What is in Kelvin's Head?

How to write the intercessions

13/05/2016
This coming Sunday, I’m going to be doing the intercessions on Sunday morning. That’s unusual, as for no particular reason, the normal pattern is that clergy here pray at Choral Evensong and lay members of the congregation normally pray at the Sung Eucharist in the morning.

So, as I sit down to think about the intercessions for Sunday morning, it may be worth jotting down here a few pointers which I might use if I were doing an intercessions training course this week.
1. Try not to treat God as either your best mate or as Queen Victoria
2. One sermon is enough and it has already happened
3. Don’t tell God the blatantly obvious
4. You don’t have to pray for everything in the world at every service
5. God is not to be inveigled – we pray because we care not because God doesn’t
Let’s take those one at a time.

1 – Try not to treat God as either your best mate or as Queen Victoria

Now listen up, we’re about to do some serious theology in an entertaining way. (Or maybe some entertaining theology in a serious way).

How we think of God in private makes quite a difference to the way we pray in public. The task of the intercessor in a church service is not particularly to express their own spiritual journey but more to give voice in the simplest possible way to the need that the people of God in that time and place have to pray. For we are a praying people – that is who we are.

But what about God. How are we to address God?

We might well ask, “God? Who He?”

To which God in Her infinite mercy and grace might well respond, “Well….”

There are twin dangers in preparing the prayers of the people of God. The first is to presume that God is one’s best friend to whom we might chatter away as though God were a beloved friend (or a beloved beloved) on the telephone. The truth is, we are dealing with the creator of heavens and the earth. Chattering away may seem presumptive.

“And Lord, just bless Betty and Flora and Lullabell. And just fill them Lord, fill them Lord with your blessings, just touch them Jesus, yes Lord, yes, yes. yes.”

God is more than merely our best mate and we’re not in bed with God when we’re doing the intercessions either. (And that’s for another blog post anyway).

However, lest we think that there are easy answers, another danger is of treating God as though God were Queen Victoria, crawling towards God through a morass of language which puts God far distant. If we spend our time only thinking of the Majestyness of God, the Mightiness of that Majestyness, our Unworthiness as Creeping Subjects to enter into the presence of the Awesome Holiness of the Utter Mightiness of the Complete Majestyness of God and begging for Mercy then we’re in danger of mistaking the God who loves us for the Empress of India.

The theologians out there have spotted what’s going on here already. It is that old immanence-transcendence dichotomy. Christians have indeed believed that God is as close as our next breath and also that God is the creator of heaven and earth. Christians believe both these things simultaneously – for nothing is impossible with God.

What we’re trying to do in the intercessions is to hold before God aspects of the world which need God’s love and there are many appropriate ways of addressing God.

It is clearly silly always to speak to God as though God were an old man or a father figure. Clearly silly, because we’ve got God’s great gift of scripture in our hands and we know that the people of God have used all kinds of interesting language to speak of the divine and to address God too which go beyond only using the image of a male father figure. Scripture won’t let us make God into daddy and I’m unconvinced that Jesus was in that business when he taught people the Lord’s Prayer. More likely I think, he was using a form of addressing God which made them think, made them wonder, moved them and formed them in faith.

At a workshop on intercession a couple of years ago, I asked people to come up with biblical titles or attributes of God which we find in the bible. We listed dozens and it is exercises like that which can deepen our faith and make intercessions incredibly rich. If you doubt this, ask a Muslim friend about the ninety nine names of God in their tradition and see how many you share in common. If you are lazy, you can find them in wikipedia – but go on, have that conversation it might change your life and that of your friend.

2 – One sermon is enough and it has already happened

You know what? One sermon is enough for just about any service. Sometimes even the sermon that has been preached feels like one too many. However, even if that is so – no, especially if that is so, don’t feel that your job as the intercessor is to preach another one.

Let red flags wave and danger klaxons sound in your mind if you find yourself for even a moment telling the congregation anything during the intercessions. Remember, you’re not speaking to them anyway.

We encourage intercessors to take a look at the bible readings before writing the intercessions. However, it is terribly tempting to pay too much attention to the readings. Particularly in St Mary’s, you never know whether the preacher will pick on the particular reading that might strike you as important and there’s a strong change that they’ll have a completely off the wall reading of a text anyway. That’s what we like here and intercessors are in grave danger if they think they know what the preacher is going to say. They are in mortal danger if they think they know what the preacher should have said. And in any church, if the intercessor appears to be trying to use the intercessions to correct the preacher, there will be teams of trained facilitators and peacemakers heading your way before the blood can dry on the carpet.

There’s a time and a place for disagreeing with the preacher. However, it ain’t in the intercessions and, trust me on this one, the church door isn’t the most fantastic place for it either.

It is worth reading the bible readings beforehand simply to see whether that informs the language that you use in putting the prayers together. Your task is not to explain these readings. Nor explicate these readings. Nor even to argue with these readings. Your task is to hold some of the concerns of the people of God in prayer in public.

3 – Don’t tell God the blatantly obvious

One of the naughtiest but most entertaining half hours that I’ve ever enjoyed on a clergy conference was with a group who were posed the question – “What is the most ridiculous intercession you have ever heard?”

(You can play a similar game with sermons if you are in the mood).

There were quite a number of strong contenders but there was one knock-out winner:

“And Lord, we pray for Beirut….which is in the Lebanon”.

Don’t tell God things that God knows already. You are no more trying to educate God than educate the people.

4 – You don’t have to pray for everything in the world at every service

Just as new preachers often try to fit everything that they’ve ever hoped to say in the pulpit into their first few sermons, so it is the case that inexperienced intercessors can get frightened that they will miss something out and include everything that they can imagine that they or anyone else might want to pray for on the day.

We’re not there to remember everything. We’re there to give voice to the deep dreamings of the people of God for a world where there is no pain, no suffering and where God has wiped every tear from the eye.

When we remember those suffering in one part of the world we are by implication remembering those who suffer elsewhere. Sure, it can be a good thing to remember places and situations which are often easily forgotten (“….oh Lord, #bringbackourgirls…”) but we can’t name every need.

There’s danger in being too specific too. “And Lord we pray that this country be delivered from the evil heresy of the European Union…” may be how you are feeling and may be how you are going to vote, but the intercessions are not really the place for that kind of thing.

We’re giving voice to the prayers of the whole people of God, not any sectarian minority.

5 – God is not to be inveigled – we pray because we care not because God doesn’t

I think this is important. I don’t believe God is there to be inveigled into doing things. It is my view that God is not particularly likely to change his mind as though upon a whim, because a certain number of the people of God happen to pray one way. God loves us anyway, whether we pray or whether we don’t.

We are not in the business of trying to sway God’s mind.

This will come as a bit of a surprise to some and something that will be eagerly debated by others – don’t we find God changing God’s mind in scripture after all?

Well, yes, and that’s what life often feels like. We can as human beings often feel as though god is capricious. But that is not the truth we live by. We live by the truth that God utterly loves us. We live in the knowledge that God’s love is here and now and everywhere and that God’s love is with us and with all people.

The point of the intercessions is not to change God’s mind about things. This is not a parliamentary lobby nor is it a demo though there’s a place for prayer in both these fields without a doubt.

We do not pray to change God’s mind. We pray because it is our vocation to hold our concerns in the presence of God. We pray because we love the world and want to love it more. We pray because prayer changes us and we change society. We pray because we care about things and people and not because we suspect God’s doesn’t care about some things and will have a change of mind because we implore and beg and inveigle.

It just doesn’t work that way.

We pray to hold the world before God because we love it.

That is all in all.
bidding prayers, how to intercede in church, intercessions, petitions, prayer

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.
  
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  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.
  
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  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.
    
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    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.
      
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      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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