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In 2019, I was a member of the General Synod Worship Planning Committee. The General Synod is the national meeting for Anglicans across Canada. In 2019, we met in Vancouver at the Sheraton Wall Centre and Christ Church Cathedral. As had been the case for, oh, gosh, as many meetings as I can remember, the place of 2SLGBTQIA people in the church was once again on the agenda. 

I remember looking around the room and taking stock of the people who had planned this meeting and had had some sort of leadership role in making the church as we knew it go ‘round. I saw gay men who had lived through the stigma and crisis of the 80s AIDS era, men who had survived and who'd had friends and partners and lovers who hadn’t. I saw women, lesbians, who even amidst their own fight for equality had provided palliative care for gay men during that time, for friends and strangers who had been turned away from their families, their churches, their healthcare providers. 

I saw priests and deacons who for many years had lived in glass closets, who had come out in their local communities and congregations, but were prevented from positions of senior or more public facing leadership in the church. I saw rainbow-clad trans and 2-spirit youth, who had answered the call to be delegates to a meeting that consisted mostly of people their parents’ age. 

I also saw in bulletins and service sheets the names of gay and allied church musicians who had composed the hymns we sang that week, the names behind the hymns we sang on any given Sunday in any given Anglican Church across the country. I saw textile artists who had been adorning altars and dressing the liturgical leadership for decades, many, if not most of them members of the LGBT community. 

I saw the colleague who, when I had come out to him, put his hands out like this and said, “What can I say? Welcome to the family, darling!”

This same colleague later planned a going away party when I moved to Vancouver. He dubbed it: “The homosexual’s revenge”. Needless to say, it was fabulous fare and a fabulous affair: Deviled eggs for days! Marshmallow and peanut butter confetti squares! Every kind of decorated cheese imaginable! It was a feast, a reminder that life is for living. 

I remember at that General Synod, at that national church meeting, seeing all of these people around the room, 2SLGBTQIA and friends, and thinking, “There wouldn’t be a Church if it weren’t for these folks!” 

There is sometimes the impression that LGBT folk are on the outskirts of religious and spiritual life. Certainly, the efforts of the Church to push them there is a part of our history that needs telling and retelling lest we repeat it or forget that there is still much to undo. But, make no mistake: 2SLGBTQIA people have always also been at the centre of religious life, making it all go ‘round in joyful, holy, defiance. 

At the same meeting of General Synod in 2019, Jeffery Stanley, the then Suicide Prevention Worker for the Anglican Church of Canada’s Indigenous Ministry spoke to the role of 2-Spirit people at the heart of Indigenous communities. He said the following:

Most indigenous societies were made up of 3 societies prior to the arrival of the settlers. Firstly, we had the women, these individuals were tasked with raising children, preserving the hunt, fish and gathered foods such as berries, and the making of clothing. Then we had the Masculine society, a group of men who hunted, fished, cut down trees for totem poles, masks, rattles, bentwood boxes, and tools, they also protected the elderly, women and children when surrounding indigenous communities would try to raid their lands. Then we had those who were deemed as 2-spirited. These are the people who were highly respected for their knowledge of knowing 2 worlds, the masculine and feminine, they chose to take part in both societies and help with the teaching and raising of children. The two-spirited were highly respected as Shaman’s, they had the power to heal people. Indigenous people knew that these individuals were a very special group, it was not shameful to be a member of this society.

Jeffery’s words are a powerful reminder for me to this day, that LGBT folk are the ones, yes, seated amongst the 5000 in desperate need of the ministry of Jesus and his disciples. They, too, are the disciples, the Shamans, carrying out ministry in beautiful, loaves and fishes kinds of ways every day. 

I think the reason LGBT folk have always been at the centre of religious life is because desire is at the centre of religious life. Desire to encounter God and for that encounter to be as tangible as a meal shared and as varied as the lives of the 5000 gathered on the shores of Galilee those 2000 odd years ago. 

Desire is a theme that runs through all four of our readings today. We see how it is used for good or for ill. There is the sexual desire that David has for Bathsheba, desire which isn’t bad in and of itself. But, desire which David ultimately uses for evil in “taking” Bathsheba without her consent. 

In today’s psalm, there is the desire for power and influence that grew in the hearts of the ancient people of God as their communities started to flourish. Again, the desire for power and influence, not in and of itself a bad thing, but without accountability and without regard for the poor, desire that God ultimately looks upon as “corrupt” and “abominable.”

In our second reading, we read of a leader deeply concerned for a community that continues to try to define itself based on who’s in and who’s out. Paul’s advice? “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge . . . who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.”

Finally, there is the desire to be satisfied, reflected in our gospel reading—the desire to have as much as you want. The desire here isn’t want in excess or want out of greed. It is want born out of seeing what abundance is possible. Jesus has the power to meet the people’s desire to the point at which they are satisfied. Not the point at which they have enough to get by, or the point at which they have enough to keep their hunger hidden so that it’s not too in your face, if you know what I mean. Fed to the point of satisfaction: that’s the kind of want, that’s the kind of desire that Jesus honours in the feeding of the 5000. That’s the kind of desire that 2SLGBTQIA people honour every day when they live lives and build communities out of a desire to accomplish far more than all we can ask or imagine. Amen.