What is in Kelvin's Head?

Christmas Sermon 2022

25/12/2022

This is the sermon that I preached at Midnight Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow for 2022.

This was reported in the Herald here: https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23213007.glasgow-clergyman-hits-rwanda-policy-christmas-service/

And in the Daily Record here: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scots-church-leader-brands-tory-28812715

Why is it always night?

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

She said, “I don’t get it. Why is it always night?”

“What?” I said.

We were just yards from Times Square buzzing with people. A space that never gets dark, lit perpetually by vast garish advertising slogans bidding all the world to come and buy.

But in the church there was dimmed lighting and the whiff of incense and a dark blue ceiling with stars painted overhead. I felt right at home but they were the only stars to be seen for miles around.

The service was about to begin.

“I just don’t get it” my friend said, gesturing upwards with her eyes. “Why is it so common to have stars painted over the altar? Why is it always night in so many churches?”

One of the things that unites so many of the readings that we have at this time of the year is that something seems to be going on in the sky. Whether it is the shepherds experiencing angels glorifying God in the highest or the Magi from the East following a star, one of the ways that the biblical writers tell that something was up is that all the characters have their eyes on the heavens. Even John’s beloved prologue, our gospel tonight, devoid of ox and ass, stable and inn and all the characters of the nativity is insistent that the light has come. And the light shone in the darkness and the darkness has never
put it out.

Now Christmas is a time of magic and mystery and of gift giving. And so I bestow upon you all right now, the ability to travel through time and space and witness the progress of a weary couple making their way to Bethlehem. A donkey carries one of them.

They are familiar to us all. We know exactly who they are.

But as darkness falls, though they’ve each heard the whispers of angels, they don’t know just how their story is going to unfold.

Darkness falls quickly in the Middle East. It can suddenly become cold.

As they look up they undoubtedly see stars above their heads. With no electric light around, the sky would have been darker. The stars would have been more spectacular.

A starlit sky is the backdrop to how we imagine Bethlehem.

It isn’t just churches that have stars painted on their ceilings. Sometimes you find them in synagogues and mosques and even on the ceilings of Turkish baths.

In so many places, the night sky is painted to show us the very holy of holies.

The stars are above us here. And why not? For this is the place in which we celebrate that God enters the world – Christ born in flesh and blood. And this is the place where we enter into that same drama as Christ is born to us also in bread and wine.

Why not celebrate that drama here? Or in any of the churches of the world. For though Christ was born but once in a borrowed room in Bethlehem, that same Christ is born thousands upon thousands and
thousands of times as Christ is born in our hearts as we draw near to God and God draws near to us.

The stars mark the holy of holies – even stars that have a rocket painted amongst them as ours have.

And this birth is always celebrated at night. But this birth means that it is always daytime in God’s world. The night will never overwhelm the light of day.

No matter the depth of the darkness, the light has come. No matter how hard we find it to find hope and love and laughter, God’s love has shone into this world. No matter the extent of human misery and meanness, God’s tenderness towards the world radiates from that manger through time and space and circumstance and is utterly, utterly real.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, has come into the world.

In the depths of this winter, there is much that could make us feel miserable. I find it difficult to believe that government policy on asylum could be even worse than it was a year ago. And yet… the current proposals to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for “processing” and settlement remind me just how sinful human beings can be.

The Rwanda asylum policy may be legal but it is immoral

But faith isn’t about how bad things are. It really does celebrate how good God is.

The birth that we celebrate teaches us that there is always hope, always the possibility of change. God changes the whole cosmos by coming at night to Bethlehem. And as religious people I think we are called to collaborate with a God who doesn’t ever seem to give up on this world or write it off. There is always hope.

Now, I just gave you the power to swoop backwards and forwards though time and see things fresh and new.

Come with me as I leave the church with its starry ceiling and walk back out through Times Square and along Forty Second Street finding my way home through the city that never sleeps.

At every road junction in midtown Manhattan at the moment, a religious group has put up stickers on the back of the traffic lights that you see as you stand on the sidewalk waiting to cross the traffic. They
simply say, “Messiah has come”.

Now, they are not put there by a Christian group. They are put there by a very small group which claims to have found a Messiah who has lived within our lifetimes.

I remember that this night not because I think that they were right. But because those stickers made me think about what any of us should do if we suddenly discovered that we knew where the Messiah had was to be found.

For that is our claim tonight. In this birth in Bethlehem, we believe the Messiah has come. Not the kind of Messiah anyone expected. We find tonight a Messiah who is vulnerable. A Messiah who is defenceless. A
Messiah who gurgles.

If we believe in this babe, what shall we do? The light of heaven shines on our faces as we gaze at the saviour of the world in the Christmas Crib.

Christmas shows us that God can do anything.

And we are made in the image and likeness of God.

The love God has for us has been given to us to share.

Stars are above us. Shepherds and animals and a puzzled, exhausted pair of parents are beside us.

Anything is possible now. For the Word has became flesh and lived among us.

What has come into being in him is life, and the life is the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never overcome it.

Amen

Midnight Mass, Rwanda

41 responses to “The Columba Declaration”

Edward Andrews

11/02/2016

As Anglicans get down to the important issue of the niceties of Theology, lets get into the broad brush situation.
The relationships between the Churches of the Celtic tradition and the Southern tradition have been fraught since the 7th Century (Whitby). Part of the whole question surrounding the war of Independence (and before with King David was teh independence of the Scottish Church.
The irony is that the present attempt is to bring the Churches of the united Kingdom together may well blow back on them. While the Kirk today doesn’t mean much in Scotland the most secular part of the UK I’m not convinsed that playing footise over Bishops is going to impress the older members – the ones who voted No.
The fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has the Anglican franchise in Scotland. It is an authentic Scottish Church (especially if you ignore the instances when it has gone to England for Episcopal ordination.) and to negotiate over its head about something so sensitive it at the best discourteous.
Those of the reformed tradition don’t get wound up by the antics of a few Episcopalians. We seek whatever degree of true unity is available to us, but do not see the need for uniformity. I spent some very pleasant years as a guest of the Scottish Episcopal Church when the climate of the Kirk became unattractive to me, and am grateful for the table fellowship which I received.
The site of two big boys presuming to set things up is not pleasing. For the information of those who want to get up tight about the real presence, that is what the reformed tradition believes, we are Calvinists not followers of Zwingli. I am not going to seek to discuss which Greer philosopher we get our understanding of existence from.

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Father David

12/02/2016

Father Ron: let us not forget that the great Arthur Michael Ramsey was born an ecumenical baby. His maternal Grandfather was Vicar of Horbling in Lincolnshire and his paternal Grandfather was a Congregationalist Minister. His Anglican Grandfather baptised him and when in adult years he visited Horbling parish church he was deeply moved when standing by the font – the place where this great man of God began his Christian pilgrim journey. However, as a child he worshipped with his family at the Congregationalist church in Cambridge. To the great benefit of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – the kind of High Jinks that took place next door at Little St. Mary’s proved to be an attractive magnet and so the pull of Anglo-Catholicism brought to us a spiritual giant and a contender (in company with William Temple) for the title of the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century and a man who yearned and longed for Christian Unity.
Edward Andrews: Even as we all long and hope for the unity of all Christians your words are wise when you point to unity not uniformity.

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Keith Barber

12/02/2016

Cynic I may be, but my first response is to ask what is the hidden agenda. For I’m pretty certain there will be one, whether it’s about trying to create an ecclesiastical bulwark against disintegration of the UK or get ++Welby an ally or two in the aftermath of the huge and hostile reaction to the Anglican Primates’ decision to punish TEC (sorry Kelvin) for its moves towards inclusion of LGBT people.

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1. Jeremy Bates
  
  13/02/2016
  
  Or perhaps it’s like the Easter-calendar announcement–a convenient way of changing the subject, at Synod and elsewhere.
  
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Father Ron Smith

12/02/2016

Whatever the motivation for this ‘secret’ accord with the Church of Scotland; simple courtesy would require that the Church of England promoters consult with their Episcopally governed equivalent in Scotia.

Another point is this; do the Presbyerians realise that they may have signed up to the catholic premise of recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion? Are they happy with that?

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1. Edward Andrews
  
  12/02/2016
  
  Well actually the Presbyterians believe “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” You will see the word real is there. Don’t know what the 39 articles say you believe.
  Those of us who are big on the real presence use the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian understanding of reality.
  
  Reply
  1. Father Ron Smith
    
    12/02/2016
    
    Not believers, then, in con-substantiation? Freely translated as bread and wine ‘together with’ the Body and Blood of Christ? Note, not the more literal trans-substantiation, which would nean the disappearance of the bread and wine. (although as some of my more scientific friends would say, this is a tautology.
    
    What all must agree on, though, is that some members of the Church of England, and many of its constituent partner Churches of the Anglican Communion, do have a problem with the ‘Real Presence’ – a reality that, for me, and I suspect most Anglican Catholics, means that the substance of the bread and wine consecrated at the Eucharist is truly “The Body and Blood of Christ” in accordance with the dominical instruction: “This IS my Body, my Blood” (Not, you will notice, “this REPRESENTS my Body, my Blood”). ‘A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’ – this saying sums it all up pretty well, I think
    
    Reply
    1. Kelvin
      
      12/02/2016
      
      I think it is time to draw the discussion about the real presence to a close on this comment thread. It is hardly the main point and I’ve never ever known a comment thread about transubstantiation to be constructive.
      
      Comments on the Columba Declaration welcome. Comments trying to explain what transubstantiation *really* means – not so much.
      
      Reply
      1. Edward Andrews
        
        12/02/2016
        
        Thank you Kelvin. As I see it the C of E has come poaching in your preserves. This is wrong and unhelpful. If there were going to be Anglican/Presbyterian dialogue the SEC should be the lead player. I have my own problems with the declaration as a Member of the Church of Scotland who seeks an end to the United Kingdom. However as a Catholic Christian I am in solidarity with my SEC brothers and sisters who have been left out of the loop. Both the Cof E synod and the Kirk’ General Assembly should reject the document, but I don’t suppose that they will.
Augur Pearce

16/02/2016

A contribution to the ‘establishment’ discussion: In my book the terms ‘establish’ and ‘Church of England’ both have more than one meaning. ‘Establish’, for example, can mean ‘set up, bring into existence’ (sense E1), or it can mean ‘endow, privilege’ (sense E2).

Most people who use it of the C of E use it in sense E2, and they understand the C of E (in what I might call sense C3) as an association with its own rules, distinct from the English nation but privileged by law in various ways (with some concomitant obligations).

In fact I think this describes the C of S position fairly well, but is quite wrong as regards the C of E. The C of E (I contend) is not distinct from the kingdom of England, it is that kingdom ‘wearing its spiritual hat’ (sense C1). England, as church, has various spiritual responsibilities to discharge, and in order to do so, it establishes (=creates; sense E1), by its law, a complex of specialist institutions, offices, rules, and assets which itself becomes known derivatively as the C of E (sense C2).

One clear example of how the C of E (in sense C1) and the C of S have been differently understood from very early times is found in comparing Richard Hooker’s well-known words ‘There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England…’ with the Church Act 1567, declaring those ‘quha outher gainsayis the word of the Evangell ressavit and apprevit as the heidis of the Confessioun of Faith professit in Parliament of befoir in the yeir of God 1560 … or that refusis the participatioun of the haly sacramentis as thay ar now ministrat, to be na memberis of the said Kirk within this realme now presently professit’.

The Church of England, in short, is simply England; the Church of Scotland is a privileged sectional group.

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1. Seph
  
  17/02/2016
  
  If this be so, it strikes me as uncomfortably caesaropapist. This may be one of the things that makes me uncomfortable when I am down south and find myself in a C of E church.
  
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