Turn our hearts and lives away from shame
Revd Dr Philip Anderson, Rector of Liverpool , preaches during the closing communion service at the Open Table Network filming day.
ON THE DAY of recording the Open Table Network (OTN)’s newly published short film in June at Liverpool Parish Church, where OTN’s office is based, the Rector of Liverpool, Revd Dr Philip Anderson, led the closing communion service, reflecting on the day's celebration of Open Table communities and the lives they have touched.
Philip’s reflection was based on a reading from Mark 12:38-44, the passage commonly known as the widow's offering or the widow's mite.
“I remember that same dynamic, wondering sometimes, was it more awkward to be gay in the Church, or Christian in the gay community? Here, however, was a group where Christ filled people with strength to resist the scorn and hatred, and shame, imposed by the scribes of today”
Today you have been reflecting on the value of the Open Table Network, on the lives it has touched, and on the vision of God for the coming years.
Some of you will have been involved in an Open Table community for many years, others perhaps more recently. I first encountered the original Open Table in Liverpool 15 years ago, and reflecting on today's gospel it's remarkable to think how that community's courage and faithfulness laid the ground for the national network that we celebrate today.
It was winter, I recall, and I took a little group of students with me, because I was a university chaplain. They joined a congregation of people from across this city and beyond, some of whom seemed to creep in, furtively, almost like a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
Five years later, when I was involved in the beginnings of the Open Table community in Wigan in 2016, I remember that same dynamic, wondering sometimes, was it more awkward to be gay in the Church, or Christian in the gay community? Here, however, was a group where Christ filled people with strength to resist the scorn and hatred, and shame, imposed by the scribes of today, in the Church, and outside in all those loud voices that want to say that it is not possible to love God and to love another person of the same gender, with the holy, life-giving love that is at the heart of Jesus Christ, and is, in its sacrificial intimacy, a kind of worship, a symbol of Christ's love for the Church.
Whether you're in a relationship and celebrating it, or single, or like the widow Jesus observed with great love, at his table there is grace to resist the narrow pride of the scribes, and mercy for our brokenness and sin, and resurrection power when we feel beaten and everything overwhelms us.
Jesus didn't spare the scribes, with their long robes and extended prayers - he said ‘they will receive the greater condemnation’. And, of course, we have to ask ourselves, when are we acting like them? There's a scribe in all of us. trying to gain the upper hand, trying to turn divine grace into power to control. The LGBT+ community has been wracked by arguments between scribes in the last few years. Jesus has been watching all of that too, much of it playing out online.
He points us to the humility and devotion of that woman, the widow, who contributed everything she had. He identifies with her, singles her out, an old lady, as symbol of his self-sacrifice that is to come, calling his young disciples to emulate her faith in God's goodness, God's future, God's faithfulness to provide.
