What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached on 15 July 2018 (Pride Weekend)

16/07/2018

Is this the word of the Lord?

Is this the gospel?

“What should I ask for” said Herodias.

“The head of the Baptist” said her mother.

And it was so.

And where is the good news in any of that?

It is one of the worst, most barbaric and miserable stories in all of scripture.

Herodias whom we know by the name of Salome in popular culture danced before the tyrant and demanded the head of the one who had stood up to Herod as he rode roughshod over the law.

(David on the other hand, danced through the streets for joy in the first reading and distributed food for everyone – but we’ll get to him later).

What about Salome? Why do we read this sorry and sordid tale?

This is not some saucy burlesque after all but a dance of death.

Where is the good news to be found?

This story comes around quite a lot – we get rather a lot about the Baptist in the lectionary. We get this story on this Sunday and we also get it for the day we remember John the Baptist’s death too.

This is not a story which ends with all the boys being brought safely from the dark and frightening cave. It is the story that ends with John’s state sponsored arbitrary execution.

Every time I read it, someone asks why.

If I’m honest, I sometimes feel the same when I am reading it too.

People will know that I rather like the theatre.

Going to the theatre is what I do when I have time off.

I am apt to get myself to places where there are lots of shows on and just book things that I fancy on the off chance that they might be that great night out that you will remember forever.

(Which is how I once booked myself tickets for the Tempest and spent the first few lines thinking that I didn’t remember the sailors in the storm being Russian sailors and got a full five minutes into what is, to say the least a long and complex night out before realising that the whole thing was going to be in Russian).

And I did the same with a production by a famous theatre producer of a play by the famously witty Oscar Wilde and glued to my seat in horror when I realised that Salome, the title of the play was not the story of some saucy socialite but just a retelling of the horror story that I’ve just read from the bible.

To put it bluntly – there are no jokes here.

But when people ask why we read it in church my answer is always the same.

We read it because it is true. We read it because brothers and sisters are suffering. We read it because John the Baptists who stand up to power still end up in prison cells. We read it because conniving plotters like Herodias and her ma still send good people to needless and pointless deaths. We read it because people still suffer under Herods.

We read it in short because tyrants still exist. And it is fear of similar tyranny that brought people out onto George Square in protest on Friday evening.

We stories like this it because notwithstanding the good news that Jesus came to share, he came to share good news so that we could share it with those who need it most.

We read it because it is true. And we’ll keep on reading it until it is true no more.

For standing up to abuses of power is surely a part of who we are and what we do.

Yesterday, I stood for hours, literally hours, in Kelvingrove Park listening to people talk about their experiences of faith and of the church.

It is a shock for people to see someone in a dog collar at a Pride celebration (or an anti-Trump protest come to that) and dozens of people wanted to chat.

And I spoke to people who wanted to change the world like John the Baptist and speak truth to power – not least yesterday, those leading the campaign for Inclusive Education in Scotland – their time has come.

Scotland’s children need them to win what they asking for.

And over the last 28 hours, I’ve spoken to people who were dressed a little differently to most of you here this morning. People who, like John the Baptist like to dress in things that wouldn’t look so respectable in Byers Road. There were not so many hair shirts on display yesterday but there were one of two leather girdles a bit like John used to wear.

But my predominant memory is of speaking to one John the Baptist after another who are trapped in caves of despair. And who think that the church is the evil empire and that Herod is in fact one of us – for people who look like me look all too much like the oppressor to them.

A particular memory of yesterday is of speaking to dozens of heart-broken Roman Catholics who feel lost and abandoned by their faith.

We never talk about that kind of thing in ecumenical conversations, which is why so many ecumenical conversations are so utterly futile and why the ecumenical age is all but over.

There will be no new ecumenical spring until we can talk about the difficult things like heartbroken Roman Catholics at Pride and about the way our streets in the summer are taken over by those claiming to be protestants banging drums of hatred.

There was different drumming on our streets yesterday.

The Scottish Episcopalians at Pride were just in front of the Co-Op brass band who encouraged us around town and up Blythswood Hill to a small selection of well-known disco hits.

As the road became steep they broke out into Abba songs of years ago.

“Do I look like a Dancing Queen?” I wondered as they blasted it out behind us before deciding that I probably did and that the only way to keep going was to shimmy.

Which brings us to David dancing for joy before the Ark of the Covenant.

The murder of the Baptist by Herod with the connivance of Herodias and her wicked mother is one of my least favourite readings in the bible. But we read it because it is true.

The story of David dancing through the city in a linen kilt to the scandal of those who thought they knew better including his wife, is one of my absolute favourites.

We read that story because it is true too.

We dance when we’re in love.

We dance because we are happy and full of joy.

And we dance because God is good.

David dances as though no-one is watching, even when he knows they are.

And if ever there was an example from scripture to emulate, I want to dance like David before the Lord.

The things we read in scripture are true – all of them. The horrors as well as the loves.

The Lord gives us choices.

To walk the way of the tyrant. Or to protest and shout for justice from the earth.

To dance the dance of death with Herodias. Or to dance the dance of life with David.

Choose life – and all the earth will be fed.

Choose life – and dance through the streets for joy like no-one is watching.

Choose life – for what other choice is worth making.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the holy Spirit. Amen.

7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”

Pausing Place

25/08/2010

I missed last night’s programme, but I thought your comments were interesting.

In a sense, perhaps it’s unsurprising if the SEC is inwardly more positive about itself than the CofS. My take is that in the recent past, at least, the SEC started from a lower common denominator, not being the “local” church in the same way as the Kirk, and so it doesn’t have to contend with others saying of it “look how the mighty have fallen” in quite the same way.

As to the health of the Kirk (and the SEC for that matter), I think we need to reflect on our self-perception and to consider carefully the points and places in which a dying church (congregation or denomination) should be allowed to die gracefully, and the ways in which we might see new life emerge from the rubble.

As a young(ish!), relatively new Christian I have seen examples of (both urban and rural) SEC and Kirk congregations where there are few signs of new growth, little to draw in younger (under 50 year olds, to pick a random-ish number) new folk, and much to sustain negative preconceptions of church as boring, irrelevant and so forth.

We as a faith community need to get much better at stepping up to the mark in our creativity and engagement with our society. The sad truth is that most young adults do not know and have not heard about Jesus Christ, and unless we engage with them in ways culturally relevant to them, and which do not presuppose previous knowledge (too often taken for granted) they never will.

It troubles me, but I do think it’s true to say that in the SEC and in the Kirk we have a church sustained by the traditions and cultural reference points taught to a previous generation. Culture has shifted radically, with the result that the same will not be able to be said in 20 years time.

Our challenge is clear. Whether the Kirk and the SEC can step up to the mark to address what it means to live out the Great Commission in the 21st century is less so.

Reply
Cal

25/08/2010

I didn’t really understand who this programme was aimed at, or even what its aim was.

Yes, numbers have fallen, but perhaps the small number of people who remain are there because they actually want to be, not because it’s the done thing on a Sunday morning.

And personally, I rather like the idea of a church “sustained by traditions”. Clearly the church has to be relevant to modern society, but in abandoning the traditions of worship then you lose the centre of why the church exists in the first place.

There was something very Presbyterian about the programme with its “we’re doomed” mentality. I find the SEC generally more positive in outlook.

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John

25/08/2010

The only book the presenter seemed to have used in his research was ‘The Death of Christian Britain: Understanding Secularisation 1800-2000’ By Callum G Brown – indeed Callum Brown was one of the speakers. The thesis of this well argued sociological study is that “quite suddenly in 1963 something very profound ruptured the character of the nation and its people sending organised Christianity on a downward spiral to the margins of social significanceâ€. That something he identifies as new media, new gender roles and a moral revolution which has dramatically ended peopleâ€™s conception that they lived Christian lives.â€ It could be said to have happened as â€œsex beganâ€ between the end of the Chatterly ban and the Beatles first LP as the poet Philip Larkin so famously put it.”
To balance this statistical decline the programme flagged up some of the “church without walls ” iniatives in a lame sort of way. All in all a most unsatisfactory programme that only told half the story.

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Kenny

25/08/2010

Good crit Kelvin. My reflection at the end of the programme was, “Lord, we visited this stuff over 30 years ago, and have come out of it stronger and better Church in the SEC.” Hopefully, we stopped longing for ‘the good old days’ a long time ago!

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MartinRitchie

26/08/2010

I thinking “Pausing Place” makes a good point about needing to creatively engage with society. From my own experience of working with a CofS congregation, this creative engagement is a weak spot for many.

As a counterpoint to the programme, interesting to note in the latest “Life and Work” a very positive article about a growing CofS congregation in Stornoway – and I mean really growing! So not all doom and gloom, and I’m sure there are many more examples of bright spots, just as there are in the SEC!

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Graham Vahey

28/08/2010

If the C of S disappeared completely we would be at a loss. During the dark and bleak years of Thatcher’s reign she refused to visit Scotland for 5 years. When she did she expressed shock that we had Royal Regalia and ordered it to be removed immediately for safe-keeping to England. Her ‘Sermon on the Mound’ is now historical for its condescension to the Scots. She was none too pleased to be handed two reports on poverty in Scotland by the powerful Church and Nation Committee. Indeed, it was to this Committee that the population turned to for a moral lead during Thatcherism. When James VI (‘Jamie the Saxt’) became James I in England, the population turned to senior Scottish earls for a moral lead. Unfortunately, the Piskie Church does not give a moral lead in Scotland, apart from the work of the Scottish Constitutional Convention in the recent past. The RC Church does pronounce on moral issues. Could it not be conceivable that all the major Churches could unite in a Committee to pronounce for Scotland on moral issues as the Church & Nation Committee once did?

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Aldous N. Gaiters

01/09/2010

Speaking as a Nonjuror myself I am sure the SEC has a right to a moral voice in Scotland. Taking the US daughter church of the SEC as a model you could see where the fissures would appear. There is room for a modern liberal Christian voice, but even I an old Liberal myself, would have to fear that such a voice might appeal to only a select few.

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