Have you ever met a monster? No? Maybe you've had to work with one, maybe you've lived next door to one, maybe been out with a couple of them? Monsters come in very different shapes and sizes.
In the original series of Dr Who, you could always tell who the monsters were - they were the ones wearing rubber masks. When the show came back last year, replete with cutting edge CGI and special effects, it was something of an oddity that the scariest image was of a figure in a rubber mask - albeit one that we recognised - a gasmask.
Nancy, the girl we see in the episode, is living during 1940's London. She got pregnant when she was a teenager, and in secret had a child. Even in this century, there are many who would deride the teenage single mother, let alone a less-enlightened age. So in the story, Nancy after giving birth starts the lie. She claims that Jamie her son, is in fact her younger brother. The war that rages all around them is not short of orphaned families and they are accepted. The lie means that, though she can show love and look after Jamie, she cannot be his mother.
And that's the way it would have stayed. When an alien spaceship crashes onto their house, the microscopic medical robots try and heal him and get it wrong. They need better information on how to cure him and so he starts the search for his mother - but of course, Nancy cannot acknowledge him.
In our reading today we hear how Peter and John had to respond to threats to keep quiet. They had been healing the sick in Jesus' name and word had gotten out they had performed a miracle. The town elders were concerned over the reaction and so tried to quiet them - using threats and intimidation.
Both of these two situations have echoes within our society. Too often folk are bullied into keeping quiet because of perceived shame or intimidation. Many of us have had to make choices about very important parts of our lives and our natures. We have to decide: do we keep quiet or do we tell it like it is? Do we tell the world who we really are or do we pretend that we are someone else?
Neither choice is easy.
If we keep silent and go with the flow, then like Nancy we can pay the consequences - we deny ourselves the chance of true relationships based on honesty and trust. We can show and feel love, but in our hearts we still feel the pain it can cause. Even to the point where we may question other people's feelings towards us - because if we're not being genuine, we may start to assume that no one else is.
Staying quiet, staying hidden because it's what we think society or our family's demand, is by no means the easy option that some people think it is. Staying hidden brings out the monsters we have to cope with.
When we stay silent about the truth, we are faced with our own monsters: we have to deal with our own deceit and question the motives of others. We wonder whether or not the people who say they love and accept us would still continue to do so if they knew who we really are.
But speaking out, like we heard John and Peter decided to do, also brings out monsters. We have to face prejudice and lack of understanding. We have to deal with question after question - the difficulty of adjusting to the new balance of our relationships with those that know us.
Sometimes people ask me, 'When did you come out?' I will normally answer, telling them the story of how I told my mother over the breakfast table on April Fools Day. But the truth is that once we decide to speak out and tell the world who we really are, we never seem to stop - we are, it seems, always coming out. Every time we move house we have the choices to make, every time someone new starts at our place of work - it never seems to end.
The message from the scripture applies to us all though, whatever label we choose to use - be it straight, bisexual, gay, transgendered or lesbian. Because we all have one inner truth that we have a choice to share with the world: that Jesus is Lord.
We have to decide whether or not to tell our families, the people we work with, our neighbours, that we are Christians. And it's no different coming out as a Christian than it is to tell the world about who we really are. The monsters come out.
We have to fight against the same prejudice and ignorance that surrounds us as people of faith. The assumptions that so many people appear to have about Christians can seem quite deep-rooted.
People seem to think that if you're a Christian that you can't have fun: that you can't look fabulous. And why do they think that? Because so much of what they see and hear of Christians tells them so! This week a piece of literature dropped through my door advertising a local church. So I picked it up with some interest - keen to see how they were working to spread the good news of the gospel. What I found was "PREPARE TO MEET THY GOD". There were words highlighted in the leaflet text - those words were 'sin', 'judgement' and biggest of all 'DEATH'. Small wonder that so many people are not open to the news of the gospel: that through knowing Jesus our lives can be enriched with joy; that through accepting the Holy Spirit into our lives we can know peace in a chaotic world; that by knowing our creator we can start to have a vision of the lives we could be leading.
Being Christian is counter-culture. We challenge the rules of society just by being there. In a secular world driven by greed and self interest, standing fast for who we are as Christians says that there is another way of living: that we can show forgiveness to folk whom some people think are unforgivable; that we can show charity and giving because we want to and we get pleasure from it rather than being guilt-tripped by the latest news report. The Christian believes that the world is bigger than the here and now - that the world and life have a spiritual dimension and that right and wrong are not just something that we decide.
Whatever we choose to do with our lives, we have to face down problems with 'the monsters' of this world. How do we battle the monsters? How do we battle the monsters when it's a war of ideas? How do we battle the monsters when we're not just dealing with some faceless yob at a bus stop - but when we're dealing with people we love and respect?
We face the monsters down with our integrity: by responding to God's call to be the people that God wants us to be.
God wants each of us to be the best that we can be - to be pure of heart and soul. Pure means something that isn't contaminated or mixed with something else. And that is what God is calling each of us to be. If God has created you as a lesbian then God wants you to be the best lesbian you can be; if you're transsexual then God wants your life and your identity to be someone who inspires respect and love in other people; if you're a gay man then God wants you to be someone who inspires other people to grow and change themselves.
That's us.
We are the people of God and this is the work we have to do. It doesn't matter what monsters we have to face, God will equip us to cope.
In our clip today we saw Nancy's world change forever when she finally tells the world who she is, and tells the one she loves the most who she really is. All the reasons that led her to keep quiet would still have been there waiting for her after the drama was over - the prejudice would still be there. But she was changed, because in her heart she knew authentic love: she knew a special trust that would keep her going, so that when the monsters of this world replaced the aliens, she would have the courage to face them.
Amen.
(Dan Joseph)
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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