Given at Holy Trinity,  South Wimbledon

As Jesus sat at dinner in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples

In the name of the Living God, Father Son and Holy Spirit . Amen

I wonder what you feel like when you are asked to go to a party?

 Sometimes , just sometimes , I forget myself at parties and have a whale of a time - perhaps if the host makes sure I know someone to talk to , or if the food and wine are very good , or if old friends are there. But sometimes they can be dismal affairs - I have memories - do you - of evenings eking out the conversation and wishing that I could go home!

If I feel like that, it's usually because I am not sitting by anyone I like or because the values of the function are just not mine! I remember one ghastly affair in the Lord Mayor's Parlour in Westminster when a glitzy lady came over to me and hissed in my ear - don't talk to women darling , talk to MEN - after all that's what we're all here for! I remember turning puce and slinking in to a corner then thinking it may be what you're here for but nobody told me!

Luckily for me, Lord Mayors of Westminster change every year and I had some far happier times after that, but it can be touch and go

 

The general experience of parties - particularly who you sit by and who sits by you, says something about you, who you like being with, who likes you!

So its intriguing to note who sat with Jesus at his party in his house - tax collectors - people who had put themselves outside the chosen children of Israel by disobeying Israel's holy law, by taking money away from their own people and handing it over to Rome , usually at huge interest so that they ended up rich too! They were drawn to this Rabbi!

And he liked them - Jesus invited a tax collector in to his inner circle. Matthew is called to be one of the twelve rather than being disregarded by association because of his job - Jesus took risks with people, he entrusted himself to them, and was willing for them to become who they would in his company, for good and ill.

It has become hard for us to imagine how unusual it was for Jesus to do this! - a rabbi , a teacher of the Jewish law consorting with those who break the law not as an act of condescension - you can bet your life they wouldn't have eaten with him if they had glimpsed for one moment that he was patronising them! - but as an act of showing them what God is like and that is merciful, compassionate  , feeling with and for , trying to understand , seeing the person behind the association, attractive, compelling, loving.

Lionel Blue gave a rather wonderful picture of this mercy this week on thought for the day. I wonder if you heard it? I was a wee bit worried when I heard that Lionel Blue was coming on the air because I know that he is getting very doddery and might be embarrassing. Well embarrassing he was and brilliant too! He had been gradually crumbling in to old age and admitted it. He ended up in hospital with an illness and drugs which made him very sick. One night, unable in the dark to make it to the basin in time he was sick on the floor. Crawling around in the dark, trying to mop himself up with tissues, he started to blub. Then he heard a voice. It wasn't God himself but it may as well have been. It was an old man from the neighbouring bed, weak himself and connected up to numerous tubes. He was on the floor,  kneeling down beside him , and whispering into his ear "Don't worry mate ,I'm right beside you”  The ill man in the other bed had not seen Lionel Blue as a strange Jewish man with a prayer cap , a loud voice , loads of visitors , a bit self - pitying , an aging gay. He had seen someone like him , in need of help - I'm right beside you mate

In ordinary life , when not in the crisis of hospital , or flood , or was we find this mercy difficult!

For human beings make groups, safe groups, like-able groups, groups with bonds of affection and similar values to give us our identity. From cradle to grave we find places to belong.

And that's ok - very ok. What's not so ok is when we elevate what we like, and agree with, and find comfortable, to the realm of the Holy. What's definitely not OK is to say that because we like something or someone, then  that's what and who God likes too!.

Then we get in real trouble - the trouble Jesus tried to save us from with his very life, in all that he said and did and gave.

- we start to get in trouble with bits of ourselves, I cannot possibly be gay as a person or ambitious as a woman or wise as a child or at my heights of creativity as a pensioner! Others will find that part of me unacceptable so I had better pretend I am not that! We dull ourselves down , cut bits of ourselves off , and then can become very snide with those living more fulfilling lives than we are and castigate them as sinful.

- we start to elevate what we like and admire to the realms of the holy we create a sick society. We in Britain like what is clean and open and honest and hardworking and prosperous and respectful and kind. So we tend not to like adolescents, hoodies, gangs, young people hanging around housing estates in the dark, dangerous, powerful, leering. We neglect them until their outsideness becomes murderous. We don't spend good money on understanding the loveless and the abandoned instead leaving it until it is way too late, then locking them up to become yet more hardened. There is something crazy about where wealth resides in this country in comparison to how much we spend on deprived children, on those struggling with serious mental illness, on the homeless, the asylum seeker and the old. There is something mad about the differentiation in wages between those who play football and those who look after the most vulnerable members of our families.

-  and at our very worst the human  race starts to justify atrocities like genocide when we judge others as not deserving of respect because their being gets in the way of our being in some way.

Even the Church is understandably, but sadly, good at making holy groups which are elevated in status way above other groups.

It' s an understandable flaw because the Church is a vast institution and you cannot run a vast institution without order and order includes among other things the creation of groups.

But it is very sad when the order, the rule, the so-called norm overcomes the needs and talents of the person standing in front of us - when if you like we don't allow Matthew to grow in to a mature disciple and leader in Christ's Church because Matthew is female, or gay and with a partner, or young or old or black or ill or poor.

I work for the Charity known as Inclusive Church which this local Church has sponsored to the tune of £1000 for which we are extremely grateful. In Inclusive Church we are trying to do 3 things - Firstly we are trying to make strategies for change so that women may become bishops , gay people with partners be ordained and consecrated , people of colour more recognised as leaders within the Church, and the millennium goals honoured by us all. We create resources to enable church people to talk abut these things and we offer a network of support to those already involved in such work.

 I felt called to do this work because in Soho as the Rector  I had become very close to many people who felt themselves to be unwanted, outside the respect of the Church , outside the norms of so called acceptable society , outside the opportunities in our society to prosper and do well.

Early in my ministry the bombing of the Admiral Duncan Pub thrust me in to care for the gay community on Old Compton Street where I learnt much about how its flamboyance covered over an enormous sadness at not feeling permitted to be ordinary. Then the Prostitutes Union asked to hold a press conference at St Anne's and when I said yes to my shock and horror they turned up in animal masks , not wanting to be known on the streets or in the meeting - the masks a terrible parody of how inhumanely they saw themselves and expected to be treated. Then I came to know a refugee family well . They came from Southern Sudan where many family members had been murdered in the Civil War. Though liking Soho for its lack of racial abuse I wept for the father in the family , a dentist in his own country who could find no similar work here and spent his days in front of the telly , depressed and feeling useless. 

At the same time I had seen the confidence and grace which can flourish from just institutions and just laws coming on stream.

We had a super school in Soho where the children of the same Sudanese family , with years of gentle care , looked promising to do very well indeed and prosper in their own life time in our country. It is a brilliant Church of England Primary School serving the whole of the local community instead of simply its "own”.

I saw the Gender equality Bill, its inception celebrated at a service at St Anne's mean liberation for many transgendered people who would no longer have to state time after time what they had gone through to be who they are now.

And of course the Civil Partnership Act brought freedom, joy and social recognition to many gay and lesbian people finally able to get married, just like everyone else, a real step on the way towards equality which some people in my congregation who had been together for 50 years took advantage of.

Witnessing the lives of Soho people, getting caught up in these oppressive and liberating  events  inevitably changed me - taught me to know mercy and indeed of course also to receive it myself, to accept myself as I accepted them and because they accepted me!

And that gives me a passion for this work because I have known at first hand what happens when we do not allow the personhood of people to grow and flourish. At best their life is a half-life , half-led , at worst it becomes deathly, attracted to death.

Inclusive Church has a huge job to do - it is not just about a number of causes , it is about changing ourselves , paying attention and giving respect to the whole of ourselves in our journey towards living the love of God known in Christ Jesus.

And it involves thinking and acting on behalf of the society we live in - that those we might want to put outside remain protected by the law so that they remain inside , and that those who feel so outside that they want to destroy, begin to have their needs heard and attended to.

We won't do all of that as Inclusive Church - we can't - what we can do is become a nudge to the Church of England to invite Matthew in and not in some condescending way to sit in the back pew, but to become a shaper of the party, a leader ,  one who invites others in because he has known mercy

I want to end with a picture which I carry away from the Lambeth Conference this year. As you know Inclusive Church was there and ran a lively stall and very successful events. But what remains in my mind is not so much the events and the stall so much as the daily life of the Church we formed with other progressive groups there together.

We in the Fringe were cut off from where  the Bishops were meeting by a huge wire fence. We had different coloured lanyards and most of us were not invited to their worship or their eating places. So we became a conference for ourselves! We prayed together early in the morning before people went off to deliver our  newsletter on campus; we did Bible study together at 11.00am, before people split into groups and pairs for more work and lunch; we held talks in the afternoons before a common review of the day and supper together ; we supported each other's events in the evenings and through all that helped and welcomed each other , argued and groaned , shared houses and food and most important of all our life stories , vulnerabilities and awareness of where we were on the journey with Jesus towards God. Leaders and followers emerged , pastors and cooks emerged , teachers and artists emerged , writers and carers - were we not Church too , and can we not find a way forwards in which the bishops do not need to be fenced in and all our gifts are recognised and shared. I left with a future vision of a huge festival for the Anglican Church where we may have very different views and roles so indeed need to meet in different tents but where we all recognise and welcome each other at the banquet of the Lamb who gave himself that we might live, fully and together.

As I am unlikely to be the Archbishop of Canterbury in my life-time (hurry up David , we need you) my vision of the Lambeth Conference is unlikely to take place. But I can hold it as a vision of how churches like yours and mine can meet each Sunday until more and more Matthews find us or we find them Amen.