What is in Kelvin's Head?

David’s Lamentation – a sermon preached on 12 August 2024

19/08/2024

David the King, was grieved and moved
He went to his chamber,
his chamber and wept
And as he wept, he wept and said…

Oh, my son, oh, my son
Would to God I had died
Would to God I had died
Would to God I had died
For thee, oh Absalom, my son, my son

Victory that day was turned into mourning
When the people did see
how the king grieved for his son
He covered his face and in a loud voice cried…

Did you ever meet someone who was better at something that you are and admire them just for that?

Meet David King of Israel who is better at doing something than I am and I love him for it.

We’ve been reading stories of David for the last couple of weeks and seen much that is unlovable. Much that we would turn our eyes from.

Two weeks ago, we heard of him sending a man to certain death in battle so that he could make off with his wife.

David’s behaviour in that reading is so outrageous that I had complaints from members of this congregation for allowing it to be read.

I tend not to believe in providence but I do believe in comeuppance and last week we saw David being confronted with righteous anger by Nathan the Prophet pointing the finger at David for his wicked behaviour. And turning David into a snivelling wreck.

David often isn’t a terribly attractive figure.

And yet he can do something that makes me admire him 3000 years since he last drew breath.

David could lament like no-one else. His cries of lament over Saul his mentor and David is lover and Absolom his son move me. Move me very deeply and make me love him despite all else we know of him.

The version of David’s Lamentation that I just sang is just one of many settings of his words thoughout the ages. His sorrow is written in the history books of the scriptures and recorded in the Book of Psalms, the hymn book that Jesus sang from.

And lament is important.

It is sometimes said that we have forgotten how to lament. Maybe we have forgotten how to lament in public, but I know that this congregation is one where lament is seldom absent in private.

Lament for the horror of wee girls killed at a dance class.

Lament for the horror of fascists turning that into something to attack those who have come to this country seeing refuge and safety.

Lament for those the stirring up of race riots online.

And Lament for schools hit by missiles in Gaza.

And people who are members of this country express lamentation for events that go back months and years as well as weeks.

Lamenting over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Lamenting for the national boundaries that Britain left behind in Africa.

Lamenting for a world being roasted by the sins of climate change denial and ignorance.

And lament for ourselves and our own sins.

For we like David have done things which we ought not to have done and no done things that we ought. And there is no help in us.

And lament for our griefs for all of us bear them.

David puts into verse his grief, He lets his troubled soul sing.

And it makes me love him.

It makes me love him because lamentation is the expression of the depth of our capacity to love. For grief is the name for love that is stronger than death.

Lament is the song of the hopeless and the despairing. But it is an urge to give voice to the deep, deep knowledge that things should not be this way. Paradoxically it contains within it hope. Hope that it will not always feel like this.

Deep in the pit, lament shines a little light on sadness and from that light, please God may seeds of hope be nourished. That knowledge that things should not be this way is the beginning, the fragile and tender beginning of doing something with the recognition that not only will all things pass but that all this could be different, better.

The hope that justice may be known.

The hope that righteousness may flourish.

The hope that peace will prevail.

The hope that the rawness of grief might change.

These are the seeds nourished by lamentation.

Christianity never denies death or grief or tragedy. Indeed, it says that all of these are all too real.

However, it says that they will not win in the end. It says that resurrection isn’t just possible but inevitable. And it says that a world put right is not just something we are called to make real but that we are called to enjoy and delight in it forever.

“Love wins” isn’t just a slogan that some of us carry about in rainbow colours at Pride. It is also the truth that those of us who bear the name Christian live by. It is our two word creed.

In the gospel reading this morning, Jesus talks about eternal life being our destiny. I am the bread of life he says. And whoever eats of me will have eternal life.

We eat of him week by week and are nourished by the comforts of the Eucharist at this table. And as we receive the bread each week we receive the challenge to make the world one in which everyone has enough to eat, people to love them and joy in great abundance.

I believe that lamentation is important and needs to be part of our song. But I also believe that lament will not be the last song that we sing.

There are alleluias to be had in putting the world to rights. There are hosannas to be sung in worship in sharing the business of a God who wills goodness and love for everyone who draws breath.

I am aware of the deep despair that people have been feeling about the world recently.

Lament and do it well. But lament and live.

In this place, every week, before we eat of the bread of life, we hear the bidding, “Lift up your hearts!”

As we hear that this week, let us hear it as a command.

For God is good. And goodness will prevail. And love wins.

Always and forever, love wins.

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

Billings, David’s Lamentation, lament, love wins, Sermon

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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