Honesty and Shared Conversations

“Can I ask you a question?” asked the year 8 pupil at the beginning of a spirituality day in Portsmouth Cathedral. We were looking at being whole people, body, mind and spirit through a range of interactive workshops.

“Of course you can!” I replied.

“If we are all God’s children why are gay people excluded from the Church?”

Having just returned from General Synod and participating in the Shared Conversations on Human Sexuality this took all the wind from my sails as I saw in the face of that young boy evidence of the damage which the church is doing.

I gave him an answer that the majority of Christians did not excluded gay people and that many, many churches fully included them. I told his teacher that as an openly gay priest I was happy to come into the school and talk to the children.

As long as I can remember the passages in the bible where Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane has been some of the most important to me. They portray Jesus at his most human, at his most honest. My experience of the recent Shared Conversations was that there was a lot of honesty and that it was painful. Very painful.

In the garden of Gethsemane we see a man who has been on a mission, a mission which has consumed his life and that of his family too and it is reaching a climax. We are almost at the point of no return, and yet there is still the possibility here of backing out, of running away and living perhaps an easier life, the life Jesus had dreamed of. And Jesus knows it.

He prays, no he begs, not to have to go through with it. The passage dramatically and movingly says that as he prayed his sweat became like great drops of blood falling onto the ground. That is some serious prayer.

“Take this cup away, don't make me drink it, find another way.” Jesus holds nothing back. He is completely honest with God. This honest Jesus is one I can follow. I can follow this Jesus because he knows what it is to struggle, to not want to do something but know it is the right path to take. To try to get out of it but realise it must be done.

I didn't start coming out as gay until I was 29, by which time I was married, had two children and was an ordained Anglican priest. I didn't even make a conscious decision to do it I just couldn't cope with being dishonest anymore.

 It was around this time that I met a fantastic gay couple. This was the first time I knowingly got to know a gay couple, living the kind of life I knew deep down I wanted. I tried for many years for this cup to be taken away from me and went to all sorts of lengths to change the way I was. Of course nothing worked and I learnt to hate who I was and indeed everything about myself.

One day one of the guys in the gay relationship asked me what it was like being a priest. Without any hesitation, which is surprising as I had not been asked the question before, I said it was like being given an unwanted gift. It was wonderful and precious and special but actually life would be a lot easier without it. After a short pause he simply said, "A bit like being gay then."

In that garden Jesus was given an unwanted gift. A path to take which whilst both wonderful and incredibly special would make his life much harder. Would in fact take his life from him.

And so I try to be honest. I'm a priest in the Church of England and I happen to be gay. I make no secret of it but nor do I feel the need to tell everyone that fact as soon as I meet them. I live my life and sometimes that is great and sometimes it is hard but it is as honest as I can make it.

For Jesus being honest made a difference, he came out of the garden with a resolve to do what it was God wanted him to do. A quiet resolve which coped with being betrayed by a kiss, having to heal the very people handling him so roughly and coping with the shadow of death now hanging over him. I pray that the honesty I encountered in the shared conversations will also make a difference. That it will enable the church to become more generous, more inclusive and more Christlike.

I don't have to face anything like Jesus did but I try to be honest. Honest with God and myself about who I am and what I am trying to be, honest about when I fail and how hard life can be.  

Unwanted gifts come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and might not be a vocation or sexuality issues but these unwanted gifts are always amazing. It might be time to unwrap them and begin to enjoy them?