What is in Kelvin's Head?

Love means love – a sermon for Midnight Mass 2018

25/12/2018

It was the middle of the night. It was dark – the night black as pitch beyond the cold bright lights which shone in our faces. And it was surprisingly cold.

Crossing the border should have been easy.

But they made us all get off the train and queue up to have our passports stamped.

September 2018 and I was trying to leave the EU.

Not for long mind. Just a week’s holiday in Istanbul and to get there, a bit of an adventure on a night train across the border.

Which led me to be standing there in the middle of the night whilst a guard checked my passport and then my visa. And then gestured me to one side.

“In there” he said gruffly.

And I found myself in a small room with a guard wearing no uniform or identification badge being interrogated, in the middle of the night.

A small room. My passport taken away. My visa taken away. All my belongings on the train which was due to move off at any moment. And here, I was being interrogated in the middle of the night.

This is not a particularly unusual thing for some members of this congregation who have come from places of danger to live in relative safety in this country. But a new experience for me.

A few questions about where I was going, where I was staying. Who I would be meeting. When would I be leaving.

Then he asked to see my phone.

“Open up!” he barked. “Let me see pictures”.

And so he went through the last 2 and half years of photographs on my phone. Pics I’d taken of friends and all the photographs of me that facebook had saved to my phone.

“What this?” he roared. “What these”.

It was pictures of me dressed head to toe in gold. Or green. Or purple. Or red. Standing here. Celebrating. Preaching.

“What you do!”

“Well, I’m a priest”

“We don’t need no priests in our country. We don’t need no preachers here!”

And I said, “…..

Well, let’s leave what I said for another time and fast forward.

Fast forward a couple of days and I find myself standing in an old church in a seldom visited quarter of Istanbul.

Around me are pictures. Mosaics. Frescos. Gold and glitz. And the frescos tell familiar stories.

An elaborate one shows a bunch of tax collectors turning up in Nazareth and telling a young woman that she and her man need to go off and be registered in their home town.

Another one next to it shows a familiar story – the same young woman clearly expecting a child riding a donkey led towards Bethlehem by Joseph – gentle, patient and maybe worried about what they will find when they get there.

Picture after picture. Mosaic after mosaic. Fresco after fresco.

Each one preaching forth the story that we are familiar with and which draws each of us here tonight for some reason or another.

The story of the One who gave up heaven and took up residence on earth.

The story of the Lord of eternity coming among us and accepting for a short lifetime all the constraints of time and place, pain and particularity.

The story of one who comes to share the story of heaven by sharing the stories of earth.

And as I stood and gazed at the glorious pictures all around me I realised that plenty of preachers had been there before me. Some of them no doubt preaching sermons and some preaching all I ever want to be able to say with nothing but pigment and paintbrush.

For God comes into this world tonight. And we bear witness to the birth at midnight. In a world which needs the light of the world to shine.

But back to that challenge at the border on another dark, cold night.

What about that suggestion that there’s no need for preachers.

I beg to differ.

This world needs more preachers. Needs you to be preachers.

This world needs those who will hear the song of the angels singing peace on earth and preach it to the nations.

This world needs those who will see the refugee family fleeing from Bethlehem and who will preach to the Herods of our own day who seek to build a hostile environment instead of proclaiming what is forever just – that those who flee for their life as refugees should be always welcome.

The world needs those who will see the tenderness of our blessed Lady towards our blessed Lord – the child in the manger and who will preach the beauty and the passion and the commitment of that love to every soul who is vulnerable. Preach not just with paintpot and pigment but with politics and passion too.

We are living through strange times in this land.

We are living out the inane reality of the absurd declaration that Brexit means Brexit.

There is far more to be said than that.

For our Blessed Lady – no mean preacher herself told us, there are the humble and the meek to exalt and those of us who love this child in the manger have a job to do making sure that those as vulnerable as he was are kept in mind through whatever political uproar occupies us.

There are those who are hungry who need to be filled. And filled by those who take their place at the manger in adoration, who are inspired to set others free with imaginations set alight by what they find in the crib.

And there are inane tyrants to be mocked. For God will bring down the mighty from their seat and it is our privilege and joy to delight in their fall.

Brexit may mean Brexit. Whatever that means.

Leave may mean leave. Even though no-one seems able to define what that looks like in a way that we will all agree on.

But this night we celebrate something altogether more profound and the antidote to the inanity that we find all around us.

God comes into the world not to show us that leave means leave but to tell us once and for all that love means love.

Love means love.

Laid in a manger.

Here for you and here for me.

Love for you and love for me.

And the world does need preachers from every tribe and tongue to share this good news:

Love is come into the world. Love enough for everyone.

In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.

20 responses to “Apologies have consequences too”

Andrew Cain

15/04/2016

You say so often and so eloquently what I feel.

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1. Father Ron Smith
  
  16/04/2016
  
  Food for serious thought, Father Kelvin. I don’t suppose there has been any objection raised by the Church of England Bishops about the liberalising ativity of our Norwegian partner’s in Christ. It is this continuing double-mindedness that exposes us Anglicans to the charge of structured hypocrisy. Keep up the good work you are doing on your web-site. Christ IS risen, Alleluia!
  
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Alan Wilson

15/04/2016

Thank you, Kelvin. It’s certainly a change of the mood music going on, but self-lacerating apologies are subject to the law of diminishing returns unless they indicate what we call “Metanoia” – change of mind, aka repentance. This means things real change. Without it, apologies breed cynicism, not hope. When, for example, a bishop tells us he is ashamed whenever he encounters homophobia in the church, curious minds want to ask him “when did you last encounter what you call homophobia in the church? What was it like? How was it separable from the ideology that validated it? And since it’s such a shameful thing, what are you going to do about it?”

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1. Kelvin
  
  16/04/2016
  
  The real disconnect for me is that Justin Welby is someone who clearly does know something about what reconcilliation is. He can’t have done that job in Coventry and not known and he can’t have named reconcilliation as one of the key strands of his time as Archbishop without knowing that metanoia is part of the deal if that is what you are chasing after.
  
  However, I can only come back again and again to the possibility that there are those who simply think that LGBT are indeed actually worth less than real people.
  
  Reply
  1. June Butler
    
    18/04/2016
    
    Kelvin, after I read your words about the empty apologies by authorities in the church after which their behavior does not change, I could not help but think what you stated in your comment, that the leaders, with exceptions like Alan Wilson, believe LGTB folks are lesser. What else can we think? My advice would be to stop apologizing and be honest, which would be a step in the right direction, because at least the hypocrisy would end.
    
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adrian copping

16/04/2016

Thank you for this. Something similar has been happening here in Wales in the past week or so where our Bishops have apologised AND issued some prayers which are authorised for use in connnection with ministry to LGBTI people. This is to be welcomed as a sign of a step in a positive direction but, at the same time, leaves a lot of questions and many disappointed.

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Bob Webster

16/04/2016

Saying it is a “constant source of deep sadness that people are persecuted for their sexuality” is not an apology. At best it is a request that someone should stop making him feel bad. That could be the people doing the persecuting, or it could be us who should just be quiet and preferably go away. An apology would be “I apologize for the hurt I have caused and as a consequence of recognizing my sin I will cease that behaviour and do everything I can to get others to stop as well.”

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Ruth Richards-Hill

16/04/2016

Kelvin, you are an expert at stating things so eloquently that makes everyone else in the Anglican communion squirm.

I was not oblivious to the fact that as a lesbian woman I entered a family of churches with a huge diversity of attitudes towards my sexuality. It was only because of the grace and love of Jesus Christ that I felt safe to come into the church despite my “flaws” and receive baptism. Is my baptism any less valid because I am a lesbian?

As a convert from Orthodox Judaism I suspect that I am sometimes more acutely aware than others at what should be in my mind a glaring hypocrisy. Rabbinical thought always looks for an alternatives to explain why a certain situation does or does not apply according to halachah (ecclesiastical law – much like the canons). But the balance either exists or it doesnt. Jesus speaks about divorce and makes it quite clear that its not really an option, while in rabbinical law, it certainly is an option. We are taught that he came to fulfil the law and yet we his church are part of a new covenant are we not? The church seems to have taken the easy way out and will marry people who have divorced, but will not marry gay couples. So if divorced people are part of the new covenant, why arent us gay folk?

I could get into all the biblical quotation arguments and as someone that reads Classical Hebrew better than most Anglicans I know, I have no fear in taking a stand on my point. (My Greek needs a little more work however.) That said, I dont see a balanced biblical foundation for excluding some that are automatically excluded by literal translation of scripture, but not others, but rather an inherited bigotry and hypocrisy that continues to thrive simply to satisy the whims of member churches whose societies havent quite experienced the journey that ours has. While that doesnt invalidate their position, neither does it invalidate the position of our society and our spiritual progress should not be hindered to satisy the agenda of those religious leaders that appear to be pandering to the demands of those churches that have not walked the path of ours.

I have arguments that cover more than simple translations and exegesis particularly surrounding what the rules were both before and after the death of Christ, but those are for another day. I know that I am a baptised Christian and Jesus loves me as much as any other, not because I am gay or straight, but because I am one of his, and therefore he wants me to thrive within his covenant rather than the stifling, unreasonable and hair splitting laws that came before – Ones that I personally know how incredibly impossible they are to live by, no matter what your sexuality, or colour, or intellectual ability. – I was there once.

When our Bishops and leaders realise that Christ died exactly to make the Christian lives of the likes of me equally valid as straight people, then perhaps we’ll make a little more progress and not see these “apologies” as merely lip service. Its almost embarrassing to LGBT people for whom their faith is a core part of their lives. It certainly is for me.

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Ruth Harley

16/04/2016

Any child in my Sunday School group could tell you that repentance is not just “saying sorry” it is “saying sorry, being sorry, and changing”. Possibly ++Justin’s words make it as far as the first of these, but I’m not convinced they signify the second, and the third is nowhere in sight. Perhaps I should send my 5 year old theologians to Lambeth and/or Lusaka to explain! Or perhaps it’s just that those who are issuing these ‘apologies’ aren’t really thinking in terms of repentance, or seeing the need for it, at all.

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Mark Falby

16/04/2016

Apologies mean nothing if not backed by action.

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Junia

16/04/2016

Well I did recently get brutally and spectacularly dumped by an American lesbian, so perhaps they just are naturally more wicked over there…

In seriousness though, thank you for this wonderfully elegant post, Kelvin, summarising so much of what I have felt since ++Justin’s statement in January. I’m starting to get a little sick of being apologised to.

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1. Cynthia
  
  17/04/2016
  
  Speaking as an American lesbian, I’m sure the Norwegian lesbians are much better people, and that we are “naturally more wicked…” 😉
  
  Kelvin expresses well the debacle of January. But interestingly, Justin just delivered an amazing sermon at ACC-16 that marks a major change of heart and theology if he’s sincere. We’ll see. A lot has happened since January.
  
  Have a look at the sermon, it’s in the Anglican Communion news. I’d hate to think that those are just empty words. Time will tell. But I want hope.
  
  Reply
  1. Kelvin
    
    17/04/2016
    
    Could you point us towards the sermon, Cynthia. I’m not seeing anything at all that’s new in relation to the things I’ve written about above.
    
    Reply
    1. Cynthia Katsarelis
      
      17/04/2016
      
      Here it is: http://www.anglicannews.org/news/2016/04/new-calls-for-new-times-archbishop-welbys-presidential-address-to-acc-16.aspx
      
      To me this seems like a new direction, born of recent realities, and perhaps inspired by the Holy Spirit.
      
      Of course, my hopes could be typical, off-the-charts American optimism. We wicked American Episcopal lesbians just know that the Promised Land is at the end of the next rainbow.
      
      Reply
      1. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Cynthia – this is what I was writing about above. It isn’t a new direction. It is what I’m complaining of. Talk of reconciliation whilst not engaging in it.
        
        There’s not a word in it about a new direction on the way the ABC relates to the Anglican Communion’s troubles. Not one.
      2. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        It seems like he was asking people to focus on the major characters, climate change and religious violence, and to work together within our diversity. That sounds like a new tack. Of course, it will be interesting to see if this translates into action. Will the discrimination against married clergy stop? Will the ABC stop pandering to the primates who didn’t show up to ACC-16?
        
        You might be right, you seem very prophetic to me. But I want you to be wrong this time. I want hope, and to work together on things that actually matter.
      3. Kelvin
        
        17/04/2016
        
        There are simply no signs of what you hope for, Cynthia. None.
      4. Cynthia Katsarelis
        
        17/04/2016
        
        Perhaps not. But I was recently a TEC delegate to the UN Commission on the Status of Women where I met a posse of awesome women from the Anglican Communion Women delegation. We had great interaction and they affirmed a “walking together” statement they wrote in 2007. It says they are staying in communion, no matter what the guys do. We women in TEC are drafting a response, graciously receiving and affirming the statement. Against this, Justin doesn’t stand a chance and he might as well change his tune.
        
        PS. One of the awesome delegates was a Rachel from St. Andrew’s, Scotland.
Richard Barnes

17/04/2016

I was really hopeful about the Anglican Communion’s purpose from reading Rachael’s blogs from UN CSW last month. But not for long. ABC Welby’s Sermon reads like a random speech generator and says much the same as he’s been doing for months in global fora.
It’s like a couple who talk about the garden and the difficult neighbours because they don’t want to talk about their sex life.
Clever way to end ACC with everyone apparently united by talking about bigger issues.
But to read ++Welby asking for nuanced theology, when he’s totally binary (Christian=happy, healthy, wealthy & wise) just made me laugh.

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Robin

19/04/2016

> In the last week we’ve had the latest document on family life to come from the Vatican and it is very clear that there’s a change in tone from the current pope and it is hard not to welcome that.

I don’t see any change of tone in the following, which is the beginning of paragraph 251 of “Amoris Laetitia”.

> 251. In discussing the dignity and mission of
the family, the Synod Fathers observed that, “as
for proposals to place unions between homosexual
persons on the same level as marriage,
there are absolutely no grounds for considering
homosexual unions to be in any way similar or
even remotely analogous to God’s plan for marriage
and family”.

I’d call that a monumental snub, deliberately administered, or an equally deliberately administered drenching with cold water.

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