ON MONDAY 29th NOVEMBER, Bishop of Liverpool Paul Bayes returned to the first Open Table community in Liverpool for a celebration of ‘joyful hope’, echoing the theme of the first week of Advent, the beginning of the Church’s year.

The service was an opportunity for the community to give thanks for his support before he retires in Spring 2022. Here is his reflection:

This church, and this network, is a flagship of inclusion. It's not the only inclusive place in our diocese, or in the church, but it's a flagship of inclusion. Because in this generation, it has reached out to receive wisdom from those on the edge of things.

When I first came here, I said to you, or to the community that was here then, that this image [pictured right], which I brought with me that day, the image of Jesus standing among the broken, that this image was for you, not because you were the broken standing around Jesus, who could heal you and make you into something different, but because you yourselves, were standing in the place of Jesus, to bring light and life to those whose lives were broken. There's a great deal of lived pain in this room and in this Network. But it is the role of God, to place God's hand where there is pain, and to heal.

Over my lifetime, as in the lifetime of any Christian, the church has seen fit to strain itself in various different ways so that it may grow more into the likeness of Christ. And you know that, in previous generations, that involved for example: wrestling with the realities of slavery, and of the fact that somehow the Holy Scriptures don't have a problem with slavery; wrestling with issues of divorce and broken relationship, and finding that the scriptures were a resource for that wrestling, but not obvious; wrestling with the place of women in the community of faith, and finding that the scriptures were not always helpful for those conversations.

And so, in the difficulties and conversations through the ages, we have arrived at an understanding of faith, which is rooted in our scripture, but which is also open to what God is doing, then and now. And in this generation, for some parts of the church, it is the area of sexuality, of relationships, of marriage and commitment. It is this area where the church is straining to grow. It is not that you are broken, although you are as we all are. It is that God has entrusted you, because of your own life's journey, with the possibility, as the collect from Stephen Shakespeare says, of being 'midwives of the gospel'.

God of the living word, the promise of the Spirit is carried in scripture’s womb; make us midwives of the gospel, ready to welcome hope newborn and make it known to a world in chains; through Jesus Christ, the Word made Flesh.

For many Christians, especially many LGBT+ Christians, the Bible has become a toxic book, because people have used it to hurt you. People have used it to wave a certain purity, which has excluded you. And yet, as Stephen's collect says, the promise of the Spirit is carried in scripture's womb.

I hardly dare talk about different ways of using the Bible in the presence of the writer of How to eat bread [Editor’s note: Revd Dr Miranda Threlfall-Holmes, author of How to eat bread, is Rector of the parish which includes St Bride’s Liverpool, home of the first Open Table community. She was present for this farewell service].

But I will quote this from Brian Zahnd, who himself has written a book recently called When Everything's on Fire. This is what Brian has to say about the relationship between scripture and our lived experience:

'To say that Christian faith is forever rooted in Scripture, yet distinct from Scripture is both theologically conservative, and theologically progressive. It is conservative, because it recognizes that Scripture is inviolable. It is progressive in that It makes a vital distinction between living faith and historic text.'

Brian goes on to say this:

'Since the canon of Scripture is closed, the soil of our Christian faith is unchanging',

and I would say, limitlessly rich.

'But that doesn't prevent the living Christian faith itself from growing, changing, developing, maturing over time. And of course, how it grows and changes will often be a matter of fervent debate within the church. But that's just the way it goes.'

And he says,

'I understand that the deeply fractured nature of the church compounds the complexity of this problem'.

And then, speaking of slavery, he says this,

'The Bible may be stuck with the assumption that slavery is an inescapable institution. But the living faith of Christianity is capable of growth, and can produce entire boughs of abolition'.

From the soil of Scripture rooted in a certain place, and a certain time, the spirits of every place, and every time produces boughs of justice.

'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice'

said Dr. King, The Bible may be stuck with assumptions about human relationships. But the living faith of Christianity is capable of growth and can produce entire boughs of liberation. Here you sit, having been given by God the nature that each of you has, as I stand here, inhabiting the nature I have, and we say to God,

'Why have you made us as we are for this time?'

And God says,

'It is because I have a calling on your life, and I will raise you up as communities of liberation in this quarrelsome body of the people who honour Jesus. I will raise you up, and I will give you strength in one another, that you may stand on this unchanging foundation and build something new. Behold, I am doing something new. Now it breaks forth, do you not perceive it?'

And in Advent, season of waiting, we wait, and we yearn for the future from which God comes to us. As it says in The Lord of the Rings,

'I wish these things had not happened in our time.'

And Gandalf says,

'So do I. And so do all who live to see such times.'

Wilberforce, when he stood on the ground of Scripture, and spoke out for the abolition of slavery, he would have wished that that had not happened in his time. Those who fought and struggled and still fight and struggle, for the place of women in the church and in society and in the world, they could have wished that that were all settled before they were born. So do I, and so do all who live to see such times, but we, Gandalf says, are called to make the most of the time given to us. To enter into our dignity as human beings standing on the revealed truth of God and seeking the future in community. And I honour you, and the Network to which you have given birth, for the courage with which you come, and sit in this cold church, and in flame with the warmth of God's Spirit, and those who look to you for leadership, those who look to you to bring the love of Christ where there has been brokenness.

I wrote a piece about anger and how anger could be used. It says, 'Be warmly angry'. I'm addressing those who feel the sense of injustice, not only LGBT+ Christians, but all those who see injustice and want to struggle against it. I wrote:

'Be warmly angry, but do not boil away. Feel what you feel, and turn that feeling into strength'.

And I quoted Joe Hill, an American who was killed, a labour organizer, but he left a phrase behind him, which said,

'If you notice that I've died, don't mourn, organize'.

And I wrote,

'Let the person you are in God, speak out. So that your own desires and your own anger become the engine for a just world. Come as you are'.

Where do you think I got that quote from?

Be as you are. Leave differently. Love differently… But never lose your anger. Even after you've let it blow through you as the sun goes down, and refused to allow it to consume you. Bring your next-morning anger, your tempered anger, your reasonable passion, the truth of how you feel… Make a difference. Return, day after day, in the face of discouragement, and misunderstanding and opposition, to make a difference again. And keep on making a difference, until things are different.’

God has made us as we are. God has given each of us the Spirit and the body, and the feeling and the love which God has intended. And in this generation, that means that some of us must struggle so that the long arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice.

And together with honouring you for your courage, and being part of this Network, I thank you for your perseverance. And I thank you for the bearing of pain. And I thank you for the reaching out with the hand of the Spirit to those who are not only in pain, but also lost.

And I promise you that I will pray for you, and for the Open Table Network as it grows, and that I will hold you before God in my retirement, and that I will listen for that voice of reasonable passion spoken into a world which needs to hear it, spoken out of the traditions of the church, but making a new thing. And when I hear you say those things, I will rejoice with you, and thank God for you.

And together with you, I believe I will see the change that God wants to see. And as bishops do, in the closing months of my episcopate, I give you a charge. I do not charge you to be furiously angry and to burn up. I do not charge you to run away in fear.

I charge you to stand in the love you have for one another and, with joyful hope, to overcome. And I promise you again, not only that I will pray for you, but that many, many people across the world will pray for you, so that together with you, we may build the church that God wants to see, and speak truth to the world that God needs to hear it. May God bless you, friends, thank you for the privilege of being able to stand with you. Please pray for me, that God will open whatever doors God may have in mind.

And be sure that the strength of the Spirit will never leave you. Not today. Not when it's difficult, not when there seems to be defeat. The Spirit and strength of God will never leave you, until God brings justice to victory. Amen