Through the lens of love: A reflection for LGBT+ History Month by Bishop Cherry Vann
Cherry Vann is Bishop of Monmouth, the first lesbian bishop in the Church in Wales, and in a civil partnership. As Archdeacon of Rochdale for 11 years, she celebrated with Open Table communities in Liverpool and Manchester, and supported a community consultation which led to forming the Open Table community in Derby.
WATCH THE SERVICE HERE [90 mins]. Hear Bishop Cherry’s reflection from 28:35 for around 15 minutes.
FEBRUARY is LGBT+ History Month, an annual celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans & non-binary history. The aim is to be an exciting, informative and celebratory month, to educate out prejudice and make LGBT+ people, in all their rich diversity, visible. This year’s theme is ‘Behind The Lens’.
On Sunday 5th February, Open Table Cambridge held a celebratory service to mark the start of LGBT+ History Month, featuring songs by local LGBT+ community choir Sing Out Cambridge. The Open Table Cambridge community hosted the Sunday morning congregation for a creative Communion service led by OTN Co-Chair Alex Clare-Young with OTN Patron, Bishop of Monmouth Cherry Vann, as the guest speaker. This is Bishop Cherry’s reflection on this year’s LGBT+ History Month theme.
Shout out, do not hold back! Lift up your voice like a trumpet! Announce to my people their rebellion, to the house of Jacob their sins.
- Isaiah 58:1
There’s been a lot of shouting and lifting up of voices recently in response to the material sent out by the bishops of the Church of England (in response to a six-year process of listening, learning and discernment on questions of identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage known as Living in Love and Faith).
People from all points on the spectrum have been quick to reassert their views in the light of what the bishops have said (and not said); most of them referencing the Bible to support their cause. Each ‘side’, it would seem, are wanting to point out to the church its rebellion and to followers of Christ ‘on the other side’, their sins.
A few months ago, I got into an email conversation with someone I didn’t know who was wanting to me to explain how I could hold the position I do on same-sex relationships. It began very gently but soon became an exchange of Bible verses as we tried to help one another understand how our very different positions were founded in scripture. After receiving what felt to be a tirade of texts, I closed down the conversation as it was clearly getting us nowhere.
At the end of the day, we can use (and the Church has used) the Bible to justify all manner of views and behaviours. We can make the Bible say almost anything. A recent and very disturbing study gives just one example. It has found that domestic violence is rife in Christian homes right across the world because of the way in which the husbands have chosen, or been encouraged, to read particular biblical texts. This is often supported by their churches and the prevailing culture of their communities. (Spousal Violence Among World Christians: Silent Scandal by Elizabeth Koepping)
In this LGBT+ History Month, we’re being invited to reflect on the theme ‘Behind the lens’ and to give thanks for the lives and the experience of those who live their professional lives behind the lens – LGBT+ film makers, photographers and all involved in producing, directing, creating art and entertainment from behind the scenes. They are the ones who determine what we see and how we see it, what’s suggested, intimated and left to our imagination.
They say the camera never lies. But, of course it does, or at least it gives us only a moment in time, and one that’s been carefully choreographed and often, these days at least, edited. It might capture the outer image in the moment - the beauty, the poise, the sophistication, the glamour (or whatever) – but it doesn’t get beneath the surface of what’s going on inside, which can be very different.
Similarly, for those behind the lens, their lived experience, their day to day reality, remains hidden, and for those who are LGBT+, often deliberately so.
Each of us, whether we identify as LGBT+ or not, live our lives through various lenses. One powerful lens is that of our experience; what has happened to us, how we’ve been treated particularly in our formative years, what we’ve learnt and been taught about ourselves and others through our relationships. Our experience helps to shape our understanding of ourselves, our sense of self, our identity, in both positive and negative ways.
But there are other lenses through which to look and understand the world. For Christians, the Bible would be one such lens. As we’ve already noted, the lens or indeed lenses we bring to bear on our reading of the Bible will influence to a greater or lesser extent how we interpret what we see there. So how do we know which lens to look through in order to find our way to the ways of God when the people of God come to such diverse views on the same scriptures?
Our readings today (Isaiah 58: 1-12 & Matthew 5: 13-20) offer some pointers, it seems to me. Isaiah holds up a mirror to the people of his day with a stark warning. They may be keeping the letter of the law, but they’re doing it for the wrong reasons. They may be giving an outward picture of observance, but they’re doing it in order to feel good about themselves, to demonstrate, to themselves at least, appropriate humility. But also, Isaiah suggests, to maintain their positions of superiority by oppressing the more vulnerable around them.
The law is not an end in itself, but a means to an end; that end being to become the people of God, to stand for the things of God and to do what God requires. Isaiah gives a list of what that looks like. Challenging injustice; breaking the barriers and the bonds that oppress people and deprive them of freedom - the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil; and sharing with others the blessings we have received.
Jesus picks this up in the part of his sermon on the mount that was our second reading. He hasn’t come to abolish the law, he assures his listeners. He’s not here to set up something completely new or outside what God has done hitherto. He’s come to fulfil the law and to do it in and through his very being. And he demonstrates this supremely in his self-giving love on the cross. This self-giving love is the lens through which we are invited to interpret scripture, understand ourselves and appreciate one another. We make God’s law and covenant a reality in our lives, as Jesus did, by the way we live, by the way we behave and by the ways we treat one another. Or, as he himself says at the conclusion of his sermon on the mount:
‘In everything, do to others as you would have them do to you; for this is the law and the prophets.’
- Matt 7:12
We may be tempted to look to others to tell us who we are. We may be tempted to allow others to tell us who we are. But we find our true identity only in God and God’s love for us. It’s in those places where we’re truly loved that we learn to discover who we truly are. Those of us who are blessed with having grown up in loving homes, amongst parents and others who love us for who we are with a deep and unconditional love, are given perhaps the surest and safest context in which to discover, acknowledge and admit to ourselves and others our sexual and gender identity. I guess that’s why, despite all that the world was telling me as I was growing up, despite all that the Church has been telling me for as long as I can remember, and despite all the fear that I’ve lived with (particularly, I have to say before I came to Wales), I have always been able to hang to who I know I am and know that I’m loved, not just by my parents, but by the God who created me as I am.
Context matters. It's why I’ve noticed since I’ve been in Wales, where the Church and its leaders publicly affirm LGBT+ people and our relationships, that even at my advancing age, I’ve grown in confidence, felt freer to be me and found an amazing joy in being accepted and celebrated, both as a lesbian bishop and as one in a relationship that goes back over 30 years.
It's why spaces like this, and other Open Table communities, are so vitally important. Here, we find love and acceptance and hope. Here we can shut out the clamour of shouting voices - our own as well as those of others - and enter a quieter and safer space. Here we can listen to the still small voice within us whispering words of love. We can connect with the Spirit within us and the presence of God that is closer to us that we are to ourselves. We can learn to see ourselves as God sees us, through the lens of God’s love, and allow ourselves to be changed and transformed day by day and week by week into the likeness of Christ.
Bringing the various lenses through which we’ve spent our lives looking, together with the lenses through which others have looked at us and judged us, and learning to hold them all within the lens of God’s love is a life-long task. It is for each human being, but especially for those who have been judged and stigmatized and marginalized - and especially by the Church.
Here is a place and here are a people amongst whom we might dare to be and allow ourselves to be loved into wholeness; to see ourselves and one another, warts and all, through the lens of God’s mercy and grace; to find our true healing and freedom in Christ and in the company of one another.
So, by God’s grace, we will shine with God’s light unashamedly before others and bear fruit that will last, to the glory of our Father in heaven.