Belonging, witnessing, prophetic: OTN Patron Bishop Cherry Vann reflects on Open Table ministry in Wales
Cherry Vann is Bishop of Monmouth, the first lesbian bishop in the Church in Wales, and in a civil partnership. As Archdeacon of Rochdale for 11 years, she celebrated with Open Table communities in Liverpool and Manchester, and supported a community consultation which led to forming the Open Table community in Derby.
WATCH Bishop Cherry’s intro video [2.5 mins]
Watch the recording of our Q&A with Cherry, in conversation with OTN Co-Chair Sarah Hobbs here [58 minutes]
ON SATURDAY 6th November 2021, around 50 people gathered from across Wales and England to celebrate five years of the LGBTQIA+ Chaplaincy in St Asaph Diocese - the first of its kind in the UK, and six years since first Open Table community in North Wales, which came under the care of the Chaplaincy in January 2017.
OTN Patron Cherry Vann, Bishop of Monmouth, offered this reflection on the day, which was also the feast of the Welsh Saint Illtud, a hermit who had founded a monastery in Glamorgan, believed to be Britain's earliest centre of learning. The readings were Song of Songs 8:6-7; Acts 4:32-35; Matthew 11: 25-end.
It really is a great privilege to be here in the north of the Province and to gather around this open table amongst friends.
It will be no surprise to you that there’s been a lot of media interest in my appointment over the past 20 months; interest that’s been partly about being new to Wales, partly about being another woman bishop, but most particularly about me being gay and in a civil partnership.
That, in a way, has been a wonderful opportunity. But it has, at the same time, felt a bit like having continually to explain myself; having to unpack how it feels to be in a church which, in some parts at least, continues to be ambivalent or even hostile; having to justify how I can reconcile my sexuality with my Christian faith.
Here, happily, I don’t have to do that because I’m amongst people who get it; many of whom get it from the inside; from your own experience.
That, we could say, is the whole point of Open Table, and one of the reasons we’ve come together today. Here is a place of safety; a space where those of us who are LGBTQIA+, along with our friends and allies, can come together and feel free to be ourselves without having to explain or justify; without feeling just a bit on the outside. We’re amongst friends, amongst people who understand, amongst fellow travellers on the road, worshipping and praying together and exploring what it means to be followers of Christ as LGBTQIA+ people in the Church and in the world.
That this place exists has been nothing short of a life-line for some members of the LGBTQIA+ community - perhaps you are one of those people. The Open Table Network, which has grown and spread steadily since those very first meetings in Liverpool, and has begun to take root in Wales, has provided places of welcome and belonging, of hope and freedom, for many who’ve felt rejected and lost, unwanted and unwelcome.
Today we’re celebrating and giving thanks for the many ways in which God has used this network, and the people who work with it and for it, to assure those of us who are LGBTQIA+ of his unequivocal love for us. Here we can know and believe and experience that we’re God’s beloved children, whatever anyone else might say about us.
I hope and pray that Open Table might continue to spread throughout our Province, providing communities of faith, hope and love for LGBTQIA+ people who want and need to be with those who share something of their experience. For here is a place of belonging.
But here is also a place of witness. In the reading from the Acts of the Apostles, we see how those earliest Christians lived out their faith in community. They were, we’re told, of one heart and mind, and demonstrated that in an extraordinary way. They didn’t just meet together for prayer and worship and studying the scriptures, but they went to extraordinary lengths to support one another. They gave sacrificially; each making available what they had, and sharing it with those who had need. There was, we’re told, not a needy person among them. Their very life as a community was a powerful witness and testimony to the resurrection of Jesus who’d transformed them and bound them together in their new life in Christ.
Gatherings of Open Table are also places of witness. For here, in so far as we’re learning to love one another in all our brokenness and need, learning to welcome one another in all our diversity and messiness, learning to give what we have and share with one another what Christ has given us - in so far as we’re doing all that, we’re witnessing to the love of God who transforms us day by day, who makes us whole and who, by his grace, makes us one in heart and mind.
And that is tremendously powerful. For it testifies to a love that transcends all the hostility, the rejection, the self-loathing, the fear that people who are LGBTQIA+ are so used to experiencing. It testifies to a love strong as death, a passion fierce as the grave. Nothing less than the love and passion God has for all His children, all His creation. Here is a place of witness.
Finally, Open Table is, I believe, a prophetic place. It’s clear from the biblical narrative that Jesus spent much of his time with those who’d been rejected by society: the sick and infirm, the poor and marginalized, those who were sidelined and overlooked for all manner of reasons. And in those places, in those people, he found a faith and a trust that sometimes surprised even him.
It’s a common theme running through the gospel narratives: Jesus, criticizing the scribes and Pharisees for missing the point, and urging those who wish to see the Kingdom of God to become as little children. There’s a deep and profoundly sad irony here; that the religious elite, the guardians of the law who spend their time studying their scriptures cannot see that the one standing in front of them is, in his life and ministry, in his very being, fulfilling the law they claim to know so well. Rather, it’s the infants, the little ones, who respond to Jesus out of their brokenness and their need.
Those on the margins have much to teach us. They bring fresh insights, drawn from their own particular experience, as I learnt in the six years that I spent working with the Deaf Church. Sidelined and patronized by both church and society, made to feel deficient, even stupid, because they couldn’t hear and struggled to speak, these Deaf sign language users had, nevertheless, come to know Jesus. They prayed and worshipped in silence, using their hands, their facial expressions and their bodies. They wrestled with a Bible that talked about a God who hears and listens, for they could do neither, at least not as hearing people do. The struggled with a Jesus who healed Deaf people, when they remained Deaf themselves. I learnt more about my faith from them than I have done at any other time or in any other place.
Those on the margins and outside the dominant norm can open our eyes to seeing the things of God in a new and exciting way. They can bring fresh perspectives to our faith and ways of seeing things. They can both enrich and challenge our understanding of who God is and how God works. And Jesus, in our passage today, rejoices in this.
Here is a prophetic place. For we too have come to know God out of our brokenness and our need. We too have discovered fresh insights, borne from our own experience of God who loves us as we are. We too are challenging what has been the dominant norm simply by learning to rejoice in who we are and what God has made us. And that is disturbing and enriching the Church in equal measure - just as people of colour and people with disabilities are doing. Just as all those on the margins have the power to do.
