What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon – preached on Valentine’s Day/Lent 1

14/02/2016

So. It is Valentine’s Day and the church bids us to go with Jesus into the desert.

Well, that’s the story of my love life. But what are we to think today? How are we to deal with this story of Jesus being tempted in the desert?

Jesus gets led in the desert, we are told. (And by whom are we told this odd story? – for there was no-one else there but him). And there he is tempted three times.

Firstly tempted to turn stones into bread for himself.

Secondly tempted to accept worldly power in exchange for worshipping the Tempter himself.

The third to doubt God and put himself at risk in doing so.

The other night I found myself at the theatre sitting next to someone who had a huge slogan written on his T Shirt and every time he leaned forwards I got to read it.

In huge gothic letters it said – “Worship Satan – Cuddle Kittens”.

I’m not entirely sure what the motivation is for wearing such a slogan. (Mind, I guess a lot of people can’t work out the motivation people have for wearing the badges I think up but they keep on selling all the same).

In our modern world, we have such complex issues of identity and personality that we are prepared to have words emblazoned onto our clothing or pinned to our lapels or tattooed right into our skin.

“Worship Satan – Cuddle Kittens” – though? What’s that all about.

I suppose it is a way of trivialising all that religion offers in terms of speaking honestly about the world in which we find ourselves.

Does it really matter whom we worship. I rather think it does.

Jesus seemed to think so too.

Well, so much for Jesus’s desert experience. What are the great temptations that the Great Tempter dangles in front of him as he wanders through the deserts of this world in the form of the body of Christ today – you and me.

I think there are maybe still three great temptations.

The first is to think that sexual sins are virtues and sexual virtues are sins.

The more I find I have to campaign for gay Christian couples to be able to get married in the light of day, the more I think that the rows over it are one of the great tricks of the Great Tempter today.

If we are all squabbling about something so gentle and good as letting God’s people get married within God’s eyes then for a whole generation, God’s people have given up the chance to speak sense to society where sexism still allows women to be treated as being of lesser worth than men – watch 30 women giggling about for one man’s attention on Take Me Out on the tellybox if you doubt it. The faster we sort ourselves out on same-sex marriage, the faster we can have something powerful to say about the inadequacies of sex and relationship education in the education system and the faster we can find something hopeful to say in the midst of the supercharged insanity of an online dating world where sex is only a click (or indeed 200 yards) away.

The second modern temptation is to think that the world revolves only around ourselves. If ever there was a Western Temptation it is this one. However, modern forms of communication don’t quite let us get away with that. When we see refugees on the news or see places where war is a present reality, we cannot escape facing the reality that the world doesn’t just consist of people like us and doesn’t happen to revolve around our experience. We can push the off button and fall to the Tempter’s tricks by thinking it all goes away when the screen goes blank – but God has put a conscience in each one of us for good reason – a conscience that we can train and nourish and feed and Lent isn’t a bad time to think about doing so.

The third is to think we are immortal.

On Wednesday evening, again and again, Cedric and I put ashes on people’s heads with some variation of the words: “Remember you are mortal, from dust you came and to dust you will return – turn away from sin and believe in the gospel”.

One forehead after another.

“Remember you are mortal, from dust you came and to dust you will return – turn away from sin and believe in the gospel”.

No doubt some find the repetition of those words rather morbid. They are not meant to be. They are a simple reality check. We are mortal and we don’t know what lies ahead.

A friend of mine uses those words as part of her prayers at night – repeating them again and again on a string of prayer beads.

“Remember you are mortal, from dust you came and to dust you will return – turn away from sin and believe in the gospel”.

What I didn’t know on Wednesday, as I worked my way through the rosary of foreheads with the same words was that someone whom I’ve worked with in the diocese would be dead by Friday night.

And when someone dies suddenly like that it is a shock.

The reality of Ash Wednesday is not to bring that shock to bear but to wake us up from wherever our spirits slumber and live life to the full. We know not what our tomorrows hold so we’d better make the best of today is what those words are all about.

Lent is for teaching us how to live, not how to die.

For some things are worth living well for.

And that take us back to Valentine, funnily enough.

Valentine, whose relics are said, oddly enough to rest in the Gorbals – in this great City of Love.

Not much is known about Valentine from contemporaneous stories. Instead, all we’ve got to go on are medieval myths – though we mustn’t be tempted by the Tempter to disregard such things for they so often contain the wisdom of the ages.

Valentine whom we know today as a providing for a great Retail Feast is commemorated as someone who didn’t just life for something, he died for it too.

One of the medieval sources suggests that Valentine’s great crime was helping Christians out and doing so in a particular way. He helped them to get married at a time when the authorities wouldn’t allow it.

All of a sudden, Valentine seems rather contemporary to me.

Having been arrested, he became something of a favourite pet to the emperor Claudius who was entertained by him. But only so much. When Valentine started trying to convert the emperor he ended up being martyred. Beaten by clubs and beheaded in Rome.

Maybe Lent and Valentine’s day tell us the same thing but in different ways.

Some things are worth living for. Worth living well for.

And some things are worth dying for too.

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.
    
    Reply
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.
    
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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.
      
      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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