God is the source of all life, wholeness, and love. God is present in all of creation, and at the same time, transcends all of creation.
“I Am that I Am” – God said to Moses in Exodus 3:14.
We are mindful of the limitations of language even as each one of us use different words to describe God. In our services, we aspire to use gender neutral language to describe God. God creates, guides, nurtures, and disciplines - qualities that cannot be neatly confined to one gender. In using such language to speak about God, we remind ourselves of the God we worship, the way we relate to each other, the kind of loving community we wish to build.
God is revealed through the Incarnation of Jesus. Jesus' life provides a model of how we should ourselves relate with creation.
The Incarnation also revealed that God’s relationship with creation is characterised by love. We are called to respond to that love through the Three Great Loves: Love of God, Love of Neighbour, and Love of Self. (Matthew 22:34-40//Mark 12:28-31//Luke 10:25-28; cf. Deuteronomy 6:5; Leviticus 19:18)
All individuals, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons, are individuals of sacred worth created in God’s image. St Maximus distinguishes between the image and the likeness of God in Genesis 1:26 (‘Let us make humankind in our image [tselem], according to our likeness [demuth]’.) –we may be made in the image of God, we lack the likeness of God. Our calling then as followers of Christ is to grow into the likeness of God as we work towards being more Christ-like.
Same-sex and transgender relationships, when lived out in accord with the love commandments of Jesus, are consistent with Christian faith and teachings.
The community is important to our faith journeys. It is through the love, support and encouragement of a healthy, vibrant spiritual community where we can be vulnerable, authentic and accountable that we can grow into the likeness of God.
We recognise the Bible as holy scripture, containing the revelations about God through time. We need to consider the historical and cultural contexts in which the books of the Bible were written and compiled, so that we can discover the truths within. We believe that God is the Living Word and we continue to experience the revelation of God in our daily lived experiences.
Questions are as important as the answers. Living the mystery is more important than church dogma and doctrine. Our faith journey is therefore marked not by dogmatic belief, but by continuous exploration, questioning, contemplation and practice. We recognise that doubt isn’t the opposite of faith – rather it is certainty that is the opposite of faith. We do not need faith if we have certainty. It is through the questions we have that guide us to a deeper relationship with God, with ourselves, and with each other.
Bad things happen, sometimes due to human actions, sometimes for no apparent reason. While we may not find an answer in this lifetime, we trust that God is with us and will provide us the guidance we need to navigate the mystery of life.
