quite a lot worse.

So when we think about being an ‘Inclusive Church’, it’s natural to start by thinking about who we think needs ‘including’. But I want to invite you to think about some subtly different questions: where do we think God is? And who do we think God is with? And who, and where, are we?

Ben Wildflower, 'Magnificat'

Let’s let Mary’s Magnificat be our guide: ‘he has put down the mighty from their seat, and exalted the humble and meek; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty’. This is where God is: with those who are hungry for justice, with the ground-down who are longing to be lifted up. Which means we have different callings, depending on who and where we are:

“Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we were born into struggle, we are charged with claiming our dignity, joy, and liberation.” (adrienne maree brown)

So when we’re thinking about being an ‘Inclusive Church’, this isn’t about us here deciding whether we want to be lovely and kind to those poor, excluded people.

It means believing that God is there: with the oppressed, the excluded and those who have been rejected by society, and, often, by the church ourselves. Because as Jesus himself told us, the stone that the builders rejected, becomes the cornerstone of God’s kin-dom.

Which brings us, by a roundabout route, back to gender and sexuality. Because underneath the church’s rejections, of women and LGBTQI+ folks, is a way of seeing the world, a way of structuring the world. I want us to think today about two kinds of structure: one is a line, the other is a box.

The line is a way of seeing the world that’s powerful, and has deep roots. It splits the world in two, separating it into binaries: body/mind, earth/spirit, chaos/order, dark/light, soft/hard, weak/strong, passive/active, silence/word… female/male…

And the line hasn’t just divided the world into two equal halves. It’s told us that the things on the right are more important, more powerful, more God-like… than the things on the left. The line has made a world of hierarchies, domination, control: a world of property and owners.

And that has, ultimately, been very bad news for all of us.

So how might we see the world differently?

Charlotte Gibson, 'Hagar'

The story of Hagar, that we’ve heard this morning, isn’t a simple answer to that question. For those who imagine there’s such a thing as ‘biblical marriage’, here we have Abraham the patriarch, and in the ‘big story’, the main purpose of Abraham’s women (yes, women plural) is to produce him a son. That sets up competition and conflict between the women – Sarah and Hagar – because Hagar (the enslaved foreigner) is fertile, and Sarah (the wife) apparently isn’t. Sarah has a choice here: use the little privilege she has as power over Hagar, or opt for a radical, rebellious solidarity in sisterhood. Tragically, she chooses power and abuse – and Hagar runs away. Even more tragically, God in this story tells Hagar to go back to the place of enslavement and abuse – a distant echo of a tragic story repeated in many Christian communities even today. We should be profoundly troubled by this story, and the violence and harm it has wreaked over the centuries.

We’ve seen ‘the line’ in action, in this story: centering the man’s needs, treating women as property, stoking competition, legitimising abuse. But it’s not the only story that this passage tells. There’s another story, where Hagar is centre-stage, and Abraham is nowhere to be seen…

While Hagar is on the run, God meets her. God sees her. God speaks to her. And Hagar becomes the only person in the whole of the bible to give God a name: ‘the God who sees’. ‘Have I seen the One who sees me and lived to tell of it?’ she says. And this is not the end of the story. Some time later, Hagar will be truly free from her slave-holders and abusers, and God will meet her again, and journey with her into her freedom.

I wonder what it feels like to be seen – truly seen, by the God who sees. And to be seen in a way that leads towards liberation… Here’s a God who crosses the line, who breaks down the dividing-walls, who journeys with the rejected and makes her home with them…

Ally Barrett, 'The anointing woman'

And here’s that line-crossing God at work again in our gospel story. Jesus in Mark’s gospel is always on the move, always active: preaching, teaching, healing, casting out demons, and so on. That’s the ‘big story’. But there’s another story in the gospel too. Of a Jesus who, at least occasionally, is interrupted, stopped in his tracks, challenged and changed – and interestingly, usually by a woman.

And one of them is in today’s gospel reading. She’s not named. She doesn’t speak. (So far, so typical, patriarchal world.) But what she does is profoundly subversive. She breaks open a container of expensive perfume, and pours it over Jesus’ head. And the men in the room are outraged: ‘why this waste?!’ they exclaim. In Luke’s version, they label her a ‘sinner’ – an easy, powerful way of excluding someone, rejecting their contribution. But Jesus receives her costly gift. He defends her: ‘leave her alone!’ In Luke’s version, he asks the men, ‘do you see this woman?’ – Do you see her? Is this Hagar’s God speaking here?! – And then, in Mark, this remarkable statement: ‘wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her’! Named or not, she is to be remembered, for her prophetic, priestly action: she has literally made Jesus the anointed one, the Christ. Like Hagar, in fact, she has named God! And her anointing here will be ‘sticky’ – it will stick with Jesus all the way to the cross… and beyond…

Ally Barrett, 'At the cross'

The Bible isn’t just black and white. It doesn’t draw one clear line. It isn’t just one big story. There are multiple, interwoven, entangled stories, some of which are in tension with each other, even contradictory. And in the body of Jesus, and at the cross, those contradictions are laid bare: for faithful women followers, and puzzled male officers of the Roman Empire, alike.

At the cross, we see the patriarchal binaries exposed for the lie they are: here is God in earthed body, in the chaos and darkness, soft and weak, passive and silent. Here is a God who empties himself of any of the dominance and control of patriarchy. Here is a God in whom, as the apostle Paul would later realise, there is no longer male or female.

Michael Cook, 'An Idle Tale'

Here is a God whose resurrection is first witnessed by women, who the male disciples then disbelieve. Who’s in the centre now, and who on the edges? Who is including whom, into the resurrection community?!

John Augustus Swanson, 'The Raising of Lazarus'

And here is a God who calls in a loud voice to those who are bound up, entombed in the prisons of death: ‘come out! Be free…’

I was given the task of talking about gender and sexuality today, I’ve talked a lot about men and women, and I don’t have much time left. I said earlier that we’d think about two kinds of structure that exclude and marginalise: one was the line, the other is a box.

The box is my shorthand for heterosexual marriage. It’s not a bad box. It’s a box that lots of good things can happen in. But we Christians have got a little bit lazy in using the box as the answer to all kinds of questions. Particularly the question ‘what is sex?’. Sex, the lazy answer goes, is what happens inside the box. It’s good if it’s in the box, it’s bad if it’s outside the box.

Except we know that’s not true. From Hagar to today, we know that heterosexual marriages can be places of resentment, lovelessness, manipulation and abuse, as well as places of love, joy, kindness and faithfulness. And that goes for the sex as much as any other aspect of the relationship. Talking about the box focuses on the container, and takes the focus of the contents.

And looking outside the box, I can witness to faithful, mutual, sacrificial, joyful, holy, love-filled relationships between two people of the same sex, through which I have seen clearly the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. And when I have seen LGBTQI+ friends respond to God’s call to ‘come out’ of the box, come out of the closet, come out of hiding, come out to be seen in the warm light of day and openness, honesty and integrity about who they are and who they love, I have seen liberation, and flourishing, and the fullness of life that Jesus said he came to bring.

For the last few years, my daughter and I have gone, with other members of our church community, to be part of Birmingham’s Pride celebrations. As an introvert, middle-aged, white, English, straight(ish) man, I have to confess it’s way out of my comfort zone. It’s a place where people like me are definitely not centre stage. But I have always felt utterly welcome, just as I am. I love dancing, but I’m physically and socially a bit awkward, and Pride has been a place where I’ve felt a warm invitation to dance my heart out, without judgment or competition, in a rainbow crowd of dancing people being joyfully, fully themselves, without hiding, fear or apology.

What if church were a bit more like that?!

What if God is inviting all of us to break down the dividing lines, to ‘come out’ of the boxes, to discover love, and joy, and life in the glorious, complex, embodied, interdependent, messily real world beyond the lines and boxes?

It is time, well and truly time, for some of us to stop talking, and do more listening. Sermons like today’s, from people like me, need to be at best a passing moment, before people like me step out of the way so that a multitude of less-heard voices can be more fully heard. I long for that day. When my female and LGBTQI+ siblings can shout and sing of God’s goodness within a church that has left the lines and boxes behind. I long for a church where I can, without condition, speak words of blessing over their lives and loves, and alongside them as fellow ministers of Christ.

And that’s where I’ll end: for those of you who have experienced rejection by the church, and need to hear God’s blessing spoken to you…

Trust your belovedness.

Let it be a protest, an act of resistance, a song of celebration.

Trust your belovedness in a world that is rarely satisfied.

Wear it like a badge of honor.

Speak it as confidently as your last name. Tattoo it to your heart.

When outside forces chip away at your sense of self,

when life asks you to hand over the keys,

remember the water.
Remember creation. Remember how it was good, so very good.

Let that truth hum through your veins.

Sing it so loud that it drowns out the weariness of the world,

for the bravest thing we can ever do

is trust that we belong here.

Rev. Sarah A. Speed