In the name of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I was at a clergy conference some years ago down in England. At the end of the evening meal one evening, someone suddenly said, “what is the most stupid prayer you ever heard”.
And I have to say that there then followed a very funny half hour as the various clergy from all different kinds of churches put their bids in for the most stupid prayer that they had ever heard.
The winner was – “And Lord, we pray for Beirut… which is in the Lebanon”
And perhaps inevitably, and perhaps more uncomfortably for clergy, the evening went on to a further discussion when someone asked – what is the most stupid sermon you ever heard?
I wonder how you would answer.
I can think of a number of contenders. Very high on my list is a sermon that I heard whilst on holiday some years ago when the preacher began with the words, “In this sermon, I want to explore the question of whether there is resurrection on the moon”.
It didn’t get better than that. The preacher argued amongst himself about whether or not there was resurrection on the moon. And then ended with the words, “…there is of course so much to say that it is impossible to answer this in one sermon, so think of this as part 1. I’ll come back with a definitive answer next week. Amen”.
I never heard the second sermon.
I still don’t know the answer.
I still don’t know whether there will be resurrection on the moon.
And I never really knew what that question meant in the first place.
Which maybe brings us to the Sadducees and the story they brought to Jesus.
Now, one of the extraordinary things about Jesus is the stories that he told.
In just a few lines of text, he left behind him stories which still have resonance with the world today. Some stories which seem perplexing, many which are enlightening. The parables. The prodigal child. The good Samaritan.
They are phenomenal stories which still have the capacity to stop us in our tracks.
And a lot of the gospel readings that we get in church are Jesus telling a story and sometimes we get to hear of those around him talking about the story.
In this Sunday’s story, that dynamic is turned on its head.
Other people tell Jesus a story and ask him to interpret it.
The Sadducees spun him a yarn and asked him to interpret it as a bit of a test.
I’m not sure that we know that much about the Sadducees other than that they were a religious group that didn’t accept that resurrection happened. And in telling their story they are setting Jesus a test. Was he one of them or one of their enemies?
There was this woman who married her man and then he died before they’d had children.
So his brother married her. And he died.
And the next brother married her. And he died.
And his brother married her. And he died.
And the next brother married her. And he died.
And his brother married her. And he died.
And the last brother married her. And he died.
And then she died.
Presumably exhausted.
Whose wife will she be in the resurrection they say.
(They were being sarcastic remember – they didn’t believe in the resurrection anyway).
How would you answer them.
You might have something to say about this woman being treated as the property of a bunch of men.
Patriarchy is strong in this one!
I think if I’d been Jesus I’d have been tempted to roll my eyes and just say, “Well they are all deid anyway. What does it matter.”
And in a way, he does kind of say that. But he does affirm that he believes in a resurrection – but seems pretty clear that his view was that human ordinances are for our earthly existence. And that our being with God will so dominate our heavenly existence that such questions simply die away.
It is a bit like asking whether there is resurrection on the moon.
The idea of resurrection isn’t about sorting out who is whose husband. We have this life to do that – if that is what we are looking for. Some of us doing rather better at it than others.
It is the case that now as then, there are religious people who manage to worship together who have different views about what will happen when we die.
Right at the focal point of this building is a piece of art which clearly addresses what some people were feeling. The reredos behind the High Altar is our Second World War memorial. And the painting on it puts three women at the tomb looking for a body and an angel with rainbow wings is very clearly saying – he is not here he is risen.
It isn’t difficult to see why those who had experienced war at first hand and who were themselves mourning those who never came back wanted to place such an image centre stage in a church such as this one.
They had been to hell and back.
An experience that is not confined to war.
The reading from the second letter to the Thessalonians that we have this morning is the first of several that we get as we approach the end of the church year in a couple of weeks time.
The world for the author of 2 Thessalonians is falling apart. Lawlessness is rife and deception is all around. If feels as though the end times are just around the corner.
I’ve often thought that this world view felt far away. But not so much at the moment.
The author tells their audience to continue to give thanks, stand firm to the traditions they have learned and feel the real comfort of God’s love and grace.
That comfort is not described as being transitory, nor even long lasting. It is described as being eternal.
As all seems to be falling apart the author says, the God who loves us gives us grace and good hope.
Not a stupid sermon.
The only sermon worth hearing.
Grace. Love. Hope.
For ever.
7 responses to “Whither the Kirk?”
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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.
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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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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 people’s conception that they lived Christian lives.†It could be said to have happened as “sex began†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. -
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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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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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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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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