What is in Kelvin's Head?

Don’t worry – it just religion. It won’t bother you.

22/09/2015

Preached on 20 September 2015

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

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Don’t worry, its just a religious thing. It won’t bother you.”

I’d just arrived in the village. And she said, ““Don’t worry, its just a religious thing. It won’t bother you.””

You see, I’d hired a car so that I could go a bit off the beaten track.

I must confess that I hadn’t realised quite how beaten the beaten track might be before I hired the car and had I done so I might have thought twice.

It is unusual for me to hire a car on holiday. Not something that I’d ever done before. I’d been seduced by the theory that in Malta they drive on the same side of the road as we do and that I’d know what I was doing on the road.

Several people told me when I was actually there and struggling to make sense of the roads that the Maltese don’t actually drive on the right or the left – they drive, quite sensibly, in the shade.

But anyway, I put the car into one of its forward gears (I never could work out one from another) and drove off that beaten track and up the road into the village.

And I was surprised to find that when I got there, something was clearly going on.

There were embroidered banners all along the street. And flags flying from all the buildings.

When I got to the B and B that I’d booked online I asked what was going on.

“Don’t worry,” the proprietor said. “Don’t worry, its just a religious thing. It won’t bother you.”

Anyway. I settled into my room. And at about 6 pm I heard the bells of the village begin to ring.

I was tired. I was hot. I just fancied sitting relaxing by the pool.

But the bells kept ringing.

I decided to have a wander up to the village square to see what was going on.

Pushing open the church door, I found a surprisingly big and beautifully kept church and a few older folk at the front saying some kind of litany.

I decided to stay for a bit and say some prayers quietly at the back.

Half an hour later, we had implored the intercession of very many saints whom I’d never heard of and I decided it was time to go and find some chips.

But there was once again the sound of the bells ringing and the lights seemed to come on and people were still arriving. Something seemed to be up so I sat down again.

What was up was Solemn Vespers. A procession soon arrived of 20 youngsters whom I took to be the choir, a few clergy and a couple of bishops at the back.

We then proceeded to have solemn vespers – nicely sung with lots of lovely incense. (By this stage, I was starting to realise I’d got lucky).

An hour later, solemn vespers was over and I thought that it was about time I went out and got some chips.

But people had kept arriving and yes, the bells rang again. And the central candle on the altar was lit which can only mean solemn pontifical high mass. And soon there was a procession of the boys, the clergy and now half a dozen bishops and yes, in this village in what I’d taken to be the middle of no-where, a cardinal.

And we then had an hour of glorious liturgy. With more incense and now a good choir and yes, an actual orchestra.

“Don’t worry,” she’d said. “Don’t worry, its just a religious thing. It won’t bother you.”

Anyway, the only thing bothering me at the end of all this (by now the church was packed) was my lack of chips and so I got up and went out into the square where I found a few hundred people standing on the steps of the church – members of the congregation who had not been able to get into the church. And by now all the bells in the towers of the church were ringing out into the night. (How great to be able to witness to the actual calling of bells on this Sunday when we celebrate the ringers of this cathedral).

And right in the middle of them, a life sized statue of our Lady – or as I was learning to call her, our Bambina. And at that moment the first of the marching bands arrived in the village square which was suddenly ablaze with coloured lights. And it soon became apparent that the Bambina herself was going walkabout round the village. Going walkabout for a couple of noisy joyous hours accompanied by ave Marias, marching bands, fireworks, sparklers and yes, glitter canons showering our Lady and the streets she went through with gold.

And so I learned that I’d just arrived in the village dedicated to the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary just before the day celebrated as the birthday of Herself.

And I can tell you that there’s nothing more lovely in the cool of the day than incense and chips.

And it was wonderful. But what about that notion that it was just a religious thing and wouldn’t bother me.

It seems to me that religion is in very great danger of becoming something that wouldn’t bother anyone.

But when it does, it isn’t really religion.

Because our aspiration is not simply to change people’s hearts in the privacy of their own prayers. The aspiration of the Christian faith has always been to transform society. Not only to bring about justice but to shower the streets with the gold dust of celebration.

It lies with religious people – people like us to keep the dream alive that the next celebration is just around the corner – that joy is real and is on offer to everyone in the village.

It lies with Christian people to live a faith that will bother the world with its claims of redemption, justice, freedom and fun to build a world entirely transformed from the way things already are.

It lies with us to live the gospel we’ve heard today. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes not me but the one who sent me”.

Doors Open seems to be an idea today that’s full of more meaning for us than simply opening the doors of this cathedral to those who want to look around.

Doors Open makes me want to work out how to think and pray and act about the refugee crisis. Doors Open makes me think of the gospel about welcoming the little child in the context of the children being carried to safety by parents on the run from wars we have contributed to. And Doors Open is also that mental image of the doors of thinking and ideas that we need to keep open in order to build the better tomorrow that our Lady seemed to be singing as I accompanied her through the village.

He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly.
And has filled the hungry with good things.

Let us take her song upon our own lips and live it in our own lives.

And, yes, let us bother the world. Let us bother the world into joy.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. And of our Bambina.

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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