It is all too easy for us, accustomed to the experience of textual abuse of the bible used as a weapon to justify bigotry, discrimination and violence to lose sight of John’s first message in today’s Mass reading, from his first epistle: that the heart of Jesus’ Gospel lesson is that God is light, in which there is no darkness:

This is what we have heard from Jesus Christ,
and the message that we are announcing to you:
God is light; there is no darkness in him at all.
If we say that we are in union with God
while we are living in darkness,
we are lying because we are not living the truth.
But if we live our lives in the light,
as he is in the light,
we are in union with one another,
and the blood of Jesus, his Son,
purifies us from all sin.

If we say we have no sin in us,
we are deceiving ourselves
and refusing to admit the truth;
but if we acknowledge our sins,
then God who is faithful and just
will forgive our sins and purify us
from everything that is wrong.
To say that we have never sinned
is to call God a liar
and to show that his word is not in us.

I am writing this, my children,

to stop you sinning;
but if anyone should sin,
we have our advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ, who is just;
he is the sacrifice that takes our sins away,
and not only ours,
but the whole world’s.

 However, we must not overlook the second message. It simply is not true, as some people insist, that we are necessarily sinners because of our sexuality, but that does not mean that we are free of sin.

Like everyone else, we too are subject to sin, and like everyone else, we need to confront the sin in our lives, and do what we can to root it out. Like everyone else, that sin may sometimes be in the way in which we use our sexual faculties selfishly or irresponsibly – or it may be in other matters entirely.

In the eyes of God, we really are just as everyone else: each of us unique, each of us deeply loved, each of us equally able to share in the joy, and the light, of God’s word.