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This book begins (in Part One) and ends (in an Appeal) with some reflections from the Gospel of John. So here, too, we turn to John’s account of the story of the feeding of the 5,000. As John so often does, he tells the story in a way that leaves us in no doubt that Jesus, the source of our salvation, is in charge. It is Jesus who confronts the disciples with the problem of the hungry crowd at the end of the day. And it is Jesus who distributes the loaves and the fish after giving thanks. It is Jesus who feeds the large crowd, a sign pointing back to creation and to the feeding of Israel in the desert and forward to his giving of himself as food that endures to eternal life to those who believe in him. It is a sign that Jesus is ‘the bread of life’ (John 6.27,35). All that the disciples have to do is to ‘Make the people sit down’ (John 6.10).

That is the very thing that this book and its accompanying resources seek to do in the life of the Church of England:¹ the book and its accompanying resources invite us all to sit down together with each other, and, like the crowds, to be nourished by Christ. It is an invitation made in faith: that God will provide the nourishment that we need to better understand God’s purposes in relation to human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage. It is an invitation that carries with it the power of God’s love: the love of the one who created us and cares for us in the seemingly impossible dilemmas we face as a church with regard to our different perspectives on these matters.

As you leaf through this book it may be that you identify with the disciples in the story of the feeding of the 5,000. The disciples must have been wearied and worried by the relentlessness of the needy crowd and frustrated by the seemingly impossible challenge that Jesus puts to them, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ (John 6.5).

It may be that you are weary of the decades of attempts by the church to engage seemingly fruitlessly or superficially with questions of sexuality and marriage. Maybe you are overwhelmed by your own experience and pain in relation to these matters and do not have the capacity or even the desire to attend to a church that seems to have been deaf to your cries.

It may be that all you can see is the impossibility of the task: the depth of disagreement within the church. So, like the disciples, you are already poised and even planning to find another way out.

It may be that you feel the pressure of the crowds watching and waiting to see what will happen as the church deliberates and hesitates. Maybe you share Jesus’ compassion for the crowd and want the church to respond, but you are held back by the inadequacy of what the church has to offer.

It may be that what you really want is to ‘get on with the real task of the church’. Maybe you are disappointed and frustrated by a church that keeps being derailed from its core mission by having to expend precious resources talking about sexuality and marriage.

So it may be that, like the disciples, you can’t see the sense of getting everyone to ‘sit down’. And yet, this book is an invitation to do just that: to sit down to learn, listen and pray together. This is neither easy nor comfortable and is itself a step of love and faith. When Jesus ordered the disciples to make the crowd sit down, they had no hard evidence that everyone would be fed. In fact, quite the contrary. In the same way, this book offers no recommendations or guarantees of an agreed way forward for the church in relation to human identity, sexuality, relationships and marriage. But it does challenge all of us to believe that God is at work among us as we sit together to learn, to study, to listen, to talk and to receive; and, in so doing, to follow Christ together in his way, truth and life.