In which I play in the fields of Theology | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

The Power of Christ’s Resurrection. For Us. Today

By Anita Mathias

The dawn after the worst day,

Mary Magdalene and her friend Mary had seen

Jesus, whom they deeply loved—

A radiant, beautiful, strong young man

Tortured, mocked, and judicially murdered.

But as they visit the tomb, they encounter Jesus,

Very much alive. Chairete, he says, Rejoice.

And then, the very first sentence the risen Christ,

Speaks to those who love him–Do not be afraid,

Me Phobeisthe.

Do not be afraid. Why?

Because the impossible has happened,

And a dead man has returned to life

(And was later seen by at least 516 people).

The risen Jesus is no longer confined by

The dictates of space and time.

Like oxygen, he is with me

In every room I enter, and with you,

An invisible, but real friend.

I am never alone.

Wisdom and strength is always available

If I slow down and request them.

Do not be afraid, because the resurrected Jesus

Breathed on his disciples, and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit,”

As he breathes on us today.

Jesus observed that justas even evil parents,

Do not give a snake to a child asking for fish,

Or a scorpion to a child requesting an egg,

His Father will not refuse His Holy Spirit

To those who ask for it.

And it is the power of the Holy Spirit

Which helps us change

Our hearts, our characters, and our lives.

Do not be afraid,

Because the resurrection of Jesus

That explosion of seismic power

Has burst the boundaries of what is possible.

God’s miracle-making power is now available to us

Our world is now a whole lot more magical.

The Apostle Paul writes that the surpassingly

Great power for us who believe,

The hyperballon megathos tes dunameos,

The dynamite power of God available to us on request

Is the same as the power which raised Jesus from the dead.

And so we have the Holy Spirit’s help for the issues of our lives.

Nothing God wants us to do will be impossible to us.

And so, we need no longer be enslaved by addictions,

Dependencies and our own bad habits. We can break

An addiction to chocolate or sugar or caffeine

(All of which I have eventually done!).

We can get out of the confining rooms

Of bad habits and our personal “can’t does”

Sometimes just like that,

With an act of will empowered by the Spirit.

The risen Jesus gives us the key to key to freedom.

“I once was dead, but now am alive,

And I hold the keys,” Jesus tells John

In the Book of Revelation. The keys of his Kingdom,

In which he wants us to live peacefully

As we would under his real-life kingly eye.

We can find freedom from indulging a bad temper.

And by turning our eyes on Jesus, as the old hymn says,

And an arrow prayer for his help,

We can channel our cranky, negative energy

Into prayerful intense focus on how best to live

Our one wild and precious life.

We can progressively find freedom from tormenting

Emotions or thoughts which waste our time and distract us:

Emotions of jealousy, unforgiveness, worry, anger or fretting.

God’s explosive, dynamite power can invade our lives

And progressively change them,

Through prayer, through the power of the Holy Spirit,

And, also, through our own willpower and determination.

(And God also works through counselling,

And talking to wise, trusted, friends.)

To get God’s endless energy and boundless strength

(as Eugene Peterson puts it) to saturate our little lives,

We need to slow down,

So that we remember to pray, and

Ask for God’s guidance and blessing

Over each thing we do in course of our days.

As we begin to master this habit,

Our days will look different.

Our lives will look different.

Everything in our lives gets better by practice:

Running, or writing, or good housekeeping or prayer.

So, start transforming your life by prayer.

Start small. Ask for God’s wisdom

Before you embark on the activities of your day:

Sessions of housework and decluttering,

Exercise, gardening, meeting friends, emails,

Social media, business or leading things.

God, how do I do these things well?

Can I do them better, in a more efficient

Or maybe a kinder way?

Does this even need to be said, or done?

God, who will guide us, likes nothing to be wasted,

Including our time, the most irreplaceable thing in our lives.

You’ll be amazed at the efficient and wise suggestions

The Spirit has, on how to do things

You’ve often done far, far better.

And as we increasingly experience God’s guidance and

Mini-miracles, our faith increases.

Practice praying on your walks,

As you do your housework or gardening,

As you drift off to sleep.

Practice praying deep into your life,

And over it, in ever-widening circles.

Anything in our lives that we do not

Bathe in prayer is something we believe

We don’t need God’s help to accomplish.

And that is foolish.

So I am training myself to convert

My thoughts into prayer,

To pray through the preoccupations,

Which scurry through my mind,

Writing, work, finances, health, travel plans

The things I want to see happen in my children’s lives

And, also, to pray for my friends and, sometimes, even my enemies.

We skitter like water striders on the surface of life.

But if we slowed down, the Spirit would whisper to us

The words which sustain the weary.

Oh, what grace we often forfeit,

Oh, what needless pain we bear

All because we do not carry,

Everything to God in prayer.

Prayer is like pouring this immense flood of light and power

Into the little petri dish of our problems.

When we do it, God’s power can change our circumstances

Sooner than we ever imagined.

As we practice bathing our lives in prayer,

We ourselves change,

Our lives slowly change,

And our faith increases.

Oh God of resurrection,

Come with your dynamite power into our lives.

We put our old dreams and our new ones into your hands.

Bring them to life. Make them glow.

Come like a mighty burst of spring into our lives

Bringing apparently dead relationships, dreams,

The things we once loved,

And all our dormant potential to radiant life.

We put our lives into your hands.

Make them beautiful.

Come Lord Jesus.

Amen.

This is a meditation on Matthew 28.

I would love you to read my memoir, fruit of much “blood, sweat, toil and tears.”

Rosaries, Reading, Secrets: A Catholic Childhood in India in the UK, and in the US, here, well, and widely available, online, worldwide 🙂

If you’d like to follow these meditations the moment they appear, please subscribe to Christian Meditation with Anita Mathias at Apple Podcasts, Spotify or

Amazon Music

or Audible

If you’d like to read my previous recorded meditations,

7 The Power of Christ’s Resurrection. For Us. Today

6 Each Individual’s Unique and Transforming Call and Vocation

5 Change Your Life by Changing Your Thoughts

4 Do not be Afraid–But be as Wise as a Serpent

3 Our Failures are the Cracks Through Which God’s Power Enters our Lives

2 The World is full of the Glory of God

1 Mindfulness is Remembering the Presence of Christ with us.

Thank you 🙂

The True Fairy Tale of the Life of Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury

By Anita Mathias

He had been “the shyest, most unhappy-looking boy you could imagine,” –so journalist Charles Moore recollects Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, a fellow-student at Eton, and Trinity College, Cambridge.

The alcoholic father, who had custody of him was, The Telegraph had revealed, a conman, a trickster, and (to Welby’s surprise) German-Jewish, not upper-class English. His childhood was “utterly insecure”. Except when at school at Eton, he never spent more than a week at a place; there were “moonlight flits” to evade rent and creditors. His father did not pay the fees for Welby’s last two years at Eton, a feat in itself!!

And then, at Cambridge, something happened. The Spirit blew; there was a revival of sorts; Nicky Gumbel of Alpha, and Nicky Lee of HTB, both at Trinity, as well as three other Nickys (four of them Etonians!) became Christians. I asked Jesus to be the Lord of my life. The sense that something had changed was instantaneous, Welby said. It felt like the world changing, like someone I’d never known coming into the room and being there. He was “overwhelmed by a sense of God’s love for him,” as Andrew Atherstone writes in his unofficial biography of Welby.

The child of alcoholic parents, whose childhood was deeply insecure, becomes the spiritual leader of 85 million Anglicans.

An unlikely and wonderful true fairy tale.

* * *

And that is why we love fairy tales. Because, not infrequently, not infrequently, our lives and the lives of those we love resemble them. Because a kind author is crafting the story of our lives, “shaping our ends for good, rough hew them how we will.” Because Christianity is a true fairy tale, as Tolkein famously told C. S. Lewis, contributing to his conversion.

For the dark areas of one’s life to turn to the gold of fairy tales is an entirely reasonable expectation when we invite Jesus Christ to control these stuttering areas, ask for his instructions, and then do whatever he tells us.

A challenging marriage, a stalled career, a faltering business, ravaged health, impossible dreams–in the midst of all of these, it is completely rational to have great hope because of the power of God. Each of these can completely turn around once we invite Jesus to be the Lord of that area, and of our lives. He will suggest revisions to the current chapter, and inspire drafts of the next ones. The business, health and career may well turn around and ascend under the new divine management. Or they may crash… and a golden, unexpected next chapter may arise phoenix-like from the ashes.

* * *

Justin Welby changed so utterly that Moore meeting him 40 years later was amazed. Of course, The Telegraph recently revealed that Welby’s biological father was Anthony Montague Browne, Churchill’s private secretary, who later worked for the Queen, and from whom he evidently received a genetic inheritance of solidity, good judgement and sound nerves. Inherited brain chemistry makes a psychopath or sociopath behave like one; but it can also be a beneficent inheritance, as it was for Welby.

But other factors contributed to the change in Welby that so astonished Moore…the Gospel, the Holy Spirit, dynamic teaching, his own disciplined follow-through, and, crucially, a circle of friends: Nicky Gumbel and the Eton-Oxbridge-Holy Trinity Brompton nexus that has a huge, hidden influence on the Church of England today. (Many influential figures such as Nicky Gumbel, John Stott, David Watson, Michael Green and Welby were converted or discipled by a man called E. J. H. Nash or Bash).

Serendipity or the grace of god… That is how Scott Peck in The Road Less Travelled explains people who have fruitful and creative lives despite distressing childhoods. In Welby’s case, it was both.

* * *

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation.

Our inheritance from our family–of intelligence, money, education and upbringing–may not be exactly what we would have chosen.

But once we accept Jesus as our Lord in medieval feudal language, we become part of Christ as he becomes part of us, and now have access to a new inheritance.

This differs from person to person. For some it’s an inheritance of this world, the sort that’s visible, valued and coveted–and for some it’s an inheritance “out of this world.”

Here are some blessings that are part of the inheritance of every children of God:

A friend, Jesus our brother, always walking beside us.

Access to Christ himself, “in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.”

Guidance from Christ. Access to his wisdom when it comes to solving the problems of our life….whether mundane–how to get the money we need for the fullest, richest, most creative life–or spiritual (stuff which is the essence of life!)

The joy of the Holy Spirit, which resembles being drunk.

The power of the Holy Spirit to help us do difficult things.

Inspiration, though the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

Answered prayer.

The knowledge of the presence of God beside us, and the Holy Spirit within us.

Peace.

Protection from evil.

The promise of wisdom.

Happiness.

Serendipity; a connection-making God.

The forgiveness of our sins: wow!!

Eternal life.

* * *

Bid my brother divide the inheritance with me. The anguished cry of the man in the crowd echoes through the centuries. Inheritances, conniving to get them, families divided by the unfair division of them are a major theme of fiction, Victorian fiction, in particular—and of real life too!!

An inheritance is always a blessing in the Old Testament– “houses filled with all kinds of good things you did not provide, wells you did not dig, and vineyards and olive groves you did not plant.” The mark of a good man was that he would leave an inheritance for his children’s children.

But the spiritual inheritance of the children of God far trumps any worldly inheritance. Read the list again! Who would jeopardise such blessings? And this inheritance that is available to all who would claim it.

“I find who I am in Jesus Christ, not in genetics,” Justin Welby said, reflecting on his “story of redemption and hope from a place of tumultuous difficulty and near despair in several lives…a testimony to the grace and power of Christ to liberate and redeem us, grace and power which is offered to every human being.”

And that is our truest inheritance as Christians, the invitation to live in a true fairy tale of a deep change in our hearts and characters; answered prayer; the surprising, the exciting, the miraculous. A fairy tale with roles in it for anyone who would come play.

Why I want to go to Tonle Batie, Cambodia with Tearfund

By Anita Mathias

I am applying to travel with Tearfund to Cambodia, to the village of Tonle Batie, near Pnomh Penh.

Cambodia endured extreme economic and social devastation during the years of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge, which has left a legacy of widows and orphans; of people who find it difficult to trust each other enough to work together; and a generation without the education to swiftly escape poverty.

I have watched interviews with Yiv Toch, a hardworking mum, and with Gneam, 65, who had lost her husband to malnutrition under the Khymer Rouge, and, then, her second husband (given her in one of Pol Pot’s forced marriages). Both have no margin against hunger or sickness, save borrowing at 120%.

However, the local church, largely composed of recent converts, (and their energetic volunteer Pastor Ke Pich, a Tearfund worker Navy, and a Youth worker Thany) is catalysing the community, infusing it with new hope, enthusiasm, and energy to pull itself out of crushing poverty.

The little miracles Jesus describes in his Gospel stories are a reality here. Yiv Toch who was given 8 chicks describes, joyfully, how she now has 50, which she can sell for extra income. The two community pigs are pregnant. Landless families who dream of a bit of land can grow vegetables in the church’s communal garden.

The pump donated by a well-meaning church, was dug so deep that the water poisoned crops and then it broke; there was no money to repair it. The community brainstormed and decided to cooperate to dig a pond to store rainwater so that—in this village without running water–they can grow vegetables, even out of the rainy season.

Gneam inspecting the eggplants.

I love these real-life stories of using creativity, ingenuity and hardwork to escape poverty. It would be a privilege to tell them!

* * *

The roots of my Christian faith are entwined with the poor. When I first committed to follow Christ, aged 17, Christ’s command “Whatever you do for the least of these, you do for me,” leaped out at me from the Gospels, and I decided to work with Mother Teresa.

I worked with Mother Teresa for 14 months, and truly enjoyed hanging out with the poor, with the “scheduled tribes” in Orissa, whom India’s development hasn’t benefited, and at Kalighat, Mother Teresa’s Home for The Dying Destitute.

However, after I came to England, studying English at Somerville College, Oxford, I have worked as a writer, and in publishing. But each time, I listen to Heidi Baker mention God’s directive to her to sit at the feet of the poor, I uneasily feel as if I am missing out on a vital aspect of the Christian life. The Gospel is good news to the poor, and perhaps the Gospel alive in our lives must, in some way, bring good news to the poor.

* * *

I would particularly enjoy observing and telling the story of the village of Tonle Batie, Cambodia, since I am an entrepreneur. I have founded two businesses with minimal capital, and the second, a small publishing company, now solely supports our family. So I am impressed by the village’s income generation schemes, which will gradually create self-sufficiency through creativity and ingenuity.

* * *

Another reason I am eager to visit Cambodia, one of the poorest countries in the world, is that the primary theme of my blog, Dreaming Beneath the Spires, is the intersection of faith and theology with everyday life. Hanging out with the poor—close to stark reality—you encounter the great theological questions (and perhaps answers): Whether God is indeed just if we contend with him; why God permits suffering, and whether there is anything redemptive about it; whether the Gospel and the power of prayer work anywhere in the world; whether God’s love and care is an ever-present reality for people in Tonle Batie, Cambodia as for those in Oxford, England, where I live.

* * *

I love travelling: visiting new countries; understanding, soaking in, and photographing new cultures; and writing about them on my blog, sensitively and affectionately. Writing about travel is a secondary strand in my blog, and interests my readers. I would love to tell the story of how Tearfund’s partner International Cooperation for Cambodia, and the local church are helping people heal after the traumatic years of the Khmer Rouge; and to learn to trust one another, and work together for the future with hope.

* * *

I have been blogging for three and a half years, and have begun developing a “platform”– about 15,000 page views a month; about 1700 Facebook fans and friends; and about 34,000 followers on Twitter where I am active (and have been a finalist for the Christian New Media “Tweeter of the Year Award.”)

I would be delighted to leverage my story-telling gifts and social media friendships to help raise money for Tonle Batie by telling its story. I regularly exchange guest posts with other established bloggers, and would love to to guest-post about my experiences in Cambodia.

Tearfund would like each blogger to inspire 20 people to contribute £3 a month so that 23 new families could go through the Church and Community Mobilisation process, being able to send their children to school, learn new farming techniques, and put food on the table. I feel certain my amazing warm-hearted audience of committed Christians readers as well as my personal and church friends and family would enjoy supporting this interesting unfolding story. I look forward to doing so myself.

* * *

Personally speaking, the practice of gratitude has been transforming my spiritual life and is an important strand in my blog. I was struck by people’s shining eyes as they described chickens multiplying, vegetables growing, not having to worry about having enough food, or having to withdraw their children from school. Oh I would love to learn and relearn gratitude for the goodness of God, which I can take for granted!

The Gospel is good news to the poor, and is the world’s greatest force for poverty reduction, I believe. Where it roots, people pray, which gives them new hope and precipitates divine assistance. People work with new enthusiasm, for the Gospel catalyses creativity. People act honestly, which breeds the trust on which co-operative entrepreneurship depends.

And since the Gospel is indeed the power of God, it will work anywhere in the world. It will be exciting to observe the Gospel at work, and Aslan on the move, in the community of Tonle Batie, Cambodia–and to tell the story of this new chapter in The Greatest Story Ever Told!

In which Christ Has An Identical Calling for Men and Women: To Follow Him

By Anita Mathias

Jesus calls us to follow him. He makes no distinction between men and women.

He does not call women to follow him by “being anxious and troubled” about cooking and cleaning, and men to follow him by fishing.

He praised Mary, who sat at his feet and listened to his teaching– like a seminary student–for having chosen the better part, though she was certainly not “being busy at home”. It was Martha to whom she left “all the preparations,” “all the work,” who was playing “the woman’s role” whom He gently rebuked.

Nowhere in the Gospels are there distinct commands for women and for men.

Had Jesus intended distinct roles for men and women–women to run the home, and men to run the church and the world–He, being brilliant (as Dallas Willard points out in The Divine Conspiracy) would have said so. And his brilliant biographers would have recorded it.

* * *

I have seen perfectly good teaching ministries get derailed when they venture into gender roles. [Read more…]

How Persephone Marlowe can Keep You Straight

By Anita Mathias

Image credit

When we moved to Oxford, and my daughter, Irene, was five, she sat next to a little girl in school called Persephone Marlowe.

And in church, to our surprise, there was Persephone Marlowe. And the whole Marlowe family who were lovely and became good friends of ours.

And when Irene was 10, I began to blog.

* * *

Now, blogging is an enormous vehicle of growth if you decide to be honest (since, anyway, one day all that is hidden shall be revealed).

And I was. I explored my discomfort with the church I currently attended (which wasn’t the wisest thing, and led me to having to leave it:-).

I explored my discomfort with contentious issues on the edges of faith. With those too ready to consign others to hell, with rigid positions on homosexuality, women’s roles, theology, or rigid inerrancy.

I threw the jigsaw of my faith on the floor, in mid-life, and reconstructed what I, Anita Mathias, really, really, believed rather than what I, Anita Mathias, had been taught.

And having questioned everything, I came back to a settled Mere Christian faith, and it was good. I felt at home in it.

* * *

And then I noticed that little Persephone Marlowe, now a beautiful teenager, was following my blog.

And, oddly, that settled the direction my blog was going to grow.

Persephone Marlowe was going to have plenty of her own faith shifts in time. We all do. But was I going to be the one to precipitate them? I, who know the anguish of questioning the very fabric of the faith so precious to me. It’s like jumping off a cliff trusting that the air will catch you.

I had asked my own daughters not to read my blog when I was working things out, so as not to scandalize then. The Holy Spirit would work on their faith in his own time. They continued to believe the conservative evangelical position taught in church, and I let them, while I was questioning–because I was questioning, and I hadn’t arrived, and some journeys can only be made alone, and one of those journeys is the journey of faith. In fact, my elder daughter Zoe’s faith is more conservative than mine, and when I don’t agree with everything Irene is taught at youth group, I am silent.

So could I, should I, be responsible for precipitating the faith-shifts of the teenagers who follow me, friends of Zoe, friends of Irene? Or should I celebrate the broad common ground of mere Christianity, rather than explore the exhausting, thin, low oxygen Machu Picchu air of dissent.

I decide. I probably didn’t believe everything my faith tradition taught in the way others believed it. But my common ground with other charismatic evangelicals was massive, and there was much to celebrate and rejoice.

There were a myriad celebratory posts I could write with good conscience, ideas which strengthened, encouraged, inspired and comforted me, and so might, if I were lucky, strengthen, encourage, inspire and comfort others.

I would major on the majors. Where I disagreed, I would largely be silent, unless I thought bad theology was actually harmful, in which case it would be my duty to speak.

* * *

When I tried to get my sister Shalini to join me in mischief, my mother used to say, If anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.

Now I sure Jesus meant it rhetorically, but I decided since I loved Christ, and loved so much about the body of the Christ, I would rather write celebratory, positive, faith-filled posts than risk scandalizing, or denting the faith of Persephone Middleton and the other sweet friends of my daughters who follow my blog.

Will my blog be saccharine sweet? Nope. My no bull-shXt rule still applies. Fortunately, as Adrian Plass says, “God is nice and he likes me,” and so the central fact of the love of God for us provides us a multitude of subjects for blog posts that are sweet, and nourishing and also true. Thank heavens!

There will be “the essence of dogness” in Heaven: C.S. Lewis

By Anita Mathias

Jake, my collie, in a buttercup meadow.

‘And I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, saying, “To him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”’ (Rev 5:13).

Every creature! Wow! Not only will we ourselves be healed, restored, and lost in the ecstasy of contemplating God and the Lamb, but every creature in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and in the sea will join us.

We shall be healed, and all the sad, abused, dumbly suffering animals of all history will be healed with us.

We will stand, and sing together.

I have loved animals all my life, and have always had as many of them as my family would permit. A couple of years ago, we had 9 pets (I live on an acre and a half in deep country, in Garsington, Oxfordshire)–rabbits, ducks, chickens, and a dog.

But decades of pet ownership do not leave one guilt free. There is the dog I could have walked more, the dog we had to give away when we left America, the rabbit who died of myxomatosis, the duck mauled by the fox on the one night we forget to put her in her shed, the hen eaten by the fox on the one night we forgot to lock the coop.

And as for the beloved pets who have died, the pets I have had to give away—I hope I will see them in heaven, for I imagine—but what do I know?–heaven will not be quite complete without dogs
The feisty C.S. Lewis was a slave to the dog of Mrs. Moore, his friend’s mother with whom he eccentrically lived. His brother, Warnie sardonically comments on the great things Jack might have achieved if he were not always trotting off to get meat from the butcher’s for the dog, or to walk him, or take him to the vet.

When a grieving dog-owner asked him if we would be re-united with our pets in heaven, Lewis did not let his lack of acquaintance with that undiscovered country prevent him from having opinions about it. “No,” he said, “not our dogs.” However, he said, there would be, in heaven, “the essence of dogness.”

I hope he’s right about the Platonic essence of Dogness in heaven. Surely he is.

But though there is nothing in Scripture about the resurrection of the dogs, I would love to believe that my dogs past and present will be there in heaven. Oh, please, Lord, let it be.

I particularly want to be reunited with my wonderful dog, Jake, whom I got from a rescue, as I have got every dog we have ever owned (or will own). He fell fast in love with me on the day we brought him home 4 years ago, and has been my constant shadow, sleeping at the foot of our bed, following me everywhere even to the bathroom, constantly repositioning himself to keep a vigilant eye on me. Though what an active collie and a sedentary writer could have in common is probably one of the mysteries of the universe!!

So tell me, do you viscerally believe you will be reunited with your pets in heaven?

“I Killed My Daddy’s King,” and Other Thoughts on the Cross

By Anita Mathias

The King (Lewis Chessmen)

Once, in the hectic days of chess parenting, I saw a plump little golden haired girl play chess with her father, while her siblings played in the tournament.

Oh, how they fell, how rapidly–his knights and bishops and rooks and even his Queen.

And then, we heard her shriek of delight, “I killed my Daddy’s King.”

And the large good-natured man sat smiling.

* * *

Ah, chess with little Teresa. All gain for Teresa, all loss for her Dad, and yet the loss was gain for the joy he felt in her joy.

* * *

The Cross!

Why did that Great Heart pay everything so we could have everything? Why didn’t someone stop him?

From high on the hill in Golgotha, grace runs downhill. To me.

* * *

Sometimes, I despair of my heart. What sort of heart is this?

A heart of thoughts, a heart of words, a heart of ink!

I withdraw to my own private citadel, with my books and my poetry to protect me. And the walls of the citadel are high, and I am at peace.

* * *

But I was not only called to write.

On that dreadful last night, His last words: “Love one another.”

Ah, but that takes a red heart, a blazing sunrise heart like his own.

But I have a cool heart. It’s an autumn heart, warm and golden sometimes, but most at home in silence, in mists and mellow fruitfulness. In words, in poetry, in thinking, in writing. In dreams. An introvert’s heart.

And what can I do? Who, oh Lord, can change their heart?

* * *

Calvary can. Christ can.

The release of the Spirit which He bought with his death can.

Let your beautiful Spirit cascade over and through my heart, oh Lord, changing this heart of ink to a heart of flesh.

I do not know how to love.

Holy Spirit, teach me.

On Vaughan Roberts’ interview, and the Case for Gay Christian Marriage

By Anita Mathias

I read this poignant interview with Vaughan Roberts, who has been the widely respected Rector of Oxford’s most conservative evangelical church, St. Ebbe’s since 1991, and felt saddened.

Roberts discloses his continuing personal battle with same sex attraction, though refuses to identify himself as homosexual…

To quote, “if we have turned to Christ, we are new creations, redeemed from slavery to sin through our union with Christ in his death and raised with him by the Spirit to a new life of holiness, while we wait for a glorious future in his presence when he returns. These awesome realities define me.”

He has remained celibate and single. “Evangelicals say that clergy should uphold the Bible’s teaching that sex is only for heterosexual marriage in their teaching and lifestyle, both of which I do.”

And Vaughan reports that he remains “faithful to the Bible’s teaching that the only right context for sexual intercourse is in a marriage between a man and a woman.”

* * *

Roberts, as far as I can tell from my own reading of the Bible, is quite correct in his statement in this interview, “The Bible presents only two alternatives: heterosexual marriage or celibacy.”

But… but… but… Are we worshipping Christ or the Bible?

What is the Bible? I believe it is divinely inspired. I believe it is trustworthy and true. I believe it is wise. I believe it is beautiful. I believe we can know God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit through its words. I believe reading and obeying it can lead us to the heights of the joy, wisdom and holiness which it’s possible to reach this side of eternity.

But I believe other things too. I believe—well, know—the Bible is a historical document. It is both a product of its times, and has eternal wisdom just as Jesus was both a first century Jew who celebrated the Passover; worshipped at the synagogue, and a radiant, transcendent person with wisdom and blessing for all men of all times.

As our understanding of the Bible evolves, we continually decide which statements were for all time, and which were written to the men and women of their time. We no longer believe slaves should submit to their masters; instead we work for their freedom. We—well, many of us—no longer believe women should remain silent in church. Instead, ashamed that the church should lag behind the world in justice, fairness and equality, we work for the ordination of women as bishops.

And as our understanding of psychosexuality evolves, we no longer believe that people choose their sexual attractions. For socio-biological reasons not fully understood, some are attracted to their own gender, and completely unattracted by the other. Changing this innate orientation is increasingly understood to be difficult, near-impossible, and psychologically dangerous. The 30,000 member British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy recently announced that it was unethical to try to.

As Vaughan Roberts sums it up in this interview, “A small proportion of people, including Christians, find that they remain exclusively attracted to the same sex as they grow into mature adulthood. God has the power to change their orientation, but he hasn’t promised to and that has not been my experience. Research suggests that complete change from exclusively homosexual desires to exclusively heterosexual ones is very rare.”

* * *

Is same-sex marriage a sin? Will it cut married gay people off from the grace, mercy and fellowship of God?

David was known as a man after God’s own heart. He had multiple wives, multiple concubines, lust driving him to adultery and murder. Yet he plumbed the depths of an intimate relationship with God so thoroughly that just reading his Psalms is a prayer.

Many (most?) of the heroes of the faith in the Bible fell short of the glory of God sexually—think of Abraham with his wives and concubines, or Jacob or Solomon.

But that did not cut them off from an intimate relationship with God–from seeing God in the flesh as Abraham did in his theophany in Gen:18, or Jacob’s vision of heaven and earth connected with angels ascending and descending between them, or Solomon’s dream-theophany in which God promises him wealth, honour, long life, and wisdom in the bargain.

* * *

I’ve lived in Oxford, England, for ten years now, and I think its best churches, with the best worship and preaching, are its evangelical ones. I have never met or heard of an openly gay person in them, and—I may be wrong—doubt they would be welcome except as potential “conversion”-fodder.

And that is a shame. We cannot make Christ a heterosexual preserve. He came for all men.

And equally, I believe we should not, cannot make marriage a heterosexual preserve.

Marriage, when it works, is a uniquely wonderful relationship, a mixture of all C.S. Lewis’s Four Loves—of Storge or affection, Philia, or friendship, Agape or unselfish love and Eros, sexual or erotic love.

I am, and always have been, heterosexual, and believe I always will be–but to be honest, if I were single, and if I were to feel this powerful draw to another woman, a mixture of storge, philia, agape and eros, I strongly doubt it would be sin to live with her. I doubt Christ would frown on it.

If people harassed my conscience with the seven verses in the Bible which, as Vaughan Roberts says, disapprove of homosexuality, I would cast myself on the mercy of Christ and in Martin Luther’s phrase, Sin Boldly. God does not save those who are only imaginary sinners. Be a sinner, sin boldly, and let your sins be strong, but let your trust in Christ be stronger, and rejoice in Christ who is the victor over sin, death, and the world. We will commit sins while we are here, for this life is not a place where justice resides. [Letter 99.13, To Philipp Melanchthon, 1 August 1521.]

* * *

Promiscuity is sin; it is idolatry, among other things—seeking pleasure or escape in things other than God, and in a way which is harmful both to yourself and your partner.

But can a loving committed same-sex relationship be sin? As you see, I was repeatedly pressed on this point in the comments section when I wrote about the Chick-fil-A controversy, and appealed to Christians to define themselves by what they were for, not what they were against.

But perhaps, sin is not mathematical. Our human courts recognize this when they hand out different punishments for the same crime—a lighter sentence to the abused spouse who stabs the persecutor in madness and self-defence than to the spouse who cold-bloodedly poisons her spouse for the insurance money and legacy. An abusive, dysfunctional family background is taken into account in sentencing.

So too, there is no impermeable algorithm for sin; a Divine Judge who sees our hearts and our weaknesses decides. And “just and true are all his ways.” And when we are in his hands, we are in good hands, for he was known as “the friend of sinners.” He noticed, approvingly, the prostitutes and tax collectors storming into the Kingdom ahead of the righteous ones (Matt 21:31).

He will look at the people involved, not the letter of the law just as our best human judges too. He will not be bound by the letter of the Bible, he will look at our circumstances and our hearts.

If I were gay, I would not choose a lifetime of solitude and grimacing and bearing it, because of those seven verses which condemn homosexuality. I would trust the mercy and goodness and understanding of the Jesus revealed in the gospels who made me exactly as I was, formed and fashioned me in my mother’s womb.

* * *

Would a homosexual who made a decision to live, in a monogramous, committed and sexual relationship, be welcome in an evangelical church just as he was?

Not in any evangelical church I have worshipped in. And some of these churches have had splendid worship and inspiring preaching.

Perhaps this is the greatest injustice we evangelicals have done to the homosexual community—we have denied them full participation in the Christian community.

But Christ is Lord of all. He is too great a treasure to be for heterosexuals only. The very thought would appall him, he who of all men was the most inclusive, who was always seeking the least, the last, the lost, the outcast, the sinner….

* * *

Oh, the immense relief with which Luther realized that the Catholicism he had been taught was limited. With what relief he turned to Christ!

I await an evolving theology which presents Christ as he is, Lord and God of all, of those who are born heterosexual, and those who are born homosexual, and in which we can all always worship him together without casting immense burdens of shame and guilt and judgement on gay Christians, burdens none of us would be able to bear.

anita.mathias