What is in Kelvin's Head?

Remembering and Forgetting

19/11/2021

A sermon preached on 14 November 2021

We live in precedented times.

Oh yes, I know what everyone has been saying for the best part of the last two years. They’ve been saying that we live in unprecedented times.

Times we could never have imagined.

Times we could never have foreseen.

Times that were different to every time before them.

Yes, said, every newspaper and media outlet. These are unprecedented times.

But we only think that these times are unprecedented because in order to cope and survive, our species has developed ways of forgetting things alongside ways of remembering them.

I think I may already have spoken from the pulpit about the dinner that I had just before lockdown when someone connected to the debate about how to address the climate crisis said to me, “We’ve just got to turn to the apocalyptic passages in the bible – it is the apocalypse that makes most sense now”.

The gospel reading today has more than a whiff of the apocalypse about it.

Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places, there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.

It is easy to get carried away with this kind of thing. Easy to see that it predicts our own panic, our own fears, our own sense of desperation.

In my wanderings through different religious experiences before I found the practice of faith that I now have, I met the apocalyptic in several places. And prophets too sometimes – prophets of doom who could see the signs of the end times all around. And thought that bad things happened to remind people to turn to God because God is cross.

And some of them would take it far too far, trying to use all kinds on nonsense to predict the precise time and date on which the world would come to an end and Christ would return to save the saved and damn the damned.

Many of them were harmless despite their gloom. Some were trouble though.

And as I’ve grown older, I’ve learned that there’s more to be learned about God by seeing the good things in life as reasons to turn to God in thankfulness rather than seeing the bad things in life as reasons to conjure up a God wants to harm us.

God never desires our harm. Not for a moment.

We are God’s beloved. Not the object of God’s anger.

Beloved in times of war. Beloved in times of plague. Beloved in times of famine.

Beloved when we need most to be beloved.

When bad things happen they remind me now that God is good. And God loves us in the places where we are afraid most of all.

When we turn to the apocalyptic in the bible for our readings – and a lot of them come to us in the lectionary over the next few weeks, it is important to remember that we are not reading fortune cookies. These are not predictions of what’s coming next.

You can read the apocalyptic in scripture as a foretelling of your own fears if you like. But a more authentic way to read it, I think, is to read it more as an outpouring of how it felt to be the writer in desperate times. It may give us compassion for those who were desperate. It may give us compassion for those who are desperate now.

And the love of God puts down deep roots in compassionate soil.

The apocalyptic fascinates us because the human psyche finds it easy to forget where people have gone before. That’s why we sometimes need explicit calls to remember.

It feels as though our time is particularly barbaric, particularly cruel, particularly insidious.

And yet reading the apocalyptic can maybe remind us that it has often felt that way. Maybe that it has always felt that way.

Modern newsgathering and social media have particular ways of amplifying the horrors of the current age. The apocalypse comes to us in newsprint and on our phones in bite sized tweets daily, hourly, by the second.

And yet, a human being is less likely to die in battle than at any time in recorded history. Thank God.

And yet, modern science makes facing this pandemic utterly unlike facing any before. Thank God.

And yet, we have means of communicating with one another that have given us companionship and connection that we could never have dreamt of before – even allowing us to worship like this today. Thank God.

Apocalyptic writing is a tool for us not a statement of fact.

It is, and probably always was, both a statement of fear and a call to action.

When we hear wars and rumours of wars – we are called to peace.

When we hear of earthquakes and natural disasters – we are called to exercise compassion.

When we hear of destruction and devastation just around the corner – Climate Change is our most present example of a dawning apocalypse – we are called to change our ways and make change happen on a global scale. Called to love this planet. Called to exercise redeeming love.

These things are attributes of God. Peace. Compassion. Redeeming love.

We are made in the image and likeness of God. These things are hard-wired. We have them within. And we can let them roam free in this world.

The apocalyptic writing that we hear in today’s gospel and the apocalyptic writing that we see in today’s newspapers are, each alike, calls to join in God’s mission.

Peace. Compassion. Redeeming love.

For all people. For every place on earth. Forever.

Amen

9 responses to “Another Day, Another Mission Strategy is launched”

Mark

28/05/2010

three diocesan wishes?
(i) Scrap every Diocesan body, council and group; let Bishops commend and expound the Gospel, and care for their clergy.
(ii) Devolve every decision to the locally accountable group; let priests be priests and not bureaucrats.
(iii) Let go of the Anglican communion for the sake of the Kingdom.

Reply
Rev Ruth

28/05/2010

You know, in all the years I’ve been a member of the SEC I didn’t know about the Diocesan Fairy Wands. But now you mention them I can see that there must indeed be such a thing. In the spirit of openness I would like to see them processed in at the beginning of General Synod with the candles and placed on the Table. Carried by small children, perhaps?

Do you know if they are different colours?

And where is The Diocese of Argyll and the Isles’ fairy wand at the moment? Is someone else looking after it and therefore has two? Or is it waiting in a dusty filing cabinet for the drawer to be flung open and set free?

Reply
kelvin

28/05/2010

Please allow me to jump in before anyone from the Diocese Across the Water feels obliged….

Ruth, you should know by now. It is the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles. Not the Diocese of Argyll and the Isles. Nor indeed the Judean Peoples’ Front.

Reply
Scottish Roundup

30/05/2010

[…] To wrap up Kelvin Holdsworth, Provost of St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow explains that as a new day dawns a new mission statement is launched […]

Reply
Kenny

08/06/2010

As the Chair of a Regional Council, and a member of Diocesan Council, I feel well and truly “whupped” by your words, Kelvin. If I were the MDO or the Bishop or Dean, I would feel similarly put down. There are folk who are genuinely trying to put together a strategy for mission that works and is not smothered by cynicism from the outset. I think a bit of support or a word of encouragement or advice may have been a bit more helpful.

It is true that some Regional Councils may not be working, but that certainly isn’t helped by clergy staying away from them because it’s bad for their health. On the contrary, it needs these priests to be there, to stand up and question what’s going on or not going on and help shape them into a body that works. The theory is a good one, but Regional Councils will fail simply because some folk will share your attitude towards them. As a member of the Bishop’s Staff Group and a member of Diocesan Council, I find it totally incredible that you choose not to attend and disseminate information from these two bodies, and indeed incredible that you have not taken your Regional Council by the scruff of the neck and shown it how it can be more productive and engage more dynamically in current Diocesan policy.

I sit on Diocesan Council too, and am amazed at the power you think it has! Very often, it seems to me, we cannot make any decisions until they are ratified by the Bishop’s Staff Group, or things come from the Staff Group that we are told to ratify. Debate is sometimes rare and I feel Council is a pretty toothless being, and exists only to ratify what others in more lofty positions want to happen. (Paisley was a prime example of this).

It’s dead easy to sit there and snipe at those who are trying their damndest to wake the sleeping and encourage growth and life. Instead, we need to pull together and make sure something is put in place that is effective and that we can all buy into.

Maybe the Clergy Conference will give us a start, but banging in and damaging the process before it has begun is perhaps not the most constructive thing you’ve done of late.

Reply
kelvin

08/06/2010

Hi Kenny – thanks for your comments. I think you are quite right in some of the things you say, though not in others.

I agree that it was not a constructive way to engage with this to put all of my grumpiness into a blog post and wish now that I had kept quiet.

There are some things which you’ve not got entirely right though. I’m not a member of the Diocesan Council, as it happens. Also, your assumptions about the way in which decisions were made about Paisley are not quite right. However, learning from what you’ve said, I’m not inclined to post more about that on here, but I will be saying more about it in meetings as appropriate.

My comments about Regional Councils are influenced by two things only – the local ones which I have been to and the reports from the Regions which are given at Diocesan Council. (I usually find these quite shocking).

As it happens, I disagree with you about clergy health. Should regional council meetings ever affect the health of clergy, its certainly time to stop going. We don’t think nearly enough about one another’s wellbeing.

I do however take the general point that my blog post was unhelpful. Though it does still represent my views, I’m sorry that I posted it online in the first place and wish I had thought twice about it.

I guess lots of us who keep blogs sometimes make mistakes and this one was one of mine.

Reply
Kenny

08/06/2010

Now I feel like a heel! I’m lucky inasmuch as what I post is largely ignored or unread, so I can rant when I like without too many consequences, unless it annoys or causes hassle for the upper echelons in our little Church.

I know, of course that you are not a member of Council, but you do attend as Provost of the Cathedral and are allowed to contribute.

You did say that Regional Council were bad for your health and well-being. I am concerned about that, and yes, I wish we were all a bit more concerned for each other, but my suggestion was that you took steps to ensure that these meetings were a little more constructive and actually did what they were set up to do. I agree that reports back to Diocesan Council are often dreadful. I shiver when I hear reported that the highlight was a Coffee Morning held in Little St Reubens, but how do we change that?

I often think that the old RCC was much much better at disseminating information down to parishes, and every parish felt part of the processes of Church Government, but new models are indeed needed. I think new processes may well emerge from this new initiative.

I wouldn’t worry too much about the negativity in this particular post. You seem to be redeeming yourself in subsequent jottings.

The truth is that we need you, and your vision, on board, and the Clergy Conference may well be a good place to begin.

Reply
Kelvin

08/06/2010

And we’ve got yet another Mission Strategy document to get our teeth into at General Synod! Hurrah!

And you know what I think of that one?

Well, let me tell you, I think………

No, maybe I’ve learnt my lesson.

For now, anyway.

Reply
Kenny

08/06/2010

I just can’t wait… and I hope tou DO say what you think!

Reply