What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon on BBC Radio 4

18/01/2015

It was great fun doing the BBC Radio 4 Sunday Worship live from St Mary’s today. There’s always a bit of an adrenalin rush about being involved with the production of 40 minutes of live radio.

If you were one of the million or so who tuned in then you’ve already heard this sermon, but the video gives you the pictures of what it looked like, including me preaching in headphones.

Sermon preached on BBC Radio 4 – 18 January 2015 from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

When we follow Jesus, we follow into a whole set of traditions that remind us that God is with us – here, right here in the world.

A few weeks ago now we were in high festival mode in this church, as in most churches. The Christmas trees are gone. The baubles are packed away. The candle-ends have been removed from the windowsills and sent off for recycling. And there is only be barest whiff of incense in the air from the feast of the Epiphany.

But the church offers us time to reflect on what we encountered. For Epiphany is a season not a one off event. It’s a time for reflecting on what it means to live in a world that God has chosen to come into and be known in.

Very often I talk about God being a God of surprises and say that when we get to know God we should expect the unexpected.

But looking through the verses of Psalm 139, perhaps the big drama of the Christmas story should never have surprised us. For they too tell us that God is with us.

Most religions have patterns of behaviour and rhythms built into them. Across many traditions, the idea of praying at the start and the end of the day is common.

The psalms were clearly part of a cycle of prayer and they still form the backbone of daily prayer for millions of people every day. It isn’t hard to hear in Psalm 139 part of that ancient rhythm of reminding oneself early in the day that God is present.

The psalmist sings “You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away.

You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways.”

Prayer is offered here in this building every day. Whether there are just a few of us gathered in the little oratory behind me as is the case on some days, or whether it is a day when the place is packed out with people celebrating a festival or a morning like this when we share our prayer with people listening on the radio, this is a place where prayer is offered every morning.

I remember when I was working in a university chaplaincy knowing one of the people in the mail room who, if he saw me going back to the chaplaincy would call after me, “Say one for me – don’t forget, say one for me”.

And we do. We pray each day here for the world around us, for people in need. We remember those who mourn and those who are sick. The rhythm of prayer means that prayers are offered not simply for the peoples of the world who need it but because some are too sick to be able to pray clearly, some a travelling, some are on the run, some are anxious and find it hard to be still.

Every time we pray, it is like a little Christmas for every time we pray we live out the truth that God is with us in the world and with us in every kind of setting that we encounter.

God is with us in the bright days when all seems well. And God is with us on the down days too. God is with us when we know it. And God is with us when we struggle to recognise it. God is with us when we pray consoling words in a holy place. But God is with us in every other time and place too.

“Where can I go from God’s spirit? Or where can I flee from God’s presence?” asks the psalmist. And the answer is that there is nowhere that is separate from God at all. Everywhere we go, God is already there.

Years ago when widespread acceptance of the internet was relatively new, I got involved in a project where a church put a webpage up asking for prayer requests. The idea was that a small congregation would pray through the requests at a lunchtime service each week.

Word got out in the press that this was available and within a few weeks the prayer requests were flooding in. Hundreds a day were coming in. Thousands. And for a time, baskets containing printouts of the prayers were being placed on the altar of the church to represent the prayers being brought before God.

The truth is though that we are already surrounded by prayer because Christians pray for the world every day. And we are already close to God – and our psalms are amongst the many promises in the bible that tell us so.

The world is troubling at the moment. Massacres happen on the streets of western capital cities, in Nigeria and in places far from the eye of the media too.

It is easy to feel unsettled and troubled.

Indeed, it is reasonable and right to feel that way.

But I believe that peace and justice will come to our world and trust that God is collaborating in our lives to help us to bring peace to pass. We must never be cheated into thinking that trouble and violence are the way the world really is.

For God is with us in the troubled, perplexing but ultimately wonderful world. And with God, love is always the last word on how things should be.

BBC Radio 4, Kelvin Holdsworth, Sermon, Sunday Worship

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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