Sermon given on Sunday 22 February at St Margaret of Antioch, Toxteth
I must thank the parishioner who recommended I switch on the BBC last week, to watch a drama filmed not far from here—in and around the Georgian Quarter and the DIngle as well as a bit further north, in Everton and Crosby—in the old, old days of 1994.
It was fun to spot the familiar locations; perhaps not so much fun to spot the familiar themes: sin and guilt, secrecy and shame, injustice, prejudice and corruption in high places.
The film was Priest, which I believe you still have a couple of months to catch on iPlayer. Central to its story is an idealistic young Catholic priest whose neat and tidy expectations are thrown into disarray when he comes to serve in a deprived, tight-knit Liverpool parish; he is forced to confront the reality not only of the world around him, but of his own sexuality and longings for love and companionship.
It took me back to my own days in the proverbial gay closet, which I can now happily say I escaped, though not until after much angst, some 21 years ago.
Writing in 1999, the American author and advocate Peggy Campolo wrote: ‘Gay people are not the only people who live in closets. People live in closets because they are afraid that they will not be loved or accepted if they are honest about who they are.’
‘My own time in a closet,’ she wrote, ‘began when I was nine years old, and it lasted for thirty-eight years.’
Peggy related how she was brought up in a loving Christian family and attended a Baptist church, where her father was pastor. And her secret was that no matter how hard she prayed, ‘God just did not exist for me.’ And so, feeling that to do otherwise would be to reject not only God, but the father she loved so much, she pretended to believe for almost four decades. This was Peggy’s closet.
Then, one day, she found herself having to comfort an elderly friend who, though a Christian, found herself suddenly afraid and struggling to have hope as death approached.
Having only ever pretended to believe since the age of nine, Peggy decided she would tell her friend Helen all that she had ever heard about Jesus Christ and going to heaven. ‘After all my years in church I knew the story well,’ she wrote. ‘Helen held my hand for dear life, and I know she heard me. And as I shared the story of God’s grace and love with my dying friend, the presence of God became real to me—comforting, close, and very, very real.’
I reread that essay at least once a year. Peggy titled it, ‘In God’s House There Are Many Closets.’
In our reading from Genesis today, closets presumably hadn’t been invented yet, but Adam and Eve were able to find some fig leaves to cover their nakedness. Knowing things had gone awry, their instinct was to feel ashamed and to hide. Were we to read further on, we’d come to the part where they heard God approach and hid themselves among the trees. But God came looking.
The entire story of the Bible, in fact, from Genesis to Revelation, is the story of the God who comes looking.
We all hide away—fearful of sins both real and imagined—scared that our failures will catch up with us. This season of Lent is an opportunity to bare everything before God and to admit, along with Adam and Eve, that we are afraid and that we hide. On Wednesday we received ashes on our heads as an acknowledgement of the often-difficult truth: We are all mortal; we have all sinned; and we will all die. We heard these words: ‘From dust you came, and to dust you will return.’ But then came words of encouragement: ‘Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’
Because there is one who was not afraid to bare everything before God. In Eden, Adam was terrified and ran for cover, but Jesus Christ willingly endured the wilderness where there was nowhere to hide. Utterly vulnerable to the elements, he was vulnerable, too, to every temptation Satan could throw his way; but he overcame. For forty days he was tested, and proved himself to be faithful.
For these forty days of Lent, we may be fasting from something ourselves—perhaps meat or chocolate or something we find irresistible and difficult to live without—but whatever we do or don’t do for Lent can only ever be a dim reflection of Christ’s perseverance through temptation, because our ability to overcome is not the important thing—it is faithfulness to the one who did overcome; it is trust in the one who, as the author of Hebrews writes, ‘in every respect has been tested as we are, yet without sin.’ This is why we can approach God with boldness, with confidence, and receive mercy in our time of need.
Honesty before God is a scary prospect, but it brings great liberation. There is freedom in baring our true selves, warts and all, before our creator. If you haven’t yet taken up some reading or some sort of personal habit of prayer or devotion for Lent, can I suggest beginning by praying Psalm 139? It is one of my favourite psalms, because it reveals a God from whom we can’t hide, even if we try. ‘Where can I flee from your presence?’ the psalmist writes. ‘If I climb up to heaven, you are there, [and] if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.’
We may as well give up trying to flee from God, because he knows our thoughts; he knows the words on our tongues before we utter them; he is behind us and before us. We cannot escape him—but in a very good way, for he pursues us and hangs onto us not in order to shame us or to judge us, but because he created us and he knows us. He is the father of Jesus’ parable, who watches and waits and hopes for return of the prodigal son, and such is his love, he comes running out to embrace him, caring not for the past but only joyful for the future.
This week we began the journey towards the cross, where the same vulnerability Christ showed in the wilderness is most fully seen: The Son of God, arms open wide, body and soul exposed to the cruelty of the world, to the evil of this present age. He carries us with him in his suffering and death, so that he may also carry us with him in his triumphant resurrection and his ascension to be with the Father. In this, St Paul says, he undoes what Adam did. Just as one man’s disobedience brought death, so one man’s obedience brings us life; where Adam’s actions plunged is into shame and condemnation, Christ’s actions raise us into a place of grace; into a restored relationship with God.
‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust’ is only half the story. It tells of our mortality, of the things that tempt us and test us, of the dustiness of our closets and hiding-places. The same God who called Adam to show himself now calls us to show ourselves, and in Christ he will carry us out of our shame and into the light.
Amen.