What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached on 7 June 2015

07/06/2015

St Mary’s is a special place for all kinds of reasons.

This place is a joy and a wonder and it is a place where I really enjoy preaching.

I almost never come away from a Sunday or a feast day without feeling moved, inspired and thankful for the worship that we manage offer here together. And that’s a wonderful thing for a priest. Too many clergy, I suspect, conduct worship which doesn’t really excite them and which they wouldn’t go to if they didn’t have to.

But not me. This is a special place.

Just occasionally, Sunday’s can be a bit more stressful than you hope they will be. And what I have in mind this morning is the very occasional times when someone has taken ill during the course of the service.

Now, the thing is, different churches deal with that in different ways. The best organised churches have someone at the door all ready to call an ambulance if one is needed.

Here in St Mary’s, what usually happens is that a perfectly formed medical team seems to instantaneously form around the person who is laid low.

I remember on one occasion someone leaning over to me and asking whether they should call 999 and my response was that they could do but there was much more chance of the person seeing an A and E doctor quickly here than actually at A and E.

On one Sunday someone rather dramatically told me that someone in the congregation had died in church and asked me to bring the holy oil to anoint them. I sent for the oils and rather tentatively approached. As I did so, I found the “corpse” sitting up and fighting people off with the words, “Will someone get all these doctors away from me”.

Not only is there suddenly a bunch of medics all set to do what they can but right behind them there seems to come a team of trained counsellors all ready to step in to offer comfort and concern to anyone who needs it.

It is all very St Mary’s.

I feel as though this morning’s gospel is a bit of an accident and emergency this morning.

• Jesus’s family thinking he has completely lost the plot and needing saving from himself.

• This line about the sin against the holy ghost that can never be forgiven.

• And then Jesus comprehensively rejecting his mother and siblings.

It is a tricky piece for any preacher.

And if we had all the time in the world, I’d tell you to get into groups and try to sort it all out. And you know what I’d do, I’d have a group of medics trying to work out what was wrong with Jesus over here. And a bunch of psychiatrists over there trying to work out whether his issues with the devil were psychological ones.

And the team of trained therapists could move in on the business with him rejecting his family. Some might want to spend time with Mary and his siblings trying to help them deal with his rejection and some might want to give Jesus himself a good listening to.

And I think we could probably manage a team of theologians in another corner to try to work out the stuff about blasphemy against the holy ghost and to say what all that was about.

And when they fell out about what that means, as I think it is probably inevitable that they would do because (trust me on this) no-one really knows what it means, we could send the counsellors over to that corner to help them listen more effectively to one another and do a little emergency pouring of oil on troubled waters.

And then those who are in management might raise the question of problem solving in multi-disciplinary teams and suggest a significant reorganisation of resources.

But by this stage we might have the justice and aid network forming themselves over in one coffee corner to remind us that blasphemy is a serious business in some parts of the world and people can be killed simply for being accused of blasphemy and asking whether or not we can have a forum speaker about this very important issue and reminding us that some in this very congregation come from those very countries and that all local issues are global issues and all global issues are local ones.

And then you might get the lesbian and group having a subversive bible study group in another corner and having a very long conversation about the idea of first tying up the strong man in order to plunder his house and asking whether or not that is a prophecy of the overthrow of hetero-normative sexist homophobic society and whether or not we are about to usher in the commonwealth of God where all it justice and joy. And peace and light will appear to break out until someone suggests that this means we need to change from speaking about the kingdom of God to speaking about the queendom of God.

And then we’ll need the team of trained counsellors and therapists all over again. And the musicians could come up with a chant on the important text, “Blessed are the peacemakers”.

And pretty soon the God Factor people zoom into action to gather the questions that the congregation might have about the gospel of the day. And they’d be busily putting them all up on a sticky label wall so we can all see one another’s questions and then we would add more questions on top of the first questions. And it would never be too late to ask another question because accepting the questions is what it is all about.

And then, this being St Mary’s, you’ll get some smart alec preacher in the pulpit going on and on about Jesus rejecting his mother and siblings and wondering whether this means that it is time for single people to remind those who live in couples and families that Jesus seemed pretty decisively to reject their way of life. And thanking God we don’t have family services here in St Mary’s because we’re a church for everyone.

And on hearing this, the therapists decide they will work most effectively running a triage system and employing their talents to those who are most in need. And they split themselves into teams that quickly get to work here, here, here and here.

And all the while, the poor gospel is lying there gasping for breath and saying, “All I wanted to do for you people was to bring you a bit of life”.

So.

What will we really take away from hearing it today?

Can I suggest three little things.

Firstly,

That God’s compassion is so exciting that when it is found in Jesus it draws a crowd.

And as a congregation we need to be ready for that to happen.

Secondly, that God’s compassion is disruptive of our expectations and of our identities. And as the people of God we’d better be ready to be able to learn more about the expansive love of God than we already know. (And if we can’t do that we’re not the people God wants us to be).

And finally – that God’s compassion comes to us as individuals. The love of God doesn’t come because of who we think we are – neither by profession nor, as this gospel teaches us via family or friends. This is not the news that Jesus regards his mother and siblings as unimportant. It is the better news that he regards every one of us as being just as close and loved by himself as as all of them.

Because God loves us each, utterly and forever. And in God’s world, no-one comes first and we all belong to another.

And after the service you can get into your teams and discuss the sermon.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

8 responses to “Assisted Dying – Why I’ve changed my mind”

BobS

16/03/2026

You lucidly illustrated an example of a family seeking to pressurise someone to influence the process of death. But what was possibly missing was the voice of the person nearing death. Where was their perspective, their reasoning? Assisted Dying starts and driven by the person dying. They are the ones who, with mental capacity, take those steps, if necessary, to expedite death at that final stage. They, together with medical experts, make those decisions.
The examples cited refer to a family desperate for a skiing holiday and your concern of funeral directors making money through direct cremations.
I fully agree with your desire for a better palliative care system. Having witnessed their work it is amazing. But that is another argument. To conflate the two dismisses the voice of those seeking assisted dying.
Your concern over assisted dying seems to be interwoven by a call for improved palliative care and a demise in direct cremations.

Reply
1. Rev Owain Jones
  
  16/03/2026
  
  Respectfully, Bob S, I think you’re overlooking the one thing that struck me very forcefully from this incident. I’ve always felt profoundly uneasy at the likelihood – I’d say ‘moral certainty’ – that the voice of the dying will in some cases be influenced, even swayed, by the dying person’s assumptions, inferences or intuitions (correct or not) about the needs of those closest to them, and even their desires. These desires might not be articulated, or even correctly guessed – but they might, and as soon as the dying person is subject to them, they are, by definition, influenced in their decision. At that point, Assisted Dying can no longer be said “to start and driven by the person dying.” I’ve been there for a long time – but what I suddenly realized reading Kelvin Holdsworth’s post, was that there’s a much darker issue here, and it relates to a fundamental principle to which I’ve always adhered. Please bear with me, and entertain for a moment an analogy which you might consider to be extreme, and which I’d be appalled to hear deployed by the religiously fanatical opponents of Assisted Dying. It’s this. I have always been opposed to the death penalty for a number of reasons, but very prominent among them is that it takes to an extreme the testing of a fundamental principle of justice (which I know I’m modifyng here to make the analogy a better fit, and of course, you’re free to take issue with that): “It is better that a hundred guilty men go free than that one innocent person be punished unjustly.” I’m aware that there’s a very significant separation between that and this, but I don’t believe it amounts to ‘clear blue water’. Let me try and articulate my conviction in a reasonable way, for you to consider, even if you reject it. I think that there’s a huge danger inscribed in legislation which will, of a moral certainty, permit circumstances in which unwilling dying individuals give assent under pressure to the active premature termination of their lives. This holds true even if a hundred times as many individuals assent freely, and even actively seek, such termination. One of the things that always made me uneasy about the Vulcans was the assertion that “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few”. There seems to me to be no way in any legislation to protect the needs and rights of the few in this issue. At the very least, I think that needs to be acknowledged openly by proponents of Assisted Dying. If we’re about to be taken across a Rubicon, I believe that everyone, on both sides of the decision, need to acknowledge that. (Incidentally, I completely agree with Kevin Holdsworth’s horror (I hope I’m expressing that fairly) at ‘Direct Cremations’ and the way they’re advertised. They seem to me to be open profiteering from the death-phobic culture in which we’re immersed. I fear that the impulses behind Assisted Dying as currently advocated may be a good-faith manifestation of the inability of society to look at the full actuality of human mortality and the relationship between life and death. I may be deluding myself, but I think I’d say that even if I were an atheist.
  
  Reply
  1. BobS
    
    17/03/2026
    
    Rev Owain, thank you for your response. I fear your analogy was stretched to fit your argument, and, apologies if my education lacked in this quarter, where the reference to Vulcans was applicable.
    If we are concerned that a very small percentage will be wronged, then many practices today should be stopped. The statistical error you describe will always be possible, albeit minimised as much as possible.
    The proposed law tries to cater for such concerns. What appears to be the argument against assisted dying is that it is not error proof.
    If a person who is deemed to have mental capacity with less than six months to live, with suitable medical provision, seeks to alleviate their suffering, and is capable of themselves administering the medication to ultimately ease that pain, then their voice has been heard.
    I also would hope that palliative care continues to improve but that is a separate argument, as are direct cremations, and now the cost of the funeral to families. These arguments are all used to conflate the underlying issue of assisted dying.
    
    Reply
2. Val Dobson
  
  16/03/2026
  
  You are wrong to connect funeral companies’ promotion of Direct Cremation with the push for assisted dying. Nowadays, many families simply cannot afford a “proper” funeral / cremation, and funeral grants come nowhere to covering the the costs. The funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs.
  
  Reply
  1. Kelvin
    
    16/03/2026
    
    I’m happy to speak out about funerals being too expensive. However, it is manifestly not the case taht funeral companies are simply responding to customer needs. If they did they would promote these as being about price. They don’t – they promote them as being about not causing a fuss, which is the point I’m making here.
    
    Reply
Nigel Kenny

16/03/2026

Thank you for your wise and persuasive words – may they influence MSPs to vote against the Bill.

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Chriatine McIntosh

16/03/2026

Thanks for this, Kelvin – I’ve been thinking more about this as contemporaries begin to vanish from this life.

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Helen Leslie

16/03/2026

Thank you Kelvin. I am someone who has spent the majority of my working life caring for people at the end of their lives. You said exactly what I would want to.

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