What is in Kelvin's Head?

That Damn Magnificat

16/04/2022

A sermon preached in St Mary’s Cathedral on Good Friday 2022

There’s something about spending these three hours in a church dedicated to Mary.

Through the year, we often get particular joy from keeping the Marian festivals. We’ve got more music in the choir library about her than about any of the others who accompanied Jesus in this life.

We sing with her the Magnificat every Sunday at evensong. We share her joy. We share her hopes for a world turned upside down. Where the mighty would what they deserve. At last.

In a church dedicated to Mary, because we pay attention to her, we get a unique insight into her Son Jesus. Because she was there. There at the beginning when he was born. There when he taught the learned teachers in the temple. There sometimes when he was teaching the rather more thick disciples and the adoring crowds. There when he performed the the first miracle – water into wine.

What did she think when that one happened?

Go my son. That’s the world we want. A world put right. A world where God breaks in and joy breaks out.

But the trouble for us is that having accompanied her through all of this, we now find ourselves in his company again.

Mary stands at the foot of the cross. It is almost unimaginable that she was able to stay. But presumably unimaginable for her to leave until it is over.

And a few other women comfort her and stand beside her in her agony.

And John, the beloved. He’s there too. Ready to take her in.

We enter into Mary’s experience when the going is good. How on earth do we enter into her experience today.

Can we see this day through her eyes or is it entirely beyond what we can bear to think of?

It is common in newsgathering to tell the story of disasters through the tears of parents weeping for their children. Mothers particularly.

A whole war may be too much to take in. A whole nation invaded is expressed in arrows on a map, nothing more. A whole cities get bombed and we struggle to know one from another. It happens over there.

But a mother’s tears at a crucifixion…

Harder to ignore. Harder to walk on by.

Theological concepts are broken by the crucifixion.

Theories of how we are reconciled to God circle the crucifixion scene like vultures.

They are too big to grasp. And they offer no comfort to a mother weeping either.

What does she think as she stands there?

Can she think? Can she process this?

Raw. Present. The pain. The agony. The tears.

Three hours is long enough to think. This is a cruel death for those being crucified. This is a cruel death for those watching.

I’ve been haunted by a question this year as I try to keep company with Mary at the cross.

Did she hold fast to what she had believed about God – all the things that she had taught him?

Or did it all break down on that day?

One of the things that I love about Mary is that her spirituality seems to be about two things which she ties together.

The world being put right is one of her themes.

And the joy of singing God’s praises is another.

Now you can find plenty of other saints who loved those things. But Mary uniquely brings them together.

My soul magnifies the Lord. And my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.

He has shown the strength of his arm. And the proud and the mighty and the rich have got their comeuppance at last.

It is joyful spirituality. Full of cheek and full of fun.

And oh, how often when I hear Jesus giving clever answers that bring God right into the lives of people who need God most, or when I see him turning over the tables of those who are corrupt, I think, I bet he got that from her.

But as she stands at the cross, what on earth goes through her head.

What questions does this hell scene raise for her.

Does she keep repeating to herself again and again, “The mighty will be brought low. The mighty will be brought low. The mighty will be brought low”.

Or is it worse than that.

Does she loose faith with it all today?

As she looks on and smells death all around her does she call on God.

We have no words from Mary on Good Friday. Nothing is recorded from her.

I don’t know what she said.

But I guess that had it been me, I wouldn’t be singing of the goodness of God nor of a world put right.

I’d be thinking, “Shit! The bastards have won. I wish I’d never brought him up the way I did. What could I have done differently? I should have taught him to keep his mouth shut more.

That damn Magnificat. Look where it has got him.

I sang, God has filled the hungry with good things.

But I’ve not eaten in hours and I never want to eat again. My stomach is in knots as he twists and turns in agony.

I sang, from this day all generations will call me blessed.

But from this day all generations will call me cursed.

I sang about God sending the rich and the mighty and the powerful away empty.

But they’ve won. They’ve won. They’ve beaten him.

`I sang, He has come to the help of his servant Israel.

But God hasn’t come to his aid. He hasn’t turned up at all.

I sang about the promises that God had made to our forebears to Abraham and his children forever.

But he has forgotten me today.

It is finished.

My song is finished.

And I’ll never sing again.

18 responses to “Twenty Years On”

Sarah

02/10/2009

The time has passed in a blinking of an eye and yet….
Special time, special place, special people.

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Rosemary Hannah

02/10/2009

I met one of my best friends there 37 years ago when we were both bejantines. She happens to be spending this week with me. She is a Rev. Dr these days – I never even made it to the coveted blue scarf. Heigh ho.

Not one female member of staff in my day at all. They used to say ‘how nice to have the ladies with us’ -some of them – while I ground my teeth.

I think there is more to it that ‘conservative’ or ‘liberal’ – in that openmindedness is not prescriptive of either. It is the way you think not your conclusions, as a brief study of a certain kind of library shelf will reveal. There, Bauckham is no more welcome than Hampson.

From my own experiences of students, I would say that (alas) even very conservative Biblical studies still come as an almighty shock to very many.

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Steven McQuitty

03/10/2009

What about the Church of England colleges, like Ripon, Ridley Hall, Westcott etc…?

Does anyone have any inside knowledge?

By the way I have jumped ships and become an Anglican Christian as opposed to a Presbyterian Christian…just started attending my local Church of Ireland parish church, which happens to be Bishop David’s last parish!

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MadPriest

03/10/2009

In England, in order to save money, the dioceses are insisting that ordinands are trained on part-time local courses. This means that they do not have the choice of traditions but have to study under the ethos of the local scheme. Unfortunately, as is the way of things nowadays, these local courses are dominated by Fulcrum type evangelicals.

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kelvin

03/10/2009

Oh, don’t get me started on training ordinands.

I don’t know anything much about the C of E colleges. I was briefly accepted to study at one of them (known as one of the two bishop factories), when the principal of TISEC decided that she didn’t want to teach me. I visited it once and decided that all the students were frightened of the principal there. I wasn’t convinced that traditional seminary based teaching was any better than the pickled seminary that TISEC had become.

We always trained together in Scotland, Madpriest. The idea of training based on churchpersonship seems rather odd.

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fr dougal

03/10/2009

Well, the old Coates Hall was supposed to be a “non-party” theological college, but a friend of mine came to study there as an evangelical ordinand and pointed out that it actually was distinctly Catholic in ethos. It might be more accurate to say that in Scotland the training reflects the ethos of the Province – which means it is catholic in ecclesial outlook rather than evangelical.

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David | Dah•veed

03/10/2009

I went to graduate seminary in the USA after completing a five year Licenciatura in Human Behavior (psych & soc) in Mexico. The accrediting agency for schools of theology is joint for the US & Canada, so I assume most schools in Canada are very similar to the US.

I started at Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University in Dallas, TX. I finished at Northwest Theological Union, Seattle, WA. I did one summer stint at Vancouver School of Theology, Vancouver, BC, sitting at the feet of the Rt. Revd. John Shelby Spong. (I drank all of my Kool Aid, thank you very much!)

In the US & Canada it seems that accredited seminaries fall into two basic categories. The first is a “conservative” seminary with a statement of faith set in stone that a student must subscribe to at some point in order to be allowed to continue their education at that institution. The curriculum then consists of spoon feeding that prescribed belief system into the students so that they might spew it back on exams.

The second is a “liberal seminary” which has no proscribed beliefs per se and has a curriculum which equips the students to do theology, and leaves what they believe to them to work out. The professors will grade you on your proficiency of using theological methodology and may critique you on how you arrived at your stated conclusions.

The three seminaries with which I was involved were in the second category. I hear Perkins has a few more evangelically minded professors than when I was there. NTU failed as I and my same year classmates completed our courses and finished our exams. My degree was a four year ThM. We never got our degrees, we cannot get transcripts, but they cashed all of our checks!

Which has something to do with why I am a psychologist and not a priest.

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Robin

14/10/2009

> It was whilst I was there that I joined the Episcopal Church and became an Anglican

It was excellent that you joined the Episcopal Church, but why on earth did you become an Anglican? I was one for three years, when I lived in Cambridge in the 1970s, but I’m glad to say it did me no permanent damage.

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