What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon – At the Well

    Here’s this morning’s sermon. I went a little off piste from the text, but essentially what I wanted to say is in both the video and the words below.

    Let me begin this morning with a poem. Just a short poem – so slight that you need to listen or it will pass you by. Water – by Philip Larkin.

    If I were called in
    To construct a religion
    I should make use of water.

    Going to church
    Would entail a fording
    To dry, different clothes;

    My liturgy would employ
    Images of sousing,
    A furious devout drench,

    And I should raise in the east
    A glass of water
    Where any-angled light
    Would congregate endlessly.

    I want us to think this morning about what it means to construct a religion – a way of being spiritual and to reflect on that with the woman at the well – the source of the water, that Jesus himself wanted to drink from.

    Now. We seem to have forgotten what significance wells have had in attempts to learn to be spiritual.

    Later today, those of you who are here with the Friends of Cathedral Music will make your way to the Medieval Cathedral in Glasgow to take part in a service there. It is the rock from which we were hewn – or the well from which we here once drew water. For the people who became this congregation were turfed out of there for keeping the Episcopal faith in 1689.

    Should anyone find their way into the under-church in the Medieval Cathedral they will find one of the clues as to why that church is where it is. Just by Mungo’s tomb, set now into the walls is a well. It is easy to ask why they would build a well into the walls of a church but of course that is to get it the wrong way round. The Saint Mungo came to a holy place to minister. Came to a holy well where he lived and died and was buried. And above and around him and the well, grew the building that now stands there today.

    If I were called in
    To construct a religion
    I should make use of water.

    So great is our need of water, so powerful is the need to quench our thirst that it should not be difficult to understand why wells were holy places. (more…)

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15 responses to “The Trump of Judgement for Liberals”

  1. Guy Avatar
    Guy

    I heard someone talking on the radio who had looked at actual voting data (wherever such people get that from). Predictors of whether someone was a Trump voter, though by no means decisive ones, were whether someone earned more than $50000, had never gone to college or had done so but dropped out, was male, and over 44 years old. But there were people in those categories who had voted for Clinton as well. Even the much spoken of Hispanic vote was not as big a predictor of voting preference as thought and there were too many women who hated Hilary Clinton for misogyny to be the overarching factor.

    The stand out predictor which went across all categories was colour, whites going for Trump, up to %58.

    This vote was an anti-Obama backlash from people who couldn’t quite forgive the fact that an African-American had been running the show for eight years, whether the racism was of the vitriolic nasty sort or the more urbane sort that says that some of the other lot are probably ok, but only as long as we don’t have to actually mix with them and they’re somewhere else, it amounts to the same thing. The analyst speaking referred to a sort of nostalgia for when whites seemed to be in overall charge of everything.

    As to our response: as far as I can see the reason American politics is so vitriolic is because Liberals and Conservatives hate each other and also want to remake the other side in their own image.

    Love the other: well very gospel, but pretty darned hard when you struggle to even like xenophobic misogynistic lgbt-haters, let alone love them!

    Love might be the attitude that those of us who call ourselves Christians have to struggle towards, but I’m less sanguine than Kelvin is on this one and the verse that keeps going through my mind is the bit in Ecclesiastes about there being a time for this a time for that.

    Sometimes conflict is inevitable and has to be fought to a finish. You can’t react to the kind of person who shouted out at Trump’s victory speech “jail Obama” on the basis of well, six of one and half a dozen of the other. And such people aren’t exactly amenable to sweet reason.

    On the other hand sometimes people have just to be left alone. Forceably trying to remake the other in your own image just antagonises.

    I think our response has to be to discern the difference between the two situations. And to redouble our efforts to make sure that a Trump can’t become Prime Minister in the UK.

    Reply
  2. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    A prophetic and timely warning, Kelvin. What Trump represents is on the way to becoming a global phenomenon. The tone of his rallies, and the chanting of mindless slogans, is all too reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. The fact that his election has been welcomed by Marine le Pen and other far-right leaders in Europe speaks volumes.

    Reply
  3. Guy Avatar
    Guy

    Something to think about: when it penetrates the general consciousness that the majority of white conservative evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, what if anything will be the fall out for Christianity as a whole?

    Reply

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