What’s it all about? Living the questions

A question mark made of many more question marks in many colours, styles and sizes.

ON SUNDAY 11th September at Open Table Warrington, Warren Hartley, co-facilitator of our first Open Table community in Liverpool shared this reflection on ‘the price we pay for love’, which echoes the words of Queen Elizabeth II in a message of condolence to those affected by the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001.

The readings in the service which inspired this were Galatians 5: 1-15 and John 13: 31-35.

I need to confess something - I was a very annoying child. You know the type - the one who asks questions, and questions from the questions, and more questions. I was frequently told ‘stop asking questions’! I had, and in many ways still have, an insatiable desire to know and to understand. I still ask questions, all the time, which drives my long-suffering husband crazy!

As I have become an uncle and great uncle, and spent time around lots of children, I smile to myself frequently as I watch the innate and wild curiosity of children as they drink in the world around them. The potential is exciting. While it is wearing at times, I try not to do anything that stifles their curiosity, while attempting to answer questions as best as I can and, unlike many adults I used to know, admit when I don’t know the answer.

My poor parents and teachers did their best in the face of unrelenting barrage of questions. One place questions definitely weren’t welcome was at church! Church had answers but I wasn’t always sure what the question was. I was told ‘Jesus is the answer’ regardless of the question, but that didn’t satisfy me.

As an adult, I studied some university modules in philosophy, and the textbook for my first module was called ‘How to Think about Weird Things’. I knew then that I’d taken the right course!

I’d given up on church by this point. The platitudinous ‘answers’ I’d been given no longer cut it. The answers given to me about my sexuality were not leading to any form of flourishing - quite the opposite, with severe depression and several breakdowns the only fruit that grew from attempting to live as I was expected to, and the stupidly futile attempts to ‘pray away the gay’.

That philosophy module gave me permission, perhaps for the first time, to really ask questions, even questions I couldn’t answer. Like ‘What’s it all about?’

So what is it all about? How am I to live? What should I believe, say, do? Questions that so many across history have asked.

At the end of my twenties, when I arrived at a place of coming out as a gay man, I experienced a sense of spiritual seeking again. I’d been an atheist for about eight years, but as I settled into a sense of who I really was, I was astonished to find a church community that was very comfortable with questions. Indeed, I discovered the idea of Living The Questions (this was the title of the course I did to prepare for Confirmation in the Church of England in 2009), and that not all questions have a definitive and complete answer - the complete opposite of the fundamentalist evangelical version of Christianity in which I grew up.

This freedom to explore, ask questions and to learn to live in the tension of the question has enriched my life beyond measure, and re-introduced me to the beautiful mystery of God.

Now, let me be crystal clear, I don’t pretend for a split second that I’ve got it all figured out - yet I still dare to ask ‘what’s it all about’?

I believe our two scripture readings [Galatians 5: 1-15 and John 13: 31-35] push us towards a place where we can begin to explore.

We are very familiar with the words of Jesus: ‘A new commandment I give you; love one another as I have loved you’. It strikes me profoundly though, where this story is placed in John’s gospel. It occurs just before Jesus is arrested. Can you hear the urgency in his voice, and sense the pathos? He is aware that he is about to face his death.

Hear the term of deep affection: ‘my children...’. To me it is like Jesus is saying:

‘Right, listen up folks, this is it. This is the end of our road together. If you don’t remember ANYTHING else I’ve taught you PLEASE remember this... Love one another. That is the sign that you are a disciple. Love one another. This is what it is all about!’

Twenty to thirty years later, St Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, is repeating this last plea of Jesus. To me, this passage in Galatians is one of the most powerful in the non-gospel books of the New Testament, even if segments sound odd to modern ears.  

‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us free... You are called to be free… serve one another humbly in love’.

In another Gospel passage, Jesus talked about the greatest commandments, to love God and to love others, which summarised all of the law. Paul goes so far as to say, there is only one -  to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’.

It is so important to note that it doesn’t say ‘as much as yourself’, does it?!  Note the imperative to love AS yourself. This is much deeper, and far more difficult, because it acknowledges our underlying oneness. We are, all of us, beloved children of God. We, all of us, are utterly infused with God’s very own image. What is that image?

‘God is love’.

If God is love, we too are love and called to love ourselves, which is all of us!  We are already one - all we lack is awareness. Julian of Norwich puts it this way: ‘The person who loves everything and everyone God made, loves God because God is in every person. God is in all things.’

It was this passage in Galatians that helped me find self-acceptance as a gay man. I was in a relationship with Kieran, now my husband, and I could see the fruits of the love between us, and the penny finally dropped. It was as if God was saying to me: ‘this is good’, this is ‘very good’. It was love that liberated me, and enabled me to love better. Sexuality is more than just bodily - it enables a connection of love, care, nourishment as well as the one-ment of sex.

In Russell T Davies’ BBC drama Years and Years, set in Manchester in a dystopian alternative future, one of the characters, Edith, is having her memories stored, digitally, as her body dies. The inference is that human beings are mechanistic, and that if we could ‘back up’ our brains, our personality could live on digitally. As the download process continues, and Edith lies dying, reflecting on her family life, she has an epiphany and declares:

‘I’m not information, all these memories. They’re not just facts. They’re so much more than that… They’re love. That’s what I’m becoming: love. I am love’

Who are we?  I am not just my memories, I am not only what happens to me.. I am love!  You too are love, and love calls to love. Can it be as simple as all that?

Yes it can, but the devil is always in the detail, which leads on to far more questions. How can we put this into practice?  How does this affect the way we live?  How to do I love those who don’t love me, especially when it’s hard enough to love those close to me?

At Corrymeela, the reconciliation centre in Northern Ireland, where people meet who have profound differences, and have even taken up arms against each other, there is a quote from Martin Luther King Jr printed in huge lettering in one of their meeting rooms. It reads:

‘Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.’

Love is at the heart of all that we do, and all that we are. It is our ultimate calling, and what our Open Table communities, in their own faltering ways, attempt to live out.

So what’s it all about? The answer is simple and complicated: ‘Love is what it’s all about!’

This, though, is not as sentimental and anaemic as saying: ‘Let’s all just be nice’. This is a revolution. A revolution in the way we relate to people, the institutions we build, our economic system, environmental stewardship, and much more.

This is the Kingdom of God, a queer Kingdom, which turns upside down everything we know, and questions the status quo. This is metanoia, the Greek word often translated as repentance, which actually means a complete change of direction.

Love costs, and it costs dearly - as Queen Elizabeth II wrote in a message of condolence to the families of victims lost in the 9/11 attacks: ‘Grief is the price we pay for love.’

I for one so rarely want to pay the price - just remember what it cost Jesus - and yet it is the only path of freedom.

US poet Maya Angelou says it profoundly and eloquently in her poem Touched by an angel:

“…love costs all we are and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.”