It’s Oxford University Freshers Fayre this week, Wednesday and Thursday, October 4th and 5th. Let’s be honest, we all know freshers who have come to Oxford, with huge relief, despite the daunting challenge of what is ahead of them, academic pressure, in a city of pride and perfectionism. The relief? Because they are escaping homes, parents and siblings who hold religious beliefs that judge, condemn and exclude them. Yes, even in their own homes, they experience the deepest, costliest, most damaging rejection of all; their parents cannot accept them, for who they know themselves to be. They often live in fear, ‘in the closet’, or continually ridiculed for being ‘queer’, in homes where queer is meant as a curse.
The students behind the Oxford Safe Churches Project, have both watched, and experienced for themselves, being drawn into large city centre churches like St Aldates and St Ebbes, by the amazing worship, (goose bumps all over, – forget Coldplay or Nirvana, this is heaven on earth!), – by the huge student community that hugs you to death, by dedicated student pastors who love bomb you with pastoral care, (like you never had at home!), and pizza, cookies to die for, and even passable coffee. You’ve found your tribe, your family and what feels like your forever home.
There is only one tiny problem, but it seems almost insignificant, compared to the love and blessings being poured into your life. Rumours circulate the city, that this church has campaigned for many years against LGBTQIA+ people; their dignity, their equality, their rights and freedom. For sure, no one really knows what Senior Leadership believe these days, they don’t say, and won’t say. Students have asked, but all they are given is fudge, nice fudge though!
‘It’s compilcated’, said with a smile, as they brush you off.
At least Vaughan Roberts has now outed himself and admitted that he is willing to divide the Church of England over the issue of homosexuality. We are grateful to him for his courage and integrity in being open, honest and transparent. (We knew anyway).
For the last couple of years, since Stephen Foster took charge as the new Rector, it appears St Aldates Church is under the HTB Network Churches unspoken mantra, of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell.’ A policy of secrecy and silence regarding the theology and pastoral care of LGBTQIA+ people, in HTB Network Churches, hangs heavy over them. LGBTQIA+ people quietly disappear, no one knows why.
Six weeks or so ago, the Oxford Safe Churches Project found a 45 minute Sunday sermon, preached to St Aldates Church, by Simon Ponsonby, Pastor of Theology. Most LGBTQIA+ people who have heard the sermon find it deeply homophobic, condemnatory and judgemental. Even allies and friends who are not queer, have concluded the same, including some not insignificant ministers and theologians.
We don’t know the exact date of the sermon, except it is pre-covid, and probably coincides with the campaigning and letter signings protesting against LGBTQIA+ inclusion in the church, 2016 – 2018.
It would appear the moment St Aldates Senior Leadership realised that the Oxford Safe Churches Project had found this sermon, they pulled it from the internet, where it had happily been platformed for several years. They are now hiding this sermon.
Why try and hide the gospel, as it pertains to the discipleship and pastoral care of LGBTQIA+ people? What do St Aldates Senior Leadership have to hide? Their courage to proclaim the gospel , within their own four walls is not in doubt.
The Oxford Safe Churches Project has to rate each of the city churches according to the last available teaching offered. Because St Aldates is currently engaging in an ‘operative theology’ that openly welcomes all LGBTQIA+ people, and the project has the testimonies of several LGBTQIA+ students, who have openly shared in their student fellowship groups, that they are both gay, and in a same-sex relationship, and been warmly affirmed, by both fellow students, and staff student workers, (their words), then there is a huge chasm of confusion, uncertainty and fear, as to how LGBTQIA+ students will be discipled in St Aldates, over the long term of their stay in Oxford and the church, what teaching are Senior Leadership suddenly going to throw at them?
If Simon Ponsonby, Stephen Foster and the Senior Leadership still hold to the ‘normative’ or traditional theology, as espoused by Ponsonby in his sermon on ‘homosexuality’, then St Aldates is a Safeguarding tragedy waiting to happen. The potential for spiritual abuse is extremely high. We are already pastoring one student who was felt forced to leave, after hearing the recent ‘Unscripted’ podcast, because they no longer ‘felt safe in church’. They had been a member for 18 months and had no idea that Senior Leadership held the beliefs preached in ‘Unscripted’.
What the Oxford Safe Churches Project has done, is shine a spotlight upon, and blow the whistle on a very deceitful, damaging and dangerous pastoral policy of keeping theology and pastoral policy about LGBTQIA+ people secret. The Oxford Diocese, Safeguarding Leads and Bishop Steven, appear to be looking the other way, pretending there is no problem.
It is tragic, that the students have had to take the responsibility for their own Safeguarding and pastoral care, into their own hands. The evils of Pilavachi, and the abuses of safeguarding and pastoral care principles in the Church of England, mean that young people and students, especially LGBTQIA+ students, have no confidence in the Safeguarding within churches like St Aldates and St Ebbes, but worse than that, they know that current safeguarding practise will re-traumatise them and deepen the sense of abuse they already feel. If my own experience of Safeguarding in St Aldates and the Diocese represents their treatment of LGBTQIA+ people, then they are right in the fears they hold.
Principles of secrecy and silence, surround all cases of abuse, and they are only possible because of unaccountable authority. All abuse is enabled and empowered because authority is not held accountable. Bishop Steven and the Diocese Safeguarding Leads need to step up, and speak up, at this time, not hide. They need to honour and defend the courageous work the students have undertaken. Let’s stop playing lip service to accountability, and start living it, creating a safeguarding culture of openness, honesty, transparency and vulnerability. That costs, time, money and means being present at the table. Bishop Steven needs to initiate the process, and include LGBTQIA+ victims of spiritual abuse at the table. At the moment Bishop Steven seems to be denying that we exist.
At present, the people most likely to wounded, damaged, and spiritually abused are LGBTQIA+ young people, freshers, and students.
In ‘The Six Pastoral Principles’, created by the bishops, in the wake of the evils of Smyth and Fletcher abuses of young people in their care, and to help create a safer culture in churches, surrounding Living in Love and Faith, and the war currently raging over LGBTQIA+ lives in the Church of England, they identify six evils currently being practised in and by the Church of England.
Two of the evils identified, are the abuse of authority and power, and the use of cultures of silence and secrecy. It is very difficult not to view the current culture within St Aldates Churches Senior Leadership, through these lens. Once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.
Until Stephen Foster and Simon Ponsonby make a public statement, and offer clear repentance, and clearly state their reformed theology, we can only assume, the sermon they are hiding, remains their ‘normative’ theology.
Here is the sermon. It needs a serious trigger warning if you are LGBTQIA+, and possibly, even if you are not. It contains the misuse of history and psychology, to prop up the usual fist full of terror texts we have come to expect from conservative evangelical charismatics. I would suggest reading the two critiques of the sermon, in last weeks blog, before you read the sermon itself.
This is transcript made by AI of the podcast.
The Truth Will Set You Free.
Sunday Sermon, St Aldates Church, Oxford.
Preacher. Simon Ponsonby.
(starts halfway through a sentence) … ‘those today struggling with those issues. Then we want to tell you that we love you. And if you have friends and family struggling with those issues, we want you to tell them that we love them. Okay. Let’s pray.
“Spirit. We ask that you would just come and rest upon us. We pray that you would give us clarity. Help me, Lord, to say something helpful. I pray that anything that I say that is chaff, Lord, that your spirit would just blow it away and take it away. Lord, let it die. But we pray that there would be a real sense of truth here this morning. The truth that sets us free. Amen.”
Let me just say that this is not going to be a sort of standard morning Sunday sermon where we’re just expanding a particular passage, and preaching and illustrating that. This is going to be more of a kind of teaching lecture presentation. And I understand if you get bored or if you want to leave. I know that’s certainly how I feel right at this moment. The latter that is.
Let me just put a few caveats around what I want to say this morning. I’ve already put one – that’s the big one. That’s what I want to say at the beginning. That’s what I’m saying at the end. We love you. If you’re a homosexual, we love you. If you’re struggling with it, we love you. Even if you’re not, we still love you.
When we discuss the question of homosexuality, we are not dealing with something that is abstract. We’re not dealing with some kind of vague, theoretical, conceptual idea. What we are addressing is people who have very real personal issues. Very often homosexuality is so enmeshed in their very existence that it feels that just to talk about it, they find their whole identity in it. And we want to say that this is not just some kind of doctrine that we can throw up and speak against. We are talking about people we all know, people who are homosexual. Many of us will have friends, many of us have family. In my own family, my brother, whom I love deeply, is an active homosexual in a committed (relationship). He recently got married, or covenanted, in his relationship, and has been an active homosexual for many years. I have a cousin who is also homosexual, so there’s something personal here. You know, we all have stories like that.
Secondly, what I want to say is that what I’m saying today and putting forward is what I believe is the normative and historic orthodox position. It is the one that comes from a plain, obvious, clear reading from the Bible. And yet I must, we must, acknowledge that other people who look at the same texts do come up with different conclusions and interpretations.
I’m going to be using the 19th century term, (we didn’t have it before then), of homosexuality, for men whose predominant sexual desire is for the same sex, with or without any homo erotic act. And whilst this talk will mainly focus upon homosexuality, the descriptions, deductions, and conclusions apply to lesbianism as well.
The controlling motif, for me, theologically, the controlling principle here, I think for me is from John 1 verse 14. If you’re taking notes, and there it says that Jesus came full of grace and truth. Full of grace and truth. Grace first, then truth. But grace and truth, not grace instead of truth. Not truth without grace, but grace and truth. And we see Christ manifesting this grace and truth in John Chapter 8. When he finds the woman who is caught in adultery, she has transgressed the law. The Pharisees are legalists. They know this. She deserves to be stoned. And Jesus, when she’s brought before Jesus, Jesus says,
‘Who is without sin, you cast the first stone before you start chucking stones. Recognise that you deserve to have stones chucked at you.’
And then after they go, the oldest first because they’ve committed more sins and they’re wiser. Jesus turns and says,
‘Where are they who condemn you?’ And she said, ‘They’ve gone.’
He says, ‘I don’t condemn you’. Grace, ‘but go leave your life of sin.’
Truth. And that is the position. I believe that we as Christians who are trying to be like Christ because after all, that’s what it’s all about. We need to be like Christ. How, you know WWJD
“What would Jesus do?”
He would be full of grace and truth. I don’t condemn you, but leave your life of sin.
He was often condemned by the Pharisees because he ate with tax collectors and sinners. Jesus stood with those who were outside. He stood with the marginalized, and the oppressed. Today, I think he would, he would happily, freely find himself in gay clubs and gay bars. And there he would be listened to because they would see that he was listening to them. And there he would be loved because people would see that he loved them. But he wouldn’t leave it there. Christ would be seeking to lead them into liberty and freedom. He would be seeking to bring a revelation of God and His kingdom, a revelation, and bringing people to a repentance of their sinful acts and seeking ultimately to bring a restoration and a liberation and a wholeness to their life. And we as Christians must be like Christ, what would he be doing? Where would he be? How would he be?
I’d like to first of all, set some facts straight. In 1948, Dr. Alfred Kinsey produced a groundbreaking study on sexual behaviour in America. And in it, he claimed that 4% of males were exclusively homosexual and 10% had some period where their primary sort of sexual proclivity was homosexual. And he claimed that 37% of people have had at least one homosexual experience By that homosexual experience, he allowed that to be even just a passing thought, once off, or a dream, or something like that. And though his findings have subsequently been shattered and dismissed as un-factual, and baseless. Kinsey’s report has been seminal in opening people’s minds not just to the possibility, but to the idea of the prevalence of homosexual activity. And this idea of the 10% has become, as it were, an urban myth. It’s suddenly become, it’s become orthodox, but it simply isn’t true.
In 1994, a rigorous survey done by the Social Organization of Sexuality in America claimed that 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women were exclusively homosexual. Wellings report, not that long ago, on sexual behaviour in Britain, showed that that we had a much lower incidence of homosexuality with only 1% of men and 0.5% of women being exclusively homosexual. Whilst homosexual experience, there may have been more of it around, it tended to be relatively isolated and generally a passing event. But it is fair to speak, I think, of a spectrum of sexuality and the vast majority of people will be heterosexual in their appetite, and in their actions and so on. And then there is a minority who will be exclusively homosexual, and then the rest in between will be somewhere along that spectrum, and depend upon nurture, dependent upon exigencies and experiences in life. It will move them, and sometimes they’ll oscillate somewhere along that spectrum.
I want us to think also, that’s just setting the facts straight, about the social and political context of homosexuality in my lifetime. I was born in 1966. I know I seem more mature and look younger, but that’s when I was born. There has been a real paradigm shift in our attitude to homosexuality. Previously, we were insulated by the sort of residue of a unique Judeo-Christian sexual ethic here in the West and in particular, in Great Britain, and this has collapsed in the late 20th century.
The late 1960s saw an intellectual and a social shift into what’s called a postmodern era. There was a rejection of the sort of canons and and the things that drove the Enlightenment, the pursuit of absolute truth, the working out of reason. And these things were rejected for various social and intellectual reasons, and they were replaced by relativism. Absolutes went, relativism came in. Everything was suddenly sort of DIY, you know, B&Q, pick and mix, and all that sort of thing. And that was applied not just to one’s leisure activities, but to one’s, you know, pleasure and one’s sexuality. Suddenly everything became a shade of grey, and we find ourselves in a kind of social context where intellectually it is acceptable to design one’s own ethic. And intellectually it is not acceptable to prescribe some form of absolute ethic.
In 1967, the Sexual Offences Act, which had declared that homosexual sex was illegal, was repealed, and homosexual acts between two consenting adults in private was made legal for the over 21-year-olds. Since then, the homosexual lobby have sought to reduce that law and change it on two key occasions. And now the age of consent for homosexual sex is 16, with safeguards to protect those who are under 18, from any sort of abuse from authority figures.
And though the homosexual community are a very small minority, they have a very powerful lobby. In just 35 years, they have totally changed the law and totally changed public opinion. So, for example, in 1997, a gay lobby organisation called Outrage had a campaign for full equality and justice on this issue. They sent 1 million postcards to this effect, to the Prime Minister, a million of them. They bombarded him with their claims. The recent struggle has been, we’ve seen it in the news in the last few months, to have homosexual partners accorded the same legal and financial privileges and rights as a heterosexual marriage spouse, but just because something is no longer illegal, doesn’t mean to say it is no longer immoral. And just because society’s opinion has changed, that doesn’t mean to say that God’s opinion has changed. In fact, God’s opinion never changes because he’s perfect. To imply change implies that he’s not perfect. What God has said is what God thinks. And God, as we will see, has said what He thinks about this.
The homosexual lobbyists have succeeded remarkably to the extent that anyone who may feel, on scientific, social, psychological, academic, or medical grounds, that the rightness of homosexuality is questionable, they are, they feel a sense of intimidation into silence. We’ve all felt it; to be thought homophobic, to be labeled, that is, to incur some form of social and intellectual vilification.
An insight into some of the tactics of some of the more powerful and persuasive lobbying of the gay community, was seen about 50 years ago with the American Psychiatric Association. The American Psychiatric Association had a handbook in which it declared that homosexual orientation and actions were the result of emotional or psychotic problems, that it was an emotional or a psychotic condition that could be treated. In 1970, at the APA annual conference, it was subject to gay activists who stood outside placarding and shouting and disrupting the meetings. This happened again in 1971, where they actually got inside the meeting, stole the microphone and didn’t allow the meetings to continue. Before the 1973 meeting, members of the APA, the leaders of the conference, met with the leaders of the gay lobby and they (the gay lobby), said,
‘We will picket your meeting every year. You will not be able to have it unless you scrap this condition from the book.’
So, they scrap the condition from the book in 1973, based on political and lobbying pressure.
And then it was no longer a recognised clinical condition, although interestingly, some years later they sent out a survey to the 10,000 members of the American Psychiatric Association. And of those who replied, I think about 2500 of them, 68% said, (2500 of 10,000 is not 68% but 20% -editors note.)
‘We still believe this is a psychotic or a neurotic disorder that needs treatment, but we’re no longer allowed to have that in the book.’
The church is one of the last domains where distinctions are made on the basis of sexuality, and she is a real target for the gay lobbies, and several denominations have already succumbed to this. And now there’s many, several denominations, mainline denominations, permit practising active homosexuals to be ministers. And the Church of England, which has held the line on this, is now here in England, although throughout the Anglican Communion it’s given up. So, in some places she’s under great pressure to follow the trend. And essentially, we need to understand that for the homosexual community, discrimination on the basis of sexual proclivity, you know what the Bible says is irrelevant. This is a matter of justice. This is a matter of human rights.
Okay. Well, that’s just a bit of kind of social political background to the context we find ourselves in.
What about the question of causation? Where does it come from? Why are people homosexual? Well, let me give three suggestions, that are normally presented. First is scripture.
It didn’t come from Scripture. The scriptural analysis. Romans 1 v 18 to 27. Romans 1 v 18 to 27, (and I’m going to come back to this), is the only text which carries both a description and a prohibition, and a claim and a suggestion, of a causation to homosexuality. And the argument is quite difficult, it has to be admitted. But the basic argument appears to say, and appears to link homosexuality and lesbian acts with idolatry. And Paul chooses homosexuality, because this was so normative and so prevalent in a Greco-Roman culture. And he says that homosexuality is an archetype. It is a fundamental symbol of rebellion against God, and against God’s divine order revealed in creation. And so if we read this Romans one, it says Paul speaks about an exchange, and this word comes up three times.
There is an exchange of God for idolatry. (verse 22). Okay, we have forsaken the glory of God for idols. Secondly, he says in verse 25, there is an exchange of truth for a lie. We’ve given up on God. We’ve taken idols. We then give up on truth. We then take deception or lies. And the consequence of this is that there is an exchange of natural, for unnatural sexual acts. Professor of ethics, Thomas Schmidt, from America says: Homosexual acts are revolting, because they epitomise, in sexual terms, man’s revolt against God.
And so what Paul seems to be saying in this passage is that homosexuality is a type, the outworking of a life that has deviated from God’s natural design and order. That has deviated from God’s decree. And as a consequence, there is idolatry, and there is a form of sexual immorality contrary to God’s design. So, Scripture posits that as one causation, then what about nature?
Many people have sought to find some form of genetic or organic determinism for this. You’re a homosexual. You have homosexual appetites because that’s what you are. And so, in 1991, a chap called Levi claimed that there were slight differences in the homosexual brain compared to the heterosexual one. He argued that one specific area of the hypothalamus of the homosexual brain, was smaller than that in heterosexual males, and corresponded to the size of the hypothalamus in female brains. And they said,
‘Oh, here it is. It’s all to do with connections in the brain between left and right or something and parts of the brain.’
But subsequent studies have completely dismissed that. And yet it becomes an urban myth.
In 1993, Haymer claimed that statistical evidence showed that a disproportionate number of homosexual men had homosexual uncles on their maternal side, and he posited that there was some form of a kind of chromosomal link that came through the mother’s side and into the, you know, the son. And yet. Similar studies again, simply say this is not true, ontologically, physiologically, we know that there is simply male and female, and 1 in 1,000,000 hermaphrodites, but they’re essentially male and female. That is what we are. That is one sex. That is one’s gender. There is no third category that we can find, you know, empirically to say ‘this is homosexual’. Irving Bieber, who wrote a classic text on this, said every homosexual is a latent homosexual.
Interestingly, even the homosexual community don’t want you to find some kind of organic or chemical or genetic code, you know, a cell for homosexuality. They want it to be a matter of personal life choice. And so, Darryl Yates, (Rist?), of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, has called this pursuit of a genetic, or the argument for a genetic basis to it, ‘An expedient lie’. This is the postmodern era. You pick and mix, you do what you want, and then there’s nurture. And this, I think, is the core to it.
Gustav Jung said the homosexual man is not able to find the manliness deep within himself. Thus, he tries to find it on a biological and sexual level. Freud said homosexuality is rooted in overprotective mothers and punitive or absent fathers. Richard Cohen, who is a psychotherapist, has written widely on this and is himself, or was himself, a practising homosexual, but is now married and come into wholeness sexually. So, this; the homosexual love need, is essentially a search for parenting.
What the homosexual seeks to fulfil; our normal needs for bonding, that have been abnormally unmet in the process of growth, and so one often finds in, say, a homosexual male that there is a sense of inadequacy and inferiority, especially in young men in regards to other men. They feel weaker. They don’t fulfil the stereotype of what a young macho man should have. They feel different. They’re not like other lads.
I was talking recently to a chap who’s now changed, to be a priest, and was part of a homosexual community for ten years before coming out of it, being delivered, being transformed by Christ Jesus, and now wanting me to set him up with girlfriends. And he told me that at school he said he was the class weed. He felt weak, he didn’t feel like others, but he wanted to be like others. And somehow, as he went through puberty, he realised that there was this strange mixing of a desire to be more like men, mixed up with his sexuality through puberty. And suddenly he came to want those men, from wanting to be like them. He came to want them, and somehow there was a form of sort of “sexual cannibalism”.
‘By having sex with them, I was somehow gaining their maleness for me because I don’t feel like a man.’
So, we see, for example, a failure at key pubic stages to have appropriate gender role models. It could be an absent or an abusive or a weak father. And this might drive a young, resentful, or fearful, or a young man who feels a sense of alienation with his peers, to identify more with his mother. And they might develop then an unhealthy, effeminate gender identity rather than a masculine one. Or maybe, you’ve got a young man who begins to idolise other men, subsequently substituting, as I said, and craving their maleness for his own, or maybe another young man, subconsciously replacing his felt deprivation of a father, by becoming attracted to an older man.
I was talking a while ago with a young man who was part of the homosexual community, and we had a long chat, a really good chat with this dear man. And there he was, he was in his early 20s, but he told me he had a predilection for men who were in their 50s, the sort of age his father would be. That’s who he went with. And I said, ‘Well, tell me about your father’.
‘Oh, I grew up without a father’.
And suddenly and, you know, it just seems so obvious. And I said to him,
‘You know, to me this seems fairly obvious. You’re just longing for a dad.’
And he said,
“Well, whatever the cause, this is where I’m at, and thank you very much. I’m enjoying it.”
I believe that this emotional craving for a masculine identification at a key time in one’s pubic development can become a chemical and physiological craving, as the brain is formatted through sexual experience. When one who has that emotional desire, and all that pubic confusion, and all of that stuff going on, and then one has a “few fumbles and a sexual fumble” and suddenly the brain is formatted, the brain is programmed. It says, – ‘this makes you feel better’.
It makes you feel better about yourself. And suddenly one is into a kind of chemical programming. And so, what I believe with homosexuality, especially with men, what begins as nurture, soon, because of experience, becomes second nature. And when they say, ‘Look, this is who I am, this is part of who I am.’
We say, ‘Yeah, that’s certainly how the brain is’. It becomes a form of kind of chemical addiction.
Well, that’s three suggestions towards the causation.
What about the challenge to homosexuality? Well, have you got your Bibles? Let’s turn to them. Primarily, we as Christians are committed to God’s revelation in Scripture, and God has not left us ignorant of his opinion on these matters. Underlying the biblical perspective on homosexuality, are the foundational creation texts in Genesis 1 v 26, he made them, says God, in his image. He made them male and female. And then in 2 v 18, where God takes from Adam and creates Eve. And these support the divine design of a male and female monogamous relationship.
God puts them at the beginning. Genesis This is the beginning, and this is the basis for human relationships and society. And one could spend an hour just on these texts, and I’ve got about 2 minutes or 1 minute. Jesus and Paul, incidentally, both refer to these texts as foundations, for their instructions on sexual ethics. No suitable helper is found for Adam. So, God doesn’t make another Adam. God makes an Eve, and Eve is God’s divinely designed and presented helper, – help-meet, the one who stands alongside. The one who complements, the one who fulfils Adam, and they are fulfilled. And she is the one who is both the suitable partner, and also the sexual partner. And the two go together. It goes on and says and they were naked. And then it talks about leaving and cleaving and becoming one flesh.
The point is that God has designed, and God has decreed the most perfect, suitable fit, and that is a woman for a man, and a man for a woman. Male and female sexual relations are more than just kind of pragmatic. They are prophetic. A husband and wife together are prophetic. In Genesis 1, v26, it says He made them in his image. He made them male and female. And there is something about man and woman together, which speaks prophetically, and analogously of God in his own being. So, a man and woman, as God designed, is somehow an ontological analogy of God’s ontology. Okay? They reflect God’s being in their union, man and woman, two becoming one flesh, where there is mutuality, reciprocity, unity, and yet individuality. They model something of the same in God, his father, Son, and Holy Spirit, who knows himself in distinction, unity, and yet distinction.
And so a key interpretation, and theological undergirding, for our understanding of sexuality, must be the Trinity distinction, yet reciprocity and unity. Okay, not conformity. And so when we have a man with a man, or a woman with a woman, what we are seeing is not only is it not God’s design and best suitable partner, but we are seeing something that is in a sense idolatrous. It is something that is in a sense blasphemous. It is something that subverts what God has consecrated and ordained to be an analogy of the unity and diversity of the Godhead. Are you with me? Get the tape and follow it up. So, a marriage of man and woman speaks of God. A union of man and man, or woman and woman, subverts the image of God.
Then we’ve got the text in Leviticus. Everyone knows this text. Leviticus 18, verse 22 says,
‘You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female. It is an abomination.’.
And then two chapters, on, in 20, v 13 it says, Here’s the consequence,
‘If a man lies with another man as he would lie with a woman, he should be put to death.’
That was part of the Jewish law. But the interpretation of that seems fairly unequivocal.
Now, an objection is often made, and one hears this. Well, it was on Newsnight last week, week before last. It’s often made out that we are selective in citing these texts, but not others in Leviticus, which treat matters of diet and clothing. But the fact is the Old Testament law is very clear. There are three divisions. There is the ceremonial law, there is the civil law, and there is the moral law. Okay? And many of these things about dress and about diet are to do with ceremonial or civil law, but they are not to do with moral law.
How do we know this? When we get to Acts Chapter 15, verse 20, at the Council of Jerusalem, we see that when the report is given that Gentiles are becoming Christians, the instruction of these Jewish apostles is not, ‘They’ve got to obey all the law’. It says they’re freed from all the law, except those that pertain to idolatry and those that pertain to immorality. But don’t worry about eating all the food, and what they should dress, and whether they should be circumcised, and all of that stuff. – that’s civil, that’s ceremonial, but the moral, they stick by. No idols and no questionable morals.
We’ve already noted Romans 1 v 26 to 27. Let me just say a bit more about this here. Homosexual and lesbian sexual acts are Paul’s illustration. They’re an archetype of rebellion against God and of a world gone mad. It goes mad leaving God for idols. It goes mad leaving truth for a lie. It goes mad by leaving natural relations for unnatural. And Paul here in verse 18 calls it ‘Ungodliness unrighteousness and the suppression of truth’. He says homosexual acts, and he emphasizes ‘acts’, verse 26, are dishonorable, unnatural, and shameless.
And Paul makes it clear, that the sort of homosexual acts that are described here, because people say, ‘Well, there’s this particular sort’. People say it’s paederasty. It’s older men with, you know, younger boys or it’s just prostitution that’s at stake. No. Paul makes it clear that it’s wilful. They exchanged, there’s an act of the will. It’s volitional. He says it’s consensual with each other. It’s not someone abusing another one. It’s with each other. It’s mutual. It’s consensual. He says it’s unnatural, paraphrasis, against nature, and he says it’s ultimately harmful. You will receive in your body the due penalty, whatever he means by that.
Some people contend that the unnatural here, refers to gay men having heterosexual sex, or rather, heterosexual men having gay sex. But it’s very clear, the text is very clear on this, that the unnatural relations, contrary to nature, are based on a passion that both men have for each other. A member of the same sex. So, this is nothing to do with sex outside of your own particular taste. These are men who have a passion for sex with men, and women who have a passion for sex with women. There is no way that one can read into that, as many seek to do in this current debate, that this is somehow people acting against their nature – Well, it’s unnatural if a heterosexual has sex with a homosexual or something like that – why would you do it anyway? Why would Paul base such an argument on it?
It is also contended that Paul here is condemning Paederasty, which is, as I’ve said, sex with young men. But the Greek emphasizes mutuality, passion of men with men. And incidentally, the reference to women having sex with women makes it clear that there’s nothing here to do with paederasty.
There are a couple of other verses. One Corinthians 6 v 9 to 10. Here it says,
‘The unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of heaven.’
And the NIV is wrong. Here it says male prostitutes nor homosexuals. There are two words here in the Greek. One is Malakoi, the other is Arsenokoitai. Malakoi, literally means soft, or effeminate. And according to Bauer, Arndt and Gingrich’s Greek lexicon, which is the definitive work on the matter, (cost £87.50), he says this is where a person is a passive partner who, quote, allows himself to be abused.
But there’s a decision. There’s volition. The second word is arsenokoitai. Arsen means male. Koité means bed or sex. And this refers to a more dominant partner in the sex act. And so Paul says those who practice homosexuality, you know, the dominant, or the or the passive, whatever. They are unrighteous and in their actions, if they continue in them, will not enter the kingdom of heaven. We also see this in 1 Timothy, 1 v 9 and 10, for your notes, and I ain’t got time to go into it.
I’ve already mentioned that my brother is ‘a homosexual’ and I remember sitting with him once. He took me out for dinner and I said,
‘Oliver, I said, why don’t you go to one of those churches that welcome and, you know, a very tolerant about gay sex, you know, a liberal Catholic sort of church?’
Now, I wasn’t trying to be a hypocrite and a fudge. I just thought I was being pragmatic, get him in a church, get him in a context of grace, get him in a place of worship, get him having the weekly Eucharist and maybe God will get him free.
And he just replied to me. He said, ‘Simon, I can read the Bible. I know what it says’.
My brother’s not a hypocrite.
This week I was with a dear friend of mine who is also practising homosexual, runs one of the college lesbian and gay societies, and we meet every week for coffee. He’s a great friend, and I really love him. And he asked me. I’ve never shown him after a long, long time, many, many times in meeting, he said,
‘What does the Bible say?’
I said, ‘Well, do you really want to know?’
He said, ‘Yeah’.
I said, ‘Well, I’m not sure’.
He said, ‘No, I want to know. Show me the verses, because maybe they’re ambiguous’.
So I opened up the Bible and I just, I didn’t comment on them. I said, ‘Here they are’.
And he read them very slowly, very carefully. He’s a very intellectual young man. And he finished it. He said,
‘Well, there’s no mistake in that, is there?’
I believe that only an a priori liberal commitment to the legitimacy of gay sex, and a casuistic slippery treatment of the texts, often which are incomprehensible in their argumentation to a trained Exegete, can evade and avoid the plain and clear meaning of the text. You could not read that out of the text, but you might be able to read it into it, – the biblical argument.
There are several other arguments. I’ll just give you headings. I haven’t got time to go into them. There is the traditional argument. This argument says, for a thousand years of Jewish history before the church came along, followed by 2000 years of Christian history, we’ve had these texts and the texts have consistently by the church fathers, and by the Jewish rabbis, and have been interpreted in the way I’ve just interpreted them as a prohibition against homosexual activity. And what we are being asked to swallow is that over 3000 years of consistent hermeneutics which apply the text as I’ve applied them; to prohibit gay sex, – are wrong. And now in the last 35 years, suddenly they’ve found the key, which actually means that they say the very opposite of what they say. And gay sex is permissible. And we say, we stand with, we’d rather stand with tradition and people who want to read the plain meaning of the text, rather than the 35 year old liberal view.
There is an argument of teleology. This is the argument from purpose and design. And, you know, as one bishop said on Newsnight, ‘The penis fits with the vagina.’ There are problems philosophically with some of the argument, but essentially it boils down to; that if one were a Darwinian determinist, one would conclude that homosexuality is a devolution of the species. Because if everyone were to be exclusively homosexual without the intervention of IVF, or science, or having to have sex against one’s own nature, with someone of the opposite sex, humanity would be extinct in one generation. And so I believe, that somehow inherent in homosexuality is a contradiction to life.
Ther is a medical argument. We make a value judgment against smoking. We make a value judgment against alcoholism. But I tell you, to be actively homosexual is to bring upon oneself physiologically, a whole host of illnesses, – to reduce one’s life span significantly, just ask an actuary, to have an increased likelihood of liver disease, hepatitis B, HIV, frequently fatal rectal and other cancers, bowel and other infectious diseases, and a much higher risk of suicide.
People say, well, that’s just because society doesn’t accept them. (laughs), No, society doesn’t accept the church.
Then there’s the psychological, which I haven’t got time to go in. But what I want to say is this, knowing that the consequence of a homosexual lifestyle leads to so much physical and psychological turmoil for that individual. Who would want to encourage someone in that? The loving thing, surely, is not to bless them in that, but to throw them a lifeline. And we as the church, that’s what we seek to do. We seek to reach out with the love of Christ and say,
‘Let us lead you to wholeness. Let us lead you to freedom. Let us lead you to be the person God has made you to be and called you to be. Come from the darkness into the light. Come into wholeness. And it’s through the cross. It’s through the blood of Jesus and the Spirit.’
Let me just finish with some headings. This is my last point. Just a few headings and then I’ll shut up. I started by saying ‘We love you homosexuals’, and God loves homosexuals. When it says in John 3 v 16,
‘God so loved the world that he sent his son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but should have everlasting life.’
He says he sent his son not to condemn the world, but to save it. Homosexuals are part of that world, a small part, but they’re a part of it and an important part. And God loves them.
My friend, not my friend, but someone who I’ve had quite a bit of correspondence with over the years and who deeply moved me. This is a chap called Martin Hallett, who runs True Freedom Trust, which is a ministry to help young men struggling with homosexuality to come into freedom. I once asked him, I said,
‘Do homosexuals need to be delivered? Is this a demon?’
I mean, this was a long time ago. I’ve subsequently read a lot more, and met a lot more. And he just said,
‘Yes, they do.’
But he said,
‘You don’t, it’s not some gay spirit, not a camp spirit or something like that.’
He said they need deliverance from a spirit of rejection, because essentially, they rejected themselves, or perceived themselves rejected by their parents. Whether they were or not, is a different matter, but they perceived it. So, there’s a perceived rejection and all that craving, and that neurotic compulsive disorder of sexual grabbing is to feed that sense of rejection.
And he says, ‘So we deliver them from a spirit of rejection.’
The problem is, so often the church puts another spirit of rejection on them. And we need to repent as a church. And we need to say, ‘Come, we love you. We welcome you. Come bring all your baggage. And I’ll tell you some of my baggage. And let’s together come to the cross’.
I believe the church must be a place where homosexuals are welcomed. And that this particular sin is not paraded. I don’t think it really is paraded, but there is a perception it is. So, we have to be very careful that we don’t single out this one sin. Incidentally, nowhere in scripture singles out this one sin, even in Romans, it goes on to talk about anger and judgement. So, this sin is always part of a list and God doesn’t isolate this one and say this is a real biggie. He says, you, you’re proud, arrogant so-and-so. That’s even bigger.
I have a friend who’s a vicar, a diocese missionary in Manchester. He says that he wants to put a big sign over the church saying, ‘All homosexuals are welcome’.
He says, ‘let’s have a chat’.
He said, ‘Let’s have a church, let’s have a service for them. Let’s just let them know we’re here, because they don’t believe it, and we need to let them know. Okay’.
Second, the church must be a safe place where people have time to work through to freedom. There are various organisations that seek to help people come through to sexual freedom, invariably run by people who were themselves homosexual. The idea that it’s nature, is simply not true. It’s nurture. But you can undo the nurture by the power of the spirit, and re nurture them into the image of Christ, as God intended them to be. And we need to be a place that sets people free. And I think that we need to be a place where there’s grace for slip ups, not condemnation.
Gay folk need positive male non-erotic friendships, where they belong and where they are encouraged. We need to foster something like with David and Jonathan, who talked of his extraordinary love for Jonathan. We need to foster that. We men need to work out how to do it. We’re not very good at it. But I think it’s a gospel issue.
The church must actively resist homophobia where it exists. I haven’t found much of it in the church, but it is there. And sometimes I see bits of it in my own soul. But we must resist it and bring and submit that to the the control of the love of Christ. I believe the church must out love the resentment and the anger, and the pain that many homosexuals feel. As we’ve said, it’s rooted in rejection, and we need to out-love it. We need to show more love, that just subsumes all that pain and rejection that they feel. But ultimately, loving, means to challenge with the truth. And to bring that spiritual surgery, that sets them free from that sickness that is there.
The church must be true to her biblical norms and sources, and we simply do not accommodate ourselves to a prevailing worldview. God sets the worldview for the church, not the world. And God has spoken. And you need to realise that when Moses gave his sexual ethic 3000 years ago, that was counterculture. And you need to realise that when Paul spoke out against homosexuality 2000 years ago, that was counterculture. And when we speak out against it today, it will be counterculture. But the kingdom is counterculture, and the Kingdom of God turns things that are upside down, right side up. And that’s what we’re about.
More things: The church must challenge the prevailing worldview. That which I think is like, ‘copula, ergo sum’. I don’t know if that’s right, but ‘I have sex therefore I am.’ And we need to say, actually, no, my identity is not in my sexuality. Jesus was a perfect man, a perfect human in every way, and yet went through life as a virgin. So, identity is, you know, I don’t have to be sexually active. And our identity is not in our sexuality. We need to teach that, and inculcate that it’s not whether I am, or I’m not having great sex. It’s whether I know that I am a child of God, redeemed and accepted in the beloved. That’s the more important worldview we must inculcate.
And lastly, the church needs to be a place of hope, where those who battle with this lifestyle orientation can be shown the way out. And there is a way out, we want to out the gays who are out. We want to get them out of it and help them out of it and lead them out of it through the cross, through Christ, through the power of the spirit, reformatting the nurture and nature that’s gone wrong. One Corinthians 6 v 11 talks about, lists homosexuality, and then it says, ‘Such were some of you.’ Tense – ‘You no longer are’. ‘Such were’. Christ sets people free. Christ makes people whole. He’s doing it for me. He’s doing it for you. And he can do it for the whole world outside our doors.
This week I told you I was with this friend of mine who’s a homosexual. Just a dear guy. And I told you we were looking at all these verses and he said,
‘Yeah, it was fairly clear’.
And then I wanted to find another one. So, I went to the back of the Bible where there’s a concordance, and I was looking up in the H’s for homosexuality. Next door were the L’s. And he said to me,
‘Look at all that love.’
There were three words for homosexuality in my concordance. There are about 300 on love. And I think we need that kind of a balance in our church. Amen. Amen?
*applause*
Thank you, Simon, so much. Well, let’s just reflect on that as we sing our closing hymn. We’re going to, as we finish the service, just be available to talk with people on Wednesday. We had a very good question and answer session, which we can’t have today, but we’re available to talk. We also offer prayer for those who would like prayer for any subject. As usual, we have a good prayer team who are trained to pray. So that’s what we want to do as we finish this service. Thank you for listening. Thank you for your attentiveness. Please remain prayerful and faithful, and I just want to underline this wonderful, wonderful sense that comes out of one Corinthians 6 that Simon just quoted. He’s talking about all these things that can go on that affect our nature, our lifestyle. And then he says, “and such were some of you, but you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and by the spirit of our God.” Let’s just stand up and thank God that he is the one who washes us and makes us holy and gives us His Holy Spirit..
(Charlie Cleverley, Rector).
Chrissie 