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.

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.

Reply
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.

Reply
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!

Reply
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!

Reply
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?

Reply
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.

Reply