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Disability, Demons, and Gays (Oh, My!): Sermon Preached on 8th September 2024 (Fifteenth Sunday After Trinity)

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A black-and-white line engraving of some demons pulling at Saint Anthony's beard.

Preached at Holy Cross, Seend; St Peter’s, Poulshot; and Christ Church, Bulkington

James 2. 1-17; Mark 7. 24-37

“…he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened.’”

A few weeks ago, an acquaintance messaged me out of the blue to tell me he was thinking about his relationship with God, and asked my advice on the best way to start reading the Bible. I gave him my usual advice: start with Mark’s Gospel – as it happens, the source of most of our Sunday Gospel readings in 2024 – then Genesis, then Revelation, then John’s Gospel, then Acts… and if you’re still keen at that point, it’s time to subscribe to some Bible Reading Fellowship notes.

This is the cover of Games Workshop's book "Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness". Brightly coloured painting of demons overseen by a dark god.
Did you spend some of your adolescence in the company of this book? © Games Workshop and used under Fair Use doctrine.

This acquaintance is a journalist, and it was obvious from some messages he sent me as he started his journey through Mark that he was comfortable with the rich multi-layered symbolism of the story, and indeed enjoying it greatly.

Then, a few days ago, he asked if I knew any disabled biblical scholars or theologians who were worth reading. As it happens, my acquaintance is disabled, and one consequence of his disability is a very severe speech impediment.

So, knowing that he had just read the section of Mark that I am preaching on this morning, I asked for his thoughts on a story of a deaf man with a speech impediment being healed when Jesus says: “Be opened.”

My friend, alert to the multiple layers of symbolism in the text, said this struck him as relating to being “open to and opened by the love of God”. As for healing, his disability is, to him, simply part of who he is—it must therefore also, he said, be part of his Christian Faith. “I don’t think Jesus would want me not to be disabled or spend every day hoping for a cure”, he wrote to me.

He has faith that God has made him as he is. Therefore, he needs no healing. Not from his disability, anyway—although, like all of us, there is doubtless much from which he does need to be healed.

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Things Have Gone Wrong At The Tavistock. Central Government Must Step In.

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I’ve long since passed the point when I thought posting anything political on the internet made any difference, and what I’m about to say is on an issue where questioning a particular orthodoxy often results in abuse.

But I don’t actually want to look back in a year or two and think I kept my head down on this issue for fear of some aggro on social media. Or even for fear of losing friends who had once been good friends.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust’s lead for safeguarding children, Sonia Appleby, is taking her own employer to court as a whistleblower, claiming that she was victimised after bringing forward concerns from clinical psychiatrists working on the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), the only adolescent gender clinic in England, which also receives referrals from Wales and both jurisdictions in Ireland.

The Trust is bringing forward disciplinary action against another clinician, David Bell, who had been approached by GIDS staff with concerns because he was a staff governor on the Trust, and who then wrote an internal report critical of GIDS.

It has been reported that 40 clinicians resigned from GIDS in just three years to early 2020.

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