Teach us, saviour, holy child,
by thy grace so meek and mild,
teach us to resemble thee,
in thy sweet humility.
by thy grace so meek and mild,
teach us to resemble thee,
in thy sweet humility.
Teach us, saviour, holy child,
by thy grace so meek and mild, teach us to resemble thee, in thy sweet humility.
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Recently I discovered Tinder. You know- swipe right, swipe left. It was odd. But I rolled with it. And I started dating this guy. We spent a fair bit of time together. And for the very first time in my life, as a 28 year old, I experienced the healing power of intimate, romantic human touch. And that's not a cute euphemism for sex. I honestly mean human touch. Just to hold another person in my arms. Just to have a chest to lay my head on, lips to kiss. It was healing to make that kind of connection with another person.
But for whatever reason, it wasn't going to work out. This realisation, while not unexpected, hit me pretty hard. Not necessarily because I had my heart set on him. Not even because I had set up for myself any particular expectations. But simply because it was the first time in my life that I had experienced this kind of healing. It was the first time I had ever so much as kissed a guy I liked. And I enjoyed that feeling. And I knew that with all the other challenges I had in my life, through this shitstorm of cancer, I really wanted to have a human to call my own. So inevitably I found it pretty difficult. It didn't help that immediately after it happened I was sucked yet again into the seemingly never-ending vortex of medical specialists and scans and tests and appointments and, ultimately, lung surgery for the second time. And so I was left depressed- zonked out of my mind on heavy duty opioids, but still in pain, feeling lonely, dealing with the fears and frustrations of a painful complication, a readmission to hospital, and a less than ideal biopsy result. Add the unresolved feelings with this guy into the mix and I was under pretty extreme stress. And so I found myself visiting the psychologist. I love my psychologist dearly. She speaks to me on my level. She respects my intelligence and, I suspect, my resilience, and I respect her expertise and genuine concern for me as a person. And from what she tells me, she might just get more out of our sessions than I do... I think that might be why she bulk bills me! After a long chat and more than a few tears, she encouraged me to pick myself up, forget about this guy, and throw myself right back out there. For my part, I felt like that might be easier said than done. ********* Stereotypes are funny things. They exist for a reason, and yet its so very dangerous to assume that any one person fits into a particular stereotype. Lots of gay guys are big into musical theatre. I'm not. If you know me, you'll know I'd much rather be at the footy with a beer in my hand screaming abuse at an umpire than enjoying the glitz and glamour of the latest musical to hit the theatres. But I have enjoyed the few shows I've seen. One of the shows that has always stuck with me is Rodgers & Hammerstein's South Pacific. I saw this show when I was in 9th or 10th grade. My brother Dan can clarify which. The students of North Sydney Boys and North Sydney Girls together put on a production, and my talented brother played the lead. I remember it so vividly. Some Enchanted Evening, as corny as Kansas in August... Its a classic. I really don't know how or why, but after I had seen the psychologist, that very same day, totally out of the blue, this song from South Pacific came to my mind- I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair. Later that afternoon, with my very dear friend Axle, I visited Mahon Pool, the beautiful ocean pool on the headland at Maroubra Beach. And I decided I'd literally wash this man right out of my hair. It didn't work. So I decided that what was needed was an intensive course of 3 hair washes over 3 days, with scope for more should that prove necessary. Kinda like what they did to Elaine on that episode where the valet's body odour was clinging stubbornly to her hair (didn't they use tomato sauce or something?!). The next day I put on my running tights and boardies, took off my singlet, and ran barefoot from my home to Mahon Pool. I washed him out of my hair a second time. And then I ran home. A total of 4.5km. It wasn't a bad effort considering it had only been 11 days since the lung surgery. And slowly the memories started to fade. With the combination of exercise, endorphins, the feeling of the road and rock under my bare feet, a connection with the earth, and the healing power of the ocean and of immersion in water, and of course the intensive hair treatments, the memories started to fade. I felt close to God. The earth. The ocean. I felt renewed and ready to face the world once again. And so I repeated the ritual one more time the following day. I felt liberated. I've hardly given this guy a thought since. My psychologist encouraged me to delete his number, but in the end, that wasn't even necessary. My hair (don't laugh) and I had moved on. And I couldn't help but think that I could wash just about anything out of my hair in a similar way. And so now I have this ridiculous but effective ritual that I can use whenever there is something in my literal mind, my metaphorical hair, that I need to be rid of. Whenever there are those moments in my life when I feel burdened by fear or guilt or frustration, in just about any difficult situation, I can strap on my soles, run up to the ocean pool, and wash it right out of my hair. And maybe more than one treatment will be required. But that's OK, because its a beautiful process to repeat. No two human beings are the same. It's never happened. And not every one of our little rules fits for every unique, beautiful individual that God has lovingly created. That's why the old testament law was so imperfect! It could never offer hope to people who were bound to fail to keep it. But now Jesus has come and set us free from enslavement to a law that offered us no hope.
In Jesus, by the grace of God alone and by nothing I could ever possibly do or not do, I have been invited to live in the genuine, tangible freedom of love and life that has been offered to me by this new and living way. Even I was invited! I was a broken, suicidal, young gay man with cancer who had no hope and no future. For all the years of my life I had lived in the shadows, burdened by crippling shame and despair. I had never found hope and I was at breaking point. And then this good God who loved even me invited me to share in the beauty of his holiness by the sacrifice of his son Jesus Christ. I would be holy! It would cost me nothing! It was free! I didn't have any obligation in return! Change wasn't demanded of me! Nothing was being asked from me! This good God was inviting even pathetic, broken, hurting me. And this good God invites every single one of his creatures to come and share freely in the grace and freedom that he offers, with no obligation. It is already finished. This is the good news of the gospel. This is freedom. This is love. This is grace. And this is the only place where freedom can be found. Over several sad and lonely days in July 2013, as I was recovering from a painful lung operation, this good God came to my unassuming little apartment, in a public housing neighbourhood in Maroubra, and he held me in his very hand. And by his grace alone, by nothing I could ever possibly do or not do, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he filled me with the courage to take hold of that invitation and to say “Yes. Yes. I will come. I am broken and I am poor and I am nothing. I am downtrodden, and I am at my breaking point. I have cried for so many years. I cannot find hope amongst this despair. But I will come.” And then an extraordinary thing happened. This good and mighty God, by his Holy Spirit, lifted from my shoulders the crippling weight of shame that had been breaking my back for so many years. And this good God set me free from my obligation to the law. And this good God declared me holy, because the price is paid in full. Nothing further required. No further obligation. The shame was gone. My mind was free. I was free. By the grace of God, through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, in the power of the Holy Spirit, I was finally. fucking. free. And then this good God began to heal my life. And he brought genuine repentance to my heart. But the repentance God led me to was not in the areas of my life where I had always been told it was required. Instead, I needed to repent of the years I had tried to live by the law and in doing so had trodden underneath my feet the precious sacrifice that Jesus made for me. I needed to repent of my alcoholism and the way I had always treated my own body- God's beautiful and unique creation- with such disdain. I needed to repent of my anger and my temper. I needed to repent of the way I had always tried to amass for myself religious head knowledge, but I didn't know the first thing about loving the people around me. I needed to repent of the fact that I had not heeded my good God's command to go and seek out the poor, and the sick, and the lonely, and the hurting, and to bind up their broken hearts and to proclaim freedom for their tortured souls. I've had to do a lot of repenting, and its not usually a smooth ride. The saddest part of my story though is that for most of the years that I had lived with that crippling weight of shame and depression, I attended a few different churches of various flavours in Sydney. I had been a regular church goer all my life. But for all the time I had spent in church, from the time I was brought by my parents to be dedicated to God as a newborn baby, never once had I actually heard or seen the gospel. Never once had I been told the message of the freedom that could be mine in the finished work of Jesus Christ. Never once was the good news proclaimed that there was no further obligation. There was always a qualification. There was always a but. There was always a little obligation tacked on the end. And it ruined the whole message of the gospel. Because my little obligation was the very source of my crippling burden of shame. My little obligation stole all of my mental energy. It stole all of my joy. It stole all of my hope. It stole a decade of my life. And the only result was shame and despair. And that shame so came from the church that I had believed loved me. And my wounds ran so very deep that the only way my good God could show me his gospel of grace was to take me out of the church altogether. For 6 years I had nothing to do with it. And only then could this good God show me that that little obligation did not come from him. It came from the people at the church who did not understand his obligation-free gospel. What is needed in our churches is not a warmer welcome for gay people. Its not another outreach ministry program. Its not a new dialogue with the community. Its not even an apology for the disgraceful way we have been treated, although that is a wonderful place to start. What is so desperately needed in our churches is an inclusive gospel of love and freedom that boldly proclaims “THERE IS NO FURTHER OBLIGATION. THE PRICE IS PAID. IT IS FINISHED.” And then in our churches we need to live and speak and act and love as though we believe that there is truly no further obligation. Sadly, this beautiful, free gospel is dangling right in front of our eyes, and we have been totally blind to it. If we remain wedded to the little obligation, we have no hope to offer anybody. Shame is a crippling thing. But the antidote is something so very amazing. And now that I've found it, I won't be returning to that place of despair. I will instead be raising my voice loudly to tell the broken-hearted that there is something so much more than shame and despair. There is hope and freedom, with no obligation and no cost, and they are all freely invited. And maybe, sadly, like me, they'll have to ditch the church, and the crippling little obligation being peddled there, to find it. |
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