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Good morning. Well, as we have just heard, Olivia Colman got her Oscar for The Favourite. I went to see it with my Dad when it came out and it remains in my mind as a vivid portrayal of a love/power triangle between Queen Anne and two courtiers. But as we came out of the cinema my father voiced the hanging question, ‘Was it history?’ Did Queen Anne have lesbian relationships with Sarah Churchill and Abigail Masham? Pink-washing is a thing – writing back into history more gay themes than are warranted by the evidence – as is straight-washing -something that another Oscar nominated film, Bohemian Rhapsody has been accused of, but then in many cultures around the world and for much of history the strong cultural prohibitions against same sex relationships have meant that many such loves have simply gone unnamed with those wanting to express such a sexual identity being pushed to the margins of society or being forced to love in secret or not to love at all. In the middle of which, the United Methodist Church, a global denomination of more than 12 million members, is meeting in St Louis, Missouri, to debate whether or not it can remain together given its different convictions about homosexuality. Many of the delegates come from countries where homosexuality is illegal and inevitably therefore invisible and shameful. Perhaps half come from more liberal contexts but here reactions are fiercely divided between progressives who want to bless faithful love between people where they see it and conservatives who believe that God’s purposes for human fulfilment are firmly heterosexual and that to pretend otherwise is seriously to mislead. It is, in essence, the same discussion that the Church of England’s General Synod is hearing reports on this week with debates to be held in 2020. In our culture, for those who are not churchgoers perhaps, it’s hard to see why it matters so much? How can Christians bless battleships and not faithful love between two human beings? One insight is provided by Benedictine monk, Lawrence Freeman, who writes in his blog, ‘The sacred language of Judaism is Hebrew; of Hinduism, Sanskrit; of the Muslims, Arabic. But what is the sacred language of Christianity? It is the body.’ For Christians the human body is sacred because God identified with all human bodies in the iconic body of Jesus Christ and wants all human beings to know true love and true freedom in their bodies too. So it matters to Christians how human beings inhabit their bodies because they are potentially holy places – places in which we might experience real love; meet God; become whole. And yet that very insight can so easily flip into a body fascism that contributes to the crucifying exclusion, marginalisation and in some contexts, vigilante persecution that turns some bodies into nobodies. Which means I think for me, that perhaps pink-washing has a place – writing back in embodiments that have been written out of history and written off – if it helps us to see that these bodies, these lives, are as real as ours, and as needing of intimate love.