What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached on 17 August 2025. (But should it have a content warning?)

22/08/2025

I wonder whether you have heard of a place called Edinburgh.

It is a place about 50 miles away from here.

And it is a wonderful diverse, international city…for at least three weeks a year.

Now the East of Scotland and the West of Scotland are different one from another.

Amongst other things, religion is different over there to over here.

I’ve always said that if you preach the same sermon in Edinburgh and Glasgow and say something funny, in Edinburgh you have to give a warning that there’s a joke coming up by saying, “And that reminds me of a joke…” and only then do they have permission to laugh.

In Glasgow however… [everyone knows the punchline before you get there]

Anyways, those three weeks are upon us when Edinburgh is en fete. And yesterday I took myself over for the final service of the Festival of the Sacred Arts that has been running for the last few weeks. I’d missed everything else but there was a special service to round it off in a church not unknown to me, being conducted by a former vice provost also not unknown to me with good music and scattered flower petals and our Blessed Lady Mary much to the fore. And I’d decided it was right up my street.

So, I looked up the details and decided to go along.

And something hit me between the eyes when I looked up the details on the Fringe Website.

It was a warning.

Alongside every show in the Fringe programme they publish warnings in case you might be upset about something.

Different shows have different warnings.

Warning: Offensive language.

Warning: Graphic nudity from the beginning.

Warning: Not suitable for under 18s.

And Choral Evensong at the end of Festival of Sacred Music bore a clear warning next to its listing.

I wonder if you could guess what the content warning was for Choral Evensong.

It said, “Warning: Audience Participation”.

Now, I think that it is really interesting and really quite funny that you have to warn people that there might be Audience Participation at a service of Choral Evensong.

I went along and sure enough, forewarned is forearmed. We were all indeed expected to belt out the hymns.

How ridiculous I thought, to give such a warning on a website…

Warning: Audience Participation.

Warning: Audience Participation.

Some through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.

Well, that’s a bit more than belting out a few hymns.

Warning: Audience Participation.

Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword.

Audience participation.

Faith has always required audience participation.

And yes, probably does demand content warnings.

The great paeon to faith from the Epistle to the Hebrews that we’ve been reading over a couple of weeks is one of the great rhetorical passages of scripture.

We come, it declares, from a heritage of faith which has made demands. Which has included audience participation of the greatest and most profound kinds.

The heritage of Christianity should carry content warnings.

And health warnings.

And life warnings.

And yet that is the paradox.

Even knowing the risks of professing faith in God publicly, people have through centuries lived out their faith through persecution and tribulation.

For they have found within their faith something worth living and dying for.

The next bit of Hebrews that we get next week declares that we have come to the City of the Living God.

Let me give you a content warning.

To approach that City and to draw close to that Living God is to risk profound change.

The Christian faith neither promises that everything will be nice, nor that everything will be easy nor that everything in your life will be unchanged if you take it seriously.

Just the opposite.

Jesus is laying it on thick in the gospel today. He knew that people living out his message would cause division and not bring immediate unity.

And he speaks realistically about how that can feel within communities and families where faith is not shared.

What Christianity offers is change. Change for every one of us who takes it seriously. Change to the world around us. For yes, we hope to see a world transformed and transfigured and born anew.

We believe in ethical living acknowledging our that we are creatures made in the image of a loving God. And we believe in a Saviour, who taught us to try to be so kind, so peace-loving and so good that it would enrage a world that is hell bent on a quite different set of values and ethics. And we believe that God’s spirit inspires us to seek ever new ways of proclaiming the kingdom of justice and joy and our beloved saviour announced to the world.

And yes, we are a people who want others to join in. For this way of living we have found is good for us and good for the world around us.

If you are trying to put this altogether, and trying to work out what living as one of God’s friends is all about, then come and talk. And remember, we’re going to be running a Christian basics course sometime between now and Christmas where it will be possible to explore the extraordinary claims that the Christian faith makes.

Perhaps you are trying to work out for yourself a way of living the Christian faith.

Well, here’s a content warning for you. Audience participation isn’t optional. It is a requirement of being one of God’s beloved.

And the kinds of things that Christians have encouraged one another in since our Lord himself walked the earth don’t change much through the centuries.

Learning to worship together and catching a glimpse together of a God who lurks in this world longing to love us more.

Learning to pray together and learning to pray alone.

Learning to read scripture with all our God given gifts of intellect and holy common sense.

Learning to be generous and to recognise that time and money are gifts we have been given that are enriched and not diminished when we in turn give them away.

Learning to light candles in the darkness. And to see a scattered flower petal as being one square inch of this world where the whole of God’s glory shines.

Learning to be holy. Learning to love. Learning to be still. Learning to see that the world will only make sense when tyrants and megalomaniacs are toppled over and the lowly lifted up.

This is the way of life that Jesus invites us to participate in.

It is not without cost and it is not simply for spectators. It is certainly not for those who never want to join in.

And we who are Christians believe it is worth heaven and earth.

For Jesus in his love and compassion simply says this: “Who is with me in this journey? Who will walk in my way?”

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

AMEN.

Content Warning, Edinburgh Festival, Festival of Sacred Arts

5 responses to “The Affirmation of a Transgender Person”

Jean Mayland

28/07/2015

That is very good. I hope it will be used in England

Reply
Andrew Amanda Leigh-Bullard

29/07/2015

I want to thank you for sharing this. I recently testified at the General Convention of the Episcopal Church on the importance of including a name change rite during the revisions of the Book of Occasional Services. I’m glad to see that other places in the Anglican Communion are looking at ways to celebrate these highly spiritual moments of transformation. This service is beautiful and I hope it will see a lot of use.

There are a couple of things I’d like to point out as a genderqueer Christian. While often toted as the example of “inclusive” language, the phrase of “his/her” is gender exclusive. It creates the expectation that the people using the service will fit into a “female” or a “male” box. This leaves out those who use other pronouns (ex. they, ze, em, etc.). When there is a cultural expectation of exclusion seeing binary phrasing often leads those of us who are genderqueer, bigender, gender fluid and many other identities feeling like we need to ask “does this apply to us?” and “can you change the wording so I can participate in this?”, which is a terrifying experience.

The focused narrative of transition from one gender to another is also problematic for me as well. While many transgender individuals do transition (socially, medically, or legally) others may feel pressured to transition but be unable to do so or may not wish to transition at all. Due to a lack of information, I transitioned from female to male before I learned that I could be transgender without checking every box of the predominant trans narrative. This meant that to fully claim my identity I later went through a second transition, from male to bigender when I realized that even the less discussed aspects of my existence were just as real and valid as those whose story matches the mainstream narrative. Even now I wouldn’t say my transition is “complete” and I certainly haven’t reached the “other” gender. Having lived as a woman, a man, and both at once I can testify things aren’t as opposite as they may appear.

I’d like to delve a bit deeper into what it means for me to be both female and male using the language that first taught me I could exist. I first learned about the richness of my gender as I listed to faithful priests describe the mystery of the Incarnation with reverence and awe. As they spoke with wonder about the God who sent Jesus to us, fully divine and fully human, I met a creator of boundless potential. In that meeting I found silence to hear how my different experiences of gender fit together. Raised a girl, who grew into a man, who then found femininity rising and began to say Compline in a dress at home, while being terrified that they would be discovered as not being “trans enough”. In Christ the pieces fit, as he could never be less than 100% divine nor less than 100% human, so I had been given the gift of being 100% a man and 100% a woman.

Because my queer gender is so firmly rooted in the language and experience of faith I feel especially drawn to ensuring our churches are open and ready to see the spiritual gifts of all trans people, not only those who fit cultural expectations for men & women.

Thank you for your witness. I offer these stories and comments to further the conversation. It means a lot to me to see priests promoting trans affirming spaces across the globe.

Reply
1. Phil Gardner
  
  05/06/2017
  
  I think ‘his/her’ should have been in italics: it’s meant to be a placeholder for whatever pronoun is appropriate for the person being baptized, and isn’t intended to exclude people of non-binary gender. I agree it’s not ideal, but unfortunately we don’t have a word that means ‘any appropriate gender pronoun’. In this case the text could read “Renew N’s life in Christ” and leave it to the president to use either the name or the appropriate pronoun.
  
  Reply
Rev. M. Rodrigues

30/07/2015

As a transgender priest in the Anglican Church of Canada, I am simply delighted to see this liturgy. I hope we can do something similar here before too long. Any other information about trans liturgies from any one/anywhere would be really welcome. And I do agree with Andrew’s insightful comments, thanks.
M.

Reply
1. Kimberly
  
  04/06/2017
  
  The point, though, is that this is not specifically a trans liturgy. It’s a liturgy for all the baptised. It assumes that our primary identity is in Christ, and our differences are held creatively together as we share in communion and are held in the body of Christ. It’s affirming because it says ‘this is a step on the journey. You already and eternally belong.’
  
  Reply