In his Easter Day sermon at Canterbury Cathedral, Archbishop Justin gave a ringing endorsement of the resurrection of Christ as central to our Gospel message. He spoke of the urgent, joyful and sometimes dangerous task of testifying to a relationship with the living Christ that has been given to all Christians. But why did he refer to \u201csexuality\u201d\u009d and what did he mean by it?
\u201cWitnesses are people who know Christ; lay or ordained, old or young, gender, politics, sexuality or whatever irrelevant\u201d\u009d.
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\nWhat did the Archbishop mean when he said that \u201csexuality is irrelevant\u201d\u009d to proclaiming the resurrection?
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\n In his closing remarks, the Archbishop says that \u201cevery disagreement in which love is maintained\u201d\u009d witnesses to the living Christ. In other words, it is not just our proclamation of the resurrection, but the way in which we stay together, maintaining \u201cgood disagreement\u201d\u009d even though we disagree over issues such as gender and politics and homosexuality, which testifies to Christ.<\/p>\n
So here is the problem. By saying that \u201csexuality or whatever\u201d\u009d is irrelevant to the witness of Christians to the resurrection, the Archbishop probably intends to say that the debates preoccupying the church are petty compared with the task of winning disciples to Christ through word and deed. Whatever he meant to say, he has run the risk of being misunderstood in two ways: suggesting that sexual morality is not important to Christian witness, and more specifically, that to be \u201cgay\u201d\u009d (by which most hearers would assume, sexually active) is completely compatible with authentic resurrection-based Christian Faith. Julian Mann in his recent piece<\/a> reminds us that the opposite is true according to Romans 6:2-4: the resurrection of Christ was physical, and so not only speaks of his victory and his Lordship in a spiritual sense, but demands physical and moral change in obedience and faith from his disciples in response.<\/p>\n The Archbishop\u2019s sermon is superb in its reminder that the empty tomb needs daily interpretation to the world by Christians in all their rich variety. But by using the word \u201csexuality\u201d\u009d in its context, (which he did not need to do), he has at best run the risk of being misunderstood. At worst he has prejudged the outcome of his own \u201d\u02dcConversation\u2019 process, and opposed the teaching of his own church, by suggesting the moral neutrality of homosexual practice.<\/p>\n