What is in Kelvin's Head?

“If God shows up in the guise of a tyrant, no-one should wear his uniform” – Sermon 15 October 2023

17/10/2023

That was quite the wedding banquet…

So, there’s an Ox roast going on over there and the fatted calfs have been slaughtered and cooked. There doesn’t seem to be a vegetarian option at this wedding, but that’s the least of our worries at the moment. For the host has taken umbrage because not enough guests have turned up. Not only that, but the guests have seized the Big Man’s people and beaten them up and killed them. And so he sends in the heavies, destroys the murderers and burns the town down.

Now that’s quite a wedding.

Even for Glasgow, that’s quite a wedding.

This little story has been around for two thousand years and my guess is that it has never been particularly easy to hear read aloud and has never been particularly easy to preach on.

And in the version of the story that Matthew offers us, Jesus isn’t prepared to let it rest. He keeps adding bits that make it all the more difficult.

The king, the host of the wedding banquet sends out additional invitations. Go into the streets and invite everyone you see, he says. And the slaves go out and gather in everyone they could find, both the bad and the good.

And lots of preachers have seized on that moment in the story as a moment of grace. Everyone gets an invitation in the end! Hurrah! It must be about how inclusive and expansive the love of God is after all.

But Jesus goes on…

Someone turned up not wearing a wedding robe and the Big Man saw him and wasn’t mightily impressed. How do you get in looking like that? He says.

And he looks to his enforcers and says, “bind him hand and foot and put him oot!” And off he goes to be thrown into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The sound of the gnashing of teeth is a terrible thing and I suspect that Jesus could foresee (or forehear) the sound of thousands of preachers for thousands of years, collectively gnashing their teeth at the prospect of interpreting this story.

That inclusive expansive benevolent host never appears in this story, does he?

So, what are we to make of it?

As I think about what I think about this parable this week, I’m reminded of a reaction I once had to a well known painting.

I was at an interview for something in Keble College, Oxford. And I popped into the chapel there, which is very fine. Now, that chapel contains the painting called the Light of the World by William Holman Hunt. It is a painting that a lot of you will be able to imagine. Jesus stands outside in the darkness knocking on a door that is behind a patch of briers and brambles. He wears a crown of thorns and wears a long silk robe and carries a lamp from which the light shines.

Now, I know that painting is an object of devotion to so many people – there’s queues to see it still. But I remember looking at this spooky depiction of Jesus and instantly thinking, well if Jesus comes knocking on my door in the night looking as weird and as creepy as that, then I know I’m never going to open the door from the inside. Indeed, I’d look for ways to keep him shut out.

The way we picture God matters. Matters enormously.

Going back to the parable, I think my problems start right at the beginning if we presume that the Big Man, the King is the same as the God whom we worship.

For I know I’m not much interested in a God who is involved in slavery. I’m not much interested in a God who engages in vengeance. I’m not much interested in a God who provokes acts of terror and burns down whole towns in his anger. I’m not much interested in a God who compels people to come to feast on the threat of violence if you don’t turn up. I’m not much interested in a God whom you have to dress up for. And I’m not much interested in a God who consigns people to hell.

And I find myself reaching for things to prop up against the door. I’m not letting that image of God anywhere near my spiritual life. I’d rather set up a barricade against him.

So, what do I make of it as I read it today.

Well, I recently spent nearly fifteen years of my life trying to get access to weddings for those who were told that they were not welcome at the feast. And perhaps it is that which sharpens the way I think about this little story today.

As I mull it over, it just doesn’t work for me to see the Big Man as God. The God I know doesn’t behave like this.

(Though the God that some people seem to think they know seems to do far too often).

Instead I find myself thinking of the ways in which religious communities try to get over the message to people that they are welcome at the feast of life.

For the experience of preparing a banquet and then no-one showing up is all too familiar in many parts of the church these days.

And the response of many Christians is grumpy. “We put on everything for you” they shout into the darkness and still no-one turns up.

But people don’t turn up to the feasts that religious people put on for perfectly good reasons. Religion (including our religion) has been responsible for acts of terror and violence. Religious people have lashed out through the centuries at those who are different and lashed out at those who are indifferent too.

God’s mission in the world is a mission of love but God hasn’t always had terribly good representatives on earth.

There are still plenty of people who instead of receiving the news that God’s love is expansive and generous and wonderful, have received the news either that they were never invited or that they wouldn’t fit in even if they did turn up.

Going back to the parable and taking another look, I find myself reading the story of the man who turned up not wearing the right robe as the story of an act of defiance.

When either God or the church gets dressed up in stories in tyrannical garb, we should not wear the uniform but resist.

We need to read the story of the man being thrown out into the darkness then in the context of Jesus’s other tales which seem to paint a picture of a God who is on the side of the victim, the God who weeps when the terrorist reaches for the gun, the God whose heart breaks when war seems inevitable, the God who is on the side of the oppressed. The God whose only response is to keep on loving much those who need love most.

There is nowhere we can go where God is not present.

There are different ways of understanding the place of darkness and exclusion. Some would imagine God consigning people to that place for all eternity. But there are other ways of imagining eternity open to us from scripture. Maybe hell is of this earth and is our own making. Certainly, some will be living it today.

The God I believe in wipes every tear from every eye, reconciles the seemingly unreconcilable and proclaims a kingdom of justice and joy. The invitation to the feast from such a God is an invitation of love not compulsion or violence.

Such a God is a God of peace and joy and love.

For such a God, I’ll open the door.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen

7 responses to “Twitter and the Church”

Justin

18/06/2009

First, congratulations Kelvin on your appointment as I&C Board convenor, and thanks to you and all who contributed to the SEC’s Synod Twitter coverage, which worked really well.

Some thoughts:

Next year, as was suggested by some of the Synod ‘Twitterarti’ we should have a proper Synod 2009 Twitter account, like that set up by the Church of Scotland for their Assembly. And it needs to be integrated into the Synod pages on the Provincial website from the outset.

It would also be good to integrate the #pisky Twitter stream into the Provincial site on a permanent basis, or to set up an SEC account for that purpose. I would also suggest making the site’s SEC blogroll more prominent. And the SEC Flickr streams.

I understand the concerns some have about the impossibility of monitoring what’s said on Twitter and the blogosphere, and its undeniable that sometimes people will say insensitive and daft things that will offend and hurt.

But that is part of the very nature of online communication. The days when organisations could manage their channels of communication through press releases and a limited number of printed publications are gone. The web has democratised communications media, offering a low cost platform for all members of an organisation: the concept of gatekeepers at the top approving and filtering information is redundant.

Like all organisations the SEC needs to embrace and engage with things like Twitter, blogs and other social networking tools, or people will simply bypass the ‘official’ channels and jump straight to where the real conversation is happening, like your blog.

It’s not just Twitter we need to embrace, but the existing web platforms we’ve already got in place. I’ve been honoured to be asked to develop a number of websites for the SEC over the past couple of years, including the Provincial site and a few diocesan sites.

Some good use has been made of these – Kennedy in particular has been doing some great stuff on the Glasgow site over the past few weeks. But my perception is that the web still plays a very muted second fiddle to print as a means of communication within our church.

At Provincial level I don’t see why all the good news material should be kept for inspires magazine. I think it should go straight onto the website as soon as it becomes available. If it’s kept in inspires nobody outside the church can see what’s going on. I don’t think subscription rates to the magazine would be affected at all if inspires material also appeared online: most commercial magazines have found that putting selected material online serves to promote rather than threaten their presence on the newstands. There are now more printed magazines than ever, and they all have websites.

I think we should allow the boards and committees to post their material direct to the SEC News section. That would, I think, encourage far more of them to contribute their material to the website.

The same applies at diocesan level: nearly all the good news is kept back for the diocesan magazines, and almost none of it makes its way to the website (again, I know Kennedy is doing his best for the Glasgow site).

News and events functionality, RSS feeds, photo galleries: they are all there on the diocesan websites waiting to be used. I have to be frank and say that communicating our diocesan news through rather poorly designed newsletters (where the Comic-Sans wars are still taking place) received only by insiders, makes us look very old-fashioned and insular.

I realise that sounds rather harsh, and that people are volunteering their time to put together the magazines. But I don’t see why we are spending so much time and money doing it that way when the web is there waiting to be used. I love the church and want it to grow, not continue to decline. The web is our friend, offering so many exciting possibilities, and its importance as a means of communication will not be grasped unless we keep banging on about it!

My tuppenceworth. Very interested to hear what others think. Congrats again and best wishes in the new post.

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gaielle

19/06/2009

Congrats and Best Wishes indeed, Kelvin. A most demanding role and requirement.

Encouraged by Justin, I shall add a penny-ha’pennies-worth.

Communication in the world of today is a serious and complex undertaking, isn’t it, not least because there are so many across-generation and accessibilty issues involved, leaving the ‘non-tech’ community disenfranchised if the ‘old fashioned’ hard copy approach is neglected – or perceived to be neglected. Hard copy will continue to be an essential medium for a while yet – and rightly so.

But equally important, and especially for reaching, including and empowering the youngest generations in the SEC, is the recognition and inclusion of new and newest technologies. Perhaps the teenagers in our midst have some useful insights to offer us for Developing Mission Outreach. The Good News was given to us to share – with everyone.

Good – effective – communication is a great thing when you encounter it. Rare Creature tho it be. Fully – and clearly intended to BE – fully inclusive, and therefore encompassing and using ALL practical and available methods of communication.

Problems in achieving Good Communication so often seem to be due to omission, oversight and a lack of appreciation of The Need To Try.

So, for instance, I Receive Information From Other, I process this internally with every intention that my Final Response will then be shared comprehensively – but I first neglected to Assure The Other that I had Actually Understood What They Were Saying. In consequence the Information I have Taken On Board may be incomplete or flawed – hence I have (inadvertently no doubt) neglected that very important step of Ensuring My Understanding Of Information Matched what Was Being Said…….

“What Is Said”, what is “Intended To Be Heard”, “What Is Heard” and “What Is Understood” are frequently 4 different things. However, effective/”good” communication requires a thorough appreciation of such likely mis-match, and also requires enormous strategic endeavour (until the skill becomes second nature) to outwit the intervention of MisUnderstanding.

As with anything in life, a little digging, hoeing, watering, general nurture and attention will reap a fine result. It takes time, and it takes effort. Such, however, are well worth investment.

But you will know these things. There is no need for me to be teaching you to suck eggs. I was just mulling out loud.

All Very Best Wishes for balancing the new hat. (I assume the new post includes a hat ?)

Reply
gaielle

19/06/2009

PS. If there is currently no hat, maybe we could invent one…………..

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Kennedy

22/06/2009

Perhaps one of our issues is that in the absence of any centrally provided forums for discussion – eg. we don’t normally have a letters page in Inspires – then the blogs and other social media just step in and provide the forum for the sort of discussion that people obviously seek.

If staff at GSO aren’t involved then the discussion is the poorer for that.

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jaye richards

23/06/2009

Just a little point, and I’m curious as to your thoughts on this, but how would you feel about someone tweeting during , say, one of your sermons or during a particularly uplifting piece of music ? is there a time and a place for this kind of communication, and might this include a religious service

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Kelvin

23/06/2009

I’d be bothered if someone was disturbing others with their tweeting. However, I was chastened a couple of years ago when I became a little distracted by someone near the front apparently unable to sit still and seeming to send lots of text messages.

It turned out however that he had the whole bible on his mobile phone and was simply looking up the passages as they were being talked about.

So, I’m not bothered about discreet twittering, I don’t think, though someone might well choose not to twitter in order to be able to concentrate more on what was going on. Part of a spiritual life in most traditions is about learning not to be distracted sometimes, and choosing not to be distracted during worship would be an admirable path to try to follow.

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jaye richards

24/06/2009

I have to admit to being disturbed sometimes during conference presentations by those around me twittering, although I do it myself so perhaps I shouldn’t complain ! I do think there’s a time and a place though, and for me, anyway, a sacred service is not the place to tweet from.

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