Sunday 27 July 2025
Liverpool Cathedral
Coming Home: A Service Marking Liverpool Pride
Luke 15.11-32
I brought a little friend—hope you don’t mind. [The friend is a cuddly toy ET.]
Now, when I preach to a new crowd, I like to give them a little test. So here’s a question for you: What’s ET short for?
Cos he’s only got little legs.
It was a test of your reactions, really, because it’s funny how you go to different churches, and in some places you crack a joke and they fall over themselves laughing. In other places they’re a bit, Oo-er, not sure whether we should be having a laugh in church, and you might get a few chuckles. Then in other places you’re just met with deadpan looks. Perhaps they’re just the most honest.
Anyway, the reason I brought this little guy is because he had that phrase, didn’t he? ‘ET phone home.’ And tonight’s service is all about ‘home.’ So it was a pretty simple connection, really—I remembered ET was sitting there on my shelf, and I thought, Hmm, that would make a good prop, and I was delighted with myself, because simple things delight simple minds.
But then I got to thinking about my childhood, and how vulnerable I felt watching that film in the theatre. I watched it once in my native Canada, and then we moved to the UK and watched it again with my cousins, because theatrical releases are always a bit later over here. And I remember getting to the end of the film—which still makes me bawl like an absolute baby—and I was suddenly very aware of my cousin Andrew sitting right next to me. So I tried my damnedest to hold in the tears. To this day I find it difficult to hold in tears. If I go, I go, and if I stifle tears too much, they end up coming out in snorts and honks and oinks and all kinds of weird noises. But in my juvenile mind—I was only five or six, although I remember it very vividly—there was no way in hell I was going to let my cousin see I was crying at ET: The Extra-Terrestrial (that’s what ET really stands for, in case you didn’t remember), so I tensed up and endured it and probably leaked a bit but managed to avoid full-on sobbing.
And that vulnerability ties in with today’s theme, too, because home is a place where you can be utterly vulnerable, utterly open, utterly yourself, and you know you’re safe. You know you are accepted.
You all think I’m wearing this grey dress because it’s fashionable, and certainly I cut a fairly svelte figure, don’t I? Fiver on Temu. But in all seriousness, I wear it because it’s a sign of the vows I’ve taken, as a Franciscan friar, to follow Jesus Christ in the way of St Francis of Assisi. Francis noted that the shape of the habit resembled the cross, and for him it was a sign of Christ’s openness, his vulnerability, arms wide open, body exposed, nothing hidden. St Paul spoke of Christ in this way, too, in his letter to the Philippians: Though being in very nature God, Christ did not consider equality with God something to be taken advantage of, but instead chose humility, chose humanity, chose to suffer with us and for us, even to the point of the pain and the shame of the cross. And so I try—not always successfully, but I try—to live what some Franciscans have called ‘the radically unprotected life.’ Because when you are able to be vulnerable before God and before others, you are able truly to love and be loved.
And this garment is called a habit because I literally inhabit it. It becomes my home, a sign of my identity as Christ-filled Dave, out in the world.
And all this brings us back to that theme: Home.
The parable we heard was all about home, and in particular home as a picture of what it means to have a place in the kingdom of God.
You’ve probably heard the story before, as it’s one of the most popular and cherished of Jesus’ parables. A wayward son returns to his father, wanting to be received back into the household. He’s not even asking for a true home in the sense we would understand it. His intention is to beg for scraps, to be taken in as a servant or a slave, because at this point in his life, even a life of servitude, with a roof over his head and food in his belly, is better than his former miserable, lonely existence.
But the son does not even get the chance to beg. When he returns, his father is already looking out for him, and runs to embrace him. The so-called prodigal son is welcomed not as a servant, but as a child. As family. The prodigal has even prepared a speech, but it seems the father doesn’t need to hear it. He’s already preparing a party, because his beloved child has returned to him.
The prodigal makes himself completely vulnerable. Here I am. Warts and all. The last thing he’s expecting is hugs and kisses and tears and feasts and music and gifts of fine robes and jewellery and an inheritance restored, but that’s exactly what he gets. He has come home.
A saint once said: ‘You have made us for yourself, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.’
This is a consistent theme of Scripture, from the Hebrew Bible right through to Revelation, when St John envisions a new heaven and earth where God makes a home with people, and people make their home with God. Home is the great Christian hope.
If you are gay or trans or queer, perhaps you know more than most—or at least in a different, unique way—what it is to be vulnerable. I experienced great shame and fear throughout my teenage years, because I belonged to a church that regularly made it clear I had to reject my gayness if I was to remain acceptable to God. And so I stayed deeply closeted and, frankly, terrified until I was 27.
This year marks 20 years since, after a lot of spluttering and stalling and stammering, I said the three hardest words ever: ‘Mom. I’m. Gay.’ You know what? I was truly home. I made myself vulnerable, and with the grace, kindness and unfettered love that comes only from God, my mother embraced me.
We haven’t all had families that accepted us. Many of us know all too well what it is to be rejected by those who were supposed to love us, whether that’s church or friends or family.
Jesus, sensing that his calling was to proclaim freedom to the oppressed, made it his business to turn things on their head. He sought out those who were despised, and he proclaimed God’s love for them. He found the excluded and he included them among his friends. He cut the powerful down to size and raised up those who had nothing. He saw those who were put to shame and gave them a place of honour at his table.
In his words and his deeds, Jesus did just what the father in the parable did: He ran to the vulnerable and gave them a home. And in Jesus, God runs to us with abandon and welcomes us home.
God sees our imperfections. God sees our failures. God sees our sins—and that can be a scary word, because for some of us, that word ‘sin’ has been wielded like a weapon against us. But whatever our sins might be, being lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, non-binary, queer, intersex or asexual is not one of them.
I’ve come to see that being gay is something God loves about me. God celebrates my gayness.
My selfishness, my gluttony, my tendency to take out my frustrations by being snippy and smart-assed with the people I love, my wanting to look the other way instead of tackling injustice head-on—they’re sins, and God is working on them. But my gayness? That comes from God.
It is not easy to be vulnerable. It is easier to put up a wall and defend ourselves against others, against those who try to love us, against God. To love and be loved is risky. But it was a risk God was prepared to take on us. Christians call this risk the Incarnation. We see it in the beautiful reredos above the high altar, one of my favourite spots in this whole cathedral: God makes a home in an infant in a manger. God becomes flesh, like us, in Jesus Christ. God has taken a chance on us. Can we take a chance on God? The reward of accepting the divine embrace is home: a place where we can be completely ourselves; a place where we can be vulnerable and therefore, beyond that, can flourish as the people God created us to be; a place where we can love and are truly, fully and eternally loved.
Amen.