The sermon preached by the Dean of Southwark on Sunday 26 October 2025

So, the latest trend to take hold in London is the ‘scream club’ in which people gather to shriek at the top of their voices. More than 600 people headed to Primrose Hill this month for the London Scream Squad’s 15 minute inaugural session. It is said to be a great way to release pent up energy. Apparently, the club’s rules are only that you must ‘hydrate, respect your body’s limits, and if you feel dizzy, pause’.

In recent days I have been tempted to join. Not only does the news each day make me want to scream, either in shock or despair, but then things come along in the Church of England which, as a public representative of it, make me want to scream too. The first bit of news was that the House of Bishops has decided to put through the proposal that ‘stand alone’ services of blessing for same-sex couples should go through a process that won’t agree to it, and that clergy will continue to be barred from entering a civil marriage with a same-sex partner. If they do, they are likely to lose their license or not get a new appointment, nor will those who are gay and married be accepted for ordination training. Of course, add to this that we are not allowed to marry same sex couples in church, and no bishop has ever been transparently appointed in a civil partnership and it is hard not to conclude that the Church of England is still homophobic and does not believe in the equality of love. Hydrate, if you feel dizzy, pause.

And then, my friend, the Dean of Canterbury, David Monteith, who is in a civil partnership of many years, wrote an article in response to this news. This made me want to scream silently inside, because I recognised so much of it. He makes the point that the Bishops’ statement was about process not about people, and he says that it multiplies the shame that LGBTQ people can be made to feel, ‘I found my life and heart constrict as I received this news once again’, he writes, ‘being told loudly and clearly that our minority lives and loves must remain marginal, hidden and uncatered for’.

And then, this: ‘I realise that all this is so niche and of none or little concern to many people in the church, unlike for those in the wider world who mostly do not comprehend why love does not mean love.  None of my clergy colleagues have enquired as to how I am doing.  No one from the bishop’s staff on which I sit have said a word. None have even alluded to noticing that the bishops had issued their conclusions. Nothing.  We are invisible despite being present and our cares and concerns are best kept to our own little minority lives…This invisibility intensifies all the other experiences of invisibility. For example, when giving a talk and the last part of my biography is omitted; when a bishop asked me to make sure my partner was not around when certain clergy visited; when as a new Dean I didn’t get invitations from the county set because they didn’t want to invite my partner but were too polite to want to enact a social snub so didn’t invite me either. Being told directly never to mention my sexuality when dealing with visiting bishops from the Communion unless they brought it up, because many would see me as possessed.’

David, and so many others, absorbing damaging and shaming mixed messages and, at the end of the day, alone with a vulnerability that no one wants to own up to creating. ‘God’, prayed that Pharisee in the temple, ‘I thank you that I am not like other people’. Is this the prayer the Church is more comfortable with, rather than a prayer of blessing and celebration of love being shared between two people?

I have rarely preached personally on this topic, but perhaps today’s the day. In all the church debates in over 30 years of ministry, I have to tell you that I haven’t recognised myself. I’ve listened to St Paul at the beginning of his letter to the Romans being quoted many, many times. It is used as what is often called a ‘text of terror’, a few lines of the bible fired as a bullet at gay people because Paul argues that some women and men ‘exchanged their passion from natural to unnatural, and God gave them up to their degrading passions’. But this isn’t me. It wasn’t like that. I didn’t choose anything. I discovered who I was, and it wasn’t easy. I knew people beat up people like me, the government was telling people not to teach children about people like me, the newspapers were naming people like me, the Church was excluding people like me if they were honest, they said Paul said I was unnatural and sinful and pointed to those lines in Romans. And I read, and I still read, and I don’t see myself nor anyone I know like me. I don’t recognise my heart there, my need to be loved and to love, my longing not to spend my life alone or afraid.

As many of you know I was brought up as a boy by my grandmother. When I was 18, I turned the TV off one evening and, slightly shaking, said I had something I wanted to tell her. She knew that I wanted to share with her that I was gay, but what she said to me has stayed with me all the years since that night, when I was so afraid as to what cost honesty would have. ‘I’ve only been worried about one thing, Mark,’ she said with a big smile, ‘I’ve just worried you would never feel able to tell me.’

During my life, and in my ministry in the Church, there have been those who would have preferred if I had stayed silent or gone into hiding. There have been times when that would have been the easiest thing to do. I came to see, though, that my grandmother’s response was the response of love, and that therefore it is also the response of God. God wants us to share with him who we really are, and to know that God’s love only overflows, and never diminishes, when we dare to do this - because integrity matters on the pathway of a disciple. That other man in the Temple did exactly this, he laid himself openly out before God, just as he was, and asked for some mercy, some understanding. And Jesus tells us that he was the one who went home justified.

Human hearts are restless. This is part of God’s call to us to find their rest in him. As part of that human journey, hearts can find harbours – people we love and share life with, people who are there to hold us and believe in us, and sometimes people we commit to growing old with together. For some these are friends, for others life partners. This is one of the beautiful miracles of life, something to be celebrated and protected.

This Cathedral has a long history of celebrating the fact that everyone, their hearts, their livelihoods, their safety, and their relationships, are as dear and as important as everyone else’s in this fragile world. Southwark Cathedral will continue to welcome all, and we rejoice in offering prayers with those who have made a loving commitment in life - and we look forward to the day when we can offer them equality with everyone else.

 We are all people of our times and contexts. Paul was not in the 21^st century, would never meet men or women who set up home together, cooked with each other, went on holiday together, were there with a light on when they got home, helping to soothe the past day, caring for each other, growing old together, being there for better or worse, and feeling the deepest painful absence in their life when death separates them. I like to imagine that if he were here today he’d see that his beautiful words about love being patient and kind, protecting, trusting, hoping and always persevering, lasting forever, and being greater than faith or hope, apply to gay and lesbian people equally and as miraculously because where love is there is God - after all he was able to see that God’s love radically extended beyond the Jewish community to everyone else. He says that he knows now ‘in part’, he knew that of himself, he knew that he, as all of us, have more to understand about grace and how it often goes where we don’t want to.

I like to think that Paul if he were here today would understand that it is because we are Christian, not despite it, that we celebrate love, spouses, partners, friends, and those whose bravery in the past, and in so many parts of our world today, continues to inspire. Or maybe he wouldn’t, and we’d disagree and would need to keep talking, breaking bread, and saying prayers together – not walking away from each other and playing games with God’s beautiful gift of communion. But I’d want him to know what I believe – that because of God, love wins, no matter what can be done or said to control or stop it, no matter how fancy the theology to disguise a prejudice. And love comes in many shapes and sizes. And for that, and for all the diversity of people in the church and beyond, thanks be to God. Thank you, God, for all the love they bring into this world. And that I will always recognise and so, please God, will Southwark Cathedral.