What is in Kelvin's Head?

Easter Sermon

05/04/2015

I could see that they needed to get past. Their seats were on the other side of me – my right-hand side.

I twisted my knees and they squeezed in and sat down.

Two young men. Twentysomethings. Hipsters. All beards and tattoos.

And everyone settled down to watch the play.

And the hubbub settled down and the lights in the theatre began to fade.

And just when the lights had fading, before the lights had come up on the stage, the man next to me leaned over to the other chap and said very clearly in something more than a whisper – “I love you”.

And the play began and I got engrossed it and it was marvellous.

And the interval came. The lights came up and people started to applaud and I heard the same voice on my right, “I love you”.

And the interval and the second half began. And the lights faded, and “….I love you”.

And at the end, the lights came on and I could feel him lean over again to his other half and I couldn’t hear anything because of the applause all around me. I could see his lips move but I didn’t need to lip-read – I already knew what the words would be.

“I love you.”

And what was happening by me was as compelling as that which was happening on the stage.

This church has been a stage this week for some pretty compelling drama too.

Whether it was the procession, proclamations and Passion reading last Sunday morning, the footwashing on Thursday or our encounters with the crucified on Friday, something dramatic has been unfolding here.

I don’t know whether you can understand what it is like being a priest in Holy Week. I find myself rushing backwards and forwards from home to here and here to home whilst the whole story is being lived out for real. There’s never enough time and never enough clerical shirts. And never quite enough capacity to ever completely catch up.

In holy week as a priest it starts to become your whole life.

There was a point this week when I wondered whether my own identification with it had gone just too far.

At 4 pm on Thursday I put on my tumble dryer to dry some clothes that I needed to wear that night at the Maundy Thursday service.

At 5 pm I realised that the tumble dryer was still full of wet clothes, had broken down completely and wasn’t going to dry a thing.

In a normal week I’d have looked around for other ways to dry the clothes and started thinking about a new tumble dryer. It being holy week, I gave a loud wail of despair and then accused it of being Judas Iscariot out to betray me.

Sometimes the story feels very real.

The truth is though – it is very real. And it is a great drama. And … there’s another thing that is true too – but we’ll come back to that in a minute.

The story is real and sometimes raw in holy week because we are real and sometimes raw.

The story moves us not because we are re-enacting something that happened a long time ago and far, far away but because it is all happening now and in fact heaven and hell are both breaking into ordinary time and disturbing everything we normally know to be true.

It is real. And it is a great drama.

And there’s that other thing that is true too.

Oh yes, the voice that speaks, when the lights go down….

Today I proclaim the resurrection to you who live in a world that needs to know that it is true.

We have known some cruel things in recent times. A cruel massacre in Kenya. A cruel plane crash in Switzerland last week. And the cruelties of rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and fear of foreigners being brought into play at election time.

One thing that Christians need to say clearly at Easter is that if Jewish people don’t feel safe in our society, as Jewish people in Scotland apparently don’t feel safe, then all people of goodwill need to commit themselves to build a world where every community feels secure.

And the election itself takes place against a background where cruel benefit sanctions have been sold to people as a positive good and austerity measures risk dismantling the safety nets that have taken decades to build.

So many things feel cruel. So many things feel wicked.

But on Easter Day the truth I believe is that this world is neither cruel nor wicked at its core.

This world is not fundamentally cruel. This world is not fundamentally bad. This world is blessed by a God who loves it.

For Christ is risen from the grave and the most helpless situation is turned into joy. From death the most unexpected new life rises.

We have lived the drama of holy week and through it all I’ve heard a voice saying – I love you.

When the lights rose on the King of Glory entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday – God was saying I love you.

When the lights faded as he was betrayed – God was saying I love you.

When the lights shone on the intimacy of the last supper – God was saying I love you.

When the light of the world went out and Jesus was crucified – there was still the echo of a voice lingering in the air saying – I love you.

And today, Christ is risen from the dead.

Risen because death is not the end.

Risen and carrying the news that nothing is completely hopeless.

Risen and not merely whispering I love you in the dark but dancing it through all of creation in the light of day.

Risen because God loves this world and risen because God says “I love you.”

For if Christ were not risen, we would not be gathered here, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

19 responses to “Preferring me dead”

chris

27/11/2010

Well said, Rosemary. As for this business of everyone’s having to remain quiet and reasonable while unspeakable things are spoken … I’m sorry. I have this whined at me more times than I can count, so that my own calm goes out the window and I want to rage, rage, and the advocates of calm sit in their dispassionate heaven and think all will be well if people just shut up for another generation. It’s an affront to any society that this discrimination is still allowed to be seen as anything other than monstrous, and we need to raise a storm of protest that will make this obvious to even the most chilly political mind.

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Rosemary Hannah

27/11/2010

For the comfort of Kelvin, however, let me add this. The people who promote discrimination against queer folk very frequently neither want them dead not yet unborn. What they actually (though mistakenly) believe, is that gay people would be just the same if they were straight. That the person would be just the same, because who you desire is some kind of bolt-on accessory which you can pick from the shelf and have or not have, like adding an MP3 player to your car, or just having a tape deck. Now I know that is a terrible misunderstanding, but it is not actually quite as terrible as wishing that the essence of people was somehow different.

FWIW I do remember teaching a session on this to students, having asked them to imagine what people 100 years from now would think of our attitudes, and having one student tell me that in 50 years all gay people would be ‘cured’, and my suppressing my fury then and trying to explain why I did not want my friends and relatives ‘cured’ – and all the emotion catching up with me in my room at midnight, resulting in tears and all-but lying on the floor banging my heels and screaming. I suppose it was less actionable than banging a student’s head off the wall…..

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Scottish Roundup

28/11/2010

[…] debates at the recent meeting of the Church of England’s General Synod under the stark title, Preferring me dead. More jauntily, the damsel of the dancing scones writes about blogging’s transformative […]

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Elizabeth

02/12/2010

I wanted to post on this when I first read it (via Google Reader) but for some reason the internets wouldn’t let me on the site.

It’s hard to read this difficult words, but I think it’s very important that they’re said. I have only the smallest glimmerings of imagining how difficult it must be to be be a gay or lesbian priest now and fear that all too often I am prone to ignore the wider actions of the Anglican Communion because I’ve found it too painful and aggravating. But ignoring it is my privilege and no good in the long run.
And on this issue, as on others, I find it unhelpful to advocate a quite and slow approach. Movement is not always uni-directional and I agree with Kelvin that we seem to be moving backwards, at least, as far as the SEC College of Bishops and the Anglican Communion leadership is concerned. The softly, softly approach is not justice and is not by any stretch of the imagination the only means by which justice is reached. On this issue, as on others, the question is, if not now, when?

And I really, really dislike gay and lesbian Anglicans being sacrificed on the altar of loyalty to the ++Rowan. This is what happened in The Episcopal Church across the pond in 2006 and thank God General Convention saw fit to reverse the decision in 2009. Loyalty tests of such kind are horrendous!

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Rosemary Hannah

03/12/2010

And bluntly the only loyalty worth giving is loyalty to Truth and God.

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Revd Ross Kennedy

04/12/2010

I didn’t listen or read about anything voted on at the recent C of E Synod so can’t comment.

But frrankly I’m bored with all the obsession with sexuality – I just wish we could obey our Lord’s command to love one another.
But let me say this to lFr Kelvin, I for one certainly don’t want you dead. Life would be so dull without you – I would miss your blog and your excellent sermons ( which I must confess I sometimes plagiarise – bless me Father for I have sinned….) Don’t agree with much of what you say on sexual ethics but accept without question your devotion to our Lord and your ministry at St Mary’s.

Prejudice and intolerance certainly smother any real opportunity for real debate. However, I have experienced this as much from those on the theological left (including correspondents to this site) as well as those on the theological right.

The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

I’ve also heard many liberals express a definite wish for all those who dare to oppose the consecration of women to the Episcopacy to get out of the Church… or maybe even to drop dead.

The fact is that lots of people experience prejudice for a variety of reasons – a friend of mine who trained as a male nurse in the 1960s experienced a great deal of prejudice from his female superiors and as a result an absolute block to any promotion.

Others are discriminated against because they are too short or too tall or too fat , or not intelligent enough or didn’t attend the right university and even for daring to choose to be a ‘closet gay’!

There is a whole suffering world out there to which we are called upon to bring hope and help in the name of Jesus. So let’s stop focusing on our own personal problems and obsessions and get on with preaching the Good News.

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ryan

04/12/2010

>>>The fact is that we are just as likely to find prejudice among liberals as well as conservatives in the church. I remember Bishop Richard Holloway discussing the ordination of women on the Television in the 1990s and making the insulting claim that most of the men opposed were probably homosexuals.

If +Richard was talking about Forward in Lace types then he might have had a point ;-).

More seriously: can you cite any ‘liberal’ church that is suggesting denying the sacraments to conservatives? Or pining for an age when violence and discrimination against evangelicals was accepted as a good? These days, people have less tolerance for ‘I’m not racist,but…’ or ‘I don’t *hate* Jews, but….” or “the sexes are equal, but” rhetoric but anti-gay discrimination on religious grounds often goes unchallenged. So while it is of course important to challenge all forms of prejudice, there are no major ‘Christian’ Institute type lobbies endeavouring to defend and legitimise persecution of the fat, tall,or short.

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David McCarthy

06/12/2010

Oh, I know that in the secret halls of the likes of Facebook, there are many who feel free to exhibit prejudice against churches and individuals who don’t fit the bill. That reveals what is truly in the hearts of people. I’d hope that no-one would permit such diatribe and speak out against it, just as I have done to those on ‘the right’ who speak and behave badly.

As for you, dear Kelvin, there are many who disagree with you, but in our wee bit of the Church, I seriously doubt if there is anyone who would “prefer you dead”. You are a gifted minister – we’d miss you!

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