Joy to the World, or to No one: a Response to the Archbishop of Westminster

So, I haven’t blogged for most of 2012. Sorry about that. To make up for it, here’s a new blog post for Christmas and the New Year, inspired by probably everything that’s been occupying my head for the last… God knows how long.

This year – like every year before it, and every year ahead – has been one of good news, and the worst news imaginable. I will admit to having experienced it as a horrific rollercoaster of elation and despair. I’ve been an unwilling sponge for the News: unable to turn away from stories of accusation and prejudice, death and destruction. I’ve been caught up in it, identified with it, considered myself among everyone affected, to the detriment of my health. If the good news, I’ve thought to myself almost daily, is not good news for everyone, it isn’t good news for anyone. If I receive it as good news, let it not just be because it benefits me.

 

There’s a sense in which the Christmas-sermon-as-political-vehicle espoused by Vincent Nichols, the Archbishop of Westminster, is both inappropriate and utterly inevitable. On one level, Christmas is a time to lay down politics, to clear the stable of as much animal dung as possible and make room for the real focal-point. On the other hand, though, even the birth of Jesus, who we are told appeared during the massacre of the innocents ordained by Herod, was a political act. His birth was no good news for established worldly powers of the time. It would unbalance our notion of power for all time to come. The government would be toppled from its pedestal and re-established on the shoulders of an Innocent. The last would be first, and whatever we did for the least of these (not for the kings or kingdoms of Earth, and not for our local religious congregations) would be rewarded in heaven. And more than that, the least of these would receive the greatest reward of all: they (and only they) would inherit the Kingdom of God. Not everyone would like it. Not everyone does.

 

So, when I read that Nichols had used his sermon as a platform to express his fears of an alleged ‘redefinition of marriage’, my first thought was ‘Well, OK. It’s Christmas, so politics, fine. But not this. Not again.’ It seemed like a rich move after the recent massacre of innocents in America, which transformed everyone's Christmas 2012 and shifted us away from all trivialities. But reading the story again in the Huffington Post, my eye was drawn to something which I've been mulling over since. Nichols – like others before him – felt it necessary to point out that his objections to ‘gay marriage’ (inverted commas because whoever it includes, it's marriage if the state allows it to be) were validated because a majority echoed his view:

 

The religious leader claimed that during a "period of listening", those who responded were "7-1 against same-sex marriage".

 

Now, one part of the Christmas message we can all take home is this: if your first concern is for a ‘moral majority’ – or any kind of majority – be very, very careful. But that much is obvious. I wasn't going to respond, I wouldn't have put virtual pen to paper, if my mind hadn't then turned  straight away to a surprising scripture, and started making connections. It was surprising because until fairly recently, the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 was a primary scripture used against homosexuality. Most scholars now agree that it can’t be used in such a way; at the very least, there are far more important meanings in it, some of which trump the ‘traditional reading’. There is no relation between the sins of Sodom suggested by the rest of scripture (pride, power, inhospitality and greed among them) and the modern concept of ‘sodomy’, making the ‘anti-gay’ interpretation untennable. But one scene in the story not only evades the anti-gay reading, it speaks caution to anyone impressed by the Archbishop's 7-1 ‘period of listening’ result. I’ve included the entire story here, without numbered verses.

Abraham Pleads for Sodom

 

When the men got up to leave, they looked down toward Sodom, and Abraham walked along with them to see them on their way. Then the Lord said, “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am about to do? Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him. For I have chosen him, so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him.”

 

Then the Lord said, “The outcry against Sodom and Gomorrah is so great and their sin so grievous that I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.”

 

The men turned away and went toward Sodom, but Abraham remained standing before the Lord. Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing—to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

 

The Lord said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”

 

Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city for lack of five people?”

 

“If I find forty-five there,” he said, “I will not destroy it.”

 

Once again he spoke to him, “What if only forty are found there?”

 

He said, “For the sake of forty, I will not do it.”

 

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak. What if only thirty can be found there?”

 

He answered, “I will not do it if I find thirty there.”

 

Abraham said, “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, what if only twenty can be found there?”

 

He said, “For the sake of twenty, I will not destroy it.”

 

Then he said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there?”

 

He answered, “For the sake of ten, I will not destroy it.”

 

When the Lord had finished speaking with Abraham, he left, and Abraham returned home.

 

This year, I have been just one man, pleading. I have found myself at various points feeling that everything was so bad, it may as well go up in smoke; we’re too far gone. Too much evil is done by one to the other, and good is not winning; it may win in the end, but how long do we have to wait? I’ve avoided becoming an atheist by the skin of my teeth, not because I don’t believe in God (truth is, I’m not sure anymore, certainty usually breeds arrogance, but I err on the side of belief) but because I don’t want to begin there in any conversation. I want to begin at how awful we humans are, and whether there is anyone left who is prepared to love, accept, and not judge. And if there is, please can they show themselves? For me, that aim is as much a secular-humanist aim as it is a Christian one.

 

I don’t see God destroying our cities any time soon – even if we do have our itchy fingers hovering over the self-destruct button – but at the very least, maybe this story celebrates the 1 in 7, even the 1 in 700. If we do end up destroying ourselves, it will be through our selfish commitment to our houses of cards; houses which become apartment blocks; apartment blocks which become cities, which need knocking down to be started again. The Occupy movement spoke of the 1%. Christians joined the movement, and for good reason. In this story, we can imagine the 1% pleading that if one man has a single God-conscious thought, may the city not be demolished because of him. And if it is, let him be saved, considered one of the righteous, wherever he is from, and whatever cultural context he rose up in (we are all sponges for our culture; ‘righteous Sodomite’ was never an oxymoron).

 

God looks to the heart of individuals – not to the ‘moral majority’ of cities, and certainly not to the ones who come out on top in any political “period of listening”. Repeatedly, I hear that a privileged, straight, appointed leader of the Church objects to gay marriage on the grounds that he e-mailed a group of close friends and constituents, and they weren’t interested. So that’s it then. Case closed.

 

Dear Vincent Nichols, maybe, just maybe, God asks you to consider the 1 in every 7 who think you are wrong, and that the infinitely progressive institution of marriage begun in Genesis might stretch (as it already has, towards all the world and every minority) to encompass same-sex love commitments. And even if you can’t, let me just for one second entertain the idea that you’re right, that same-sex love is ‘sinful’ and the story of Sodom and Gomorrah says so. Maybe the most prophetic Christmas message to be found in it is God’s own words: “I will go down and see if what they have done is as bad as the outcry that has reached me. If not, I will know.” Because God is not impressed with the majority vote. He has come down to Earth to find out whether it’s all as bad as we say it is. And if it isn’t, he will know. That could prove the Christmas story good news for everyone, even those of us who were born and raised in Sodom.