What is in Kelvin's Head?

Easter Sermon

05/04/2015

I could see that they needed to get past. Their seats were on the other side of me – my right-hand side.

I twisted my knees and they squeezed in and sat down.

Two young men. Twentysomethings. Hipsters. All beards and tattoos.

And everyone settled down to watch the play.

And the hubbub settled down and the lights in the theatre began to fade.

And just when the lights had fading, before the lights had come up on the stage, the man next to me leaned over to the other chap and said very clearly in something more than a whisper – “I love you”.

And the play began and I got engrossed it and it was marvellous.

And the interval came. The lights came up and people started to applaud and I heard the same voice on my right, “I love you”.

And the interval and the second half began. And the lights faded, and “….I love you”.

And at the end, the lights came on and I could feel him lean over again to his other half and I couldn’t hear anything because of the applause all around me. I could see his lips move but I didn’t need to lip-read – I already knew what the words would be.

“I love you.”

And what was happening by me was as compelling as that which was happening on the stage.

This church has been a stage this week for some pretty compelling drama too.

Whether it was the procession, proclamations and Passion reading last Sunday morning, the footwashing on Thursday or our encounters with the crucified on Friday, something dramatic has been unfolding here.

I don’t know whether you can understand what it is like being a priest in Holy Week. I find myself rushing backwards and forwards from home to here and here to home whilst the whole story is being lived out for real. There’s never enough time and never enough clerical shirts. And never quite enough capacity to ever completely catch up.

In holy week as a priest it starts to become your whole life.

There was a point this week when I wondered whether my own identification with it had gone just too far.

At 4 pm on Thursday I put on my tumble dryer to dry some clothes that I needed to wear that night at the Maundy Thursday service.

At 5 pm I realised that the tumble dryer was still full of wet clothes, had broken down completely and wasn’t going to dry a thing.

In a normal week I’d have looked around for other ways to dry the clothes and started thinking about a new tumble dryer. It being holy week, I gave a loud wail of despair and then accused it of being Judas Iscariot out to betray me.

Sometimes the story feels very real.

The truth is though – it is very real. And it is a great drama. And … there’s another thing that is true too – but we’ll come back to that in a minute.

The story is real and sometimes raw in holy week because we are real and sometimes raw.

The story moves us not because we are re-enacting something that happened a long time ago and far, far away but because it is all happening now and in fact heaven and hell are both breaking into ordinary time and disturbing everything we normally know to be true.

It is real. And it is a great drama.

And there’s that other thing that is true too.

Oh yes, the voice that speaks, when the lights go down….

Today I proclaim the resurrection to you who live in a world that needs to know that it is true.

We have known some cruel things in recent times. A cruel massacre in Kenya. A cruel plane crash in Switzerland last week. And the cruelties of rising anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and fear of foreigners being brought into play at election time.

One thing that Christians need to say clearly at Easter is that if Jewish people don’t feel safe in our society, as Jewish people in Scotland apparently don’t feel safe, then all people of goodwill need to commit themselves to build a world where every community feels secure.

And the election itself takes place against a background where cruel benefit sanctions have been sold to people as a positive good and austerity measures risk dismantling the safety nets that have taken decades to build.

So many things feel cruel. So many things feel wicked.

But on Easter Day the truth I believe is that this world is neither cruel nor wicked at its core.

This world is not fundamentally cruel. This world is not fundamentally bad. This world is blessed by a God who loves it.

For Christ is risen from the grave and the most helpless situation is turned into joy. From death the most unexpected new life rises.

We have lived the drama of holy week and through it all I’ve heard a voice saying – I love you.

When the lights rose on the King of Glory entering Jerusalem on Palm Sunday – God was saying I love you.

When the lights faded as he was betrayed – God was saying I love you.

When the lights shone on the intimacy of the last supper – God was saying I love you.

When the light of the world went out and Jesus was crucified – there was still the echo of a voice lingering in the air saying – I love you.

And today, Christ is risen from the dead.

Risen because death is not the end.

Risen and carrying the news that nothing is completely hopeless.

Risen and not merely whispering I love you in the dark but dancing it through all of creation in the light of day.

Risen because God loves this world and risen because God says “I love you.”

For if Christ were not risen, we would not be gathered here, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

11 responses to “Providence and Vocation for Liberals in Public Life”

David Evans

29/06/2015

I was one of the Lib Dems who did foresee the calamity in 2015 and actively campaigned to get the party to change leader – after 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 it wasn’t difficult for anyone to see, but it was difficult for many nice Lib Dems to own up to the fact that they had allowed it to happen. I failed, but I don’t think it was part of anyone’s plan that I did (except possibly Ryan Coetzee and a few other true believers).

There’s a lot in your points I can agree with, particularly regarding the naivety of referring to God’s plan, when many Christian’s have a view that his/hers/its plan is to let us get on with it and find our own way to salvation. However, the most interesting question is when you say “The trouble is, these are not side issues, these are my rights.” Do you really mean that you have the right to force someone else to marry you who doesn’t want to and believes it is wrong, even though you have the right to and can get someone else to do the same job for you? Do individuals have the right to insist on being married by the registrar of their choice, or just the right to get married? Are you not perhaps just a bit assuming that your tree is that bit taller than the other guy’s?

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  29/06/2015
  
  I think that people should be able to expect individual people who represent the state not to discriminate against them in any of the protected categories. I think that the equal rights tree is bigger than my tree and the registrar’s tree.
  
  I don’t claim that individuals should be able to force registrars of their choice to marry them, not least because I don’t think it is a very real question – few people want to be married by someone who doesn’t want them to be married. I do think that local authorities have not simply the right but the duty to remove public officials who can’t serve every member of the public due to their personal prejudices.
  
  Reply
  1. David Evans
    
    30/06/2015
    
    I think you are rather changing your ground here from your original piece. You started with “The trouble is, these are not side issues, these are my rights.”
    
    You have now moved onto “I think that people should be able to expect individual people who represent the state not to discriminate against them in any of the protected categories.” So we now have a right to expect, but only against a person who works in the public sector, and even if it is against that person’s conscience and only if you are in a specially protected category.
    
    It gets even more tenuous then as you accept when you then say “I don’t claim that individuals should be able to force registrars of their choice to marry them.” So the right is not to a person wanting to be married at all.
    
    Finally we get “I do think that local authorities have not simply the right but the duty to remove public officials who can’t serve every member of the public due to their personal prejudices.” So the right is not to an individual at all, so definitely not “your rights” but to a public sector organisation. Hardly a human right, more of an employer’s right by your own statements.
    
    I rather think that your equal rights tree, however high you think it is, has decidedly peculiar roots.
    
    Reply
    1. Graham Evans
      
      05/07/2015
      
      David, I thought most liberals accepted the view that in the provision of services to the general public, whether provided by the public sector or private sector, a policy of non-discrimination was an essential ingredient of a progressive society. I accept that there is a notable exception to this rule in terms of the provision of abortion, but this arises from the broad range of medical procedures undertaken by one type of doctor or another. Surgeons are specialised medical practitioners, as are nurses who assist them, so it is most unlikely then anyone who opposed abortion on conscience grounds would actually be faced with having to refuse to conduct an abortion. The provision of most services to the general public is also a specialist activity, and no-one forces people to engage in any particular activity. The idea that a registrar should be able to opt out of undertaking a civil gay marriage represents the thin edge of a dangerous wedge. If such people wish to opt out of doing so, then they should act as part of a religious community, such as a deacon in Anglican Church, which has the legal power to conduct religious marriages, are still recognised by the State.
      
      Reply
      1. David Evans
        
        18/07/2015
        
        Quite simply Graham I disagree with your view that this is a level of discrimination in the provision of a public service of anything like the scale you imply makes it essential that every individual has to comply with it. The “go with it or get out” philosophy demanded of the state by so many in pursuit of their personal view of their rights is to my mind a greater threat to liberty than the fact that Fred or Freda don’t agree with something and don’t want to do it but George, Georgina, Harry, Harriette etc etc etc etc can do it instead. Ultimately you aren’t stopping someone from exercising their right; you are preventing someone from imposing their requirement on someone else.
        
        However, I note Kelvin hasn’t responded to my substantive point and I await that with interest.
Iain Brodie Browne

02/07/2015

Firstly thank you for your posting.
I have been expressing my concern elsewhere that the main voices we have heard in the debate about Tim’s faith have been firstly from those who think that it wholly a private matter and because his opinions are sincerely held and are derived from his faith the rest of us should back off and secondly those who seem to imply that having a religious faith at all is a negative factor. Until your contribution I am not aware that anyone has directly addressed the issue from different Christian understanding.
I cut my political teeth at the end of the 1960s opposing the all ‘white’ rugby and cricket tours from South Africa. The dominant voices from the churches were from Trevor Huddleston and David Sheppard. They effectively contested the assertions of those who told us (and they did) that apartheid was part of God’s plan.
Earlier in that decade Michael Ramsey spoke up clearly in support of what was then called homosexual law reform. David Steel, who pushed through the 1967 Act did so at a time when he was regularly introducing Songs of Praise.
I regret that equal marriage and the removal of other discriminations against gay people –including the issue you raise about Registrars- have not been as effectively championed by Christians as those earlier reforms. It is fair to say that in the minds of those who you describe as ‘decent people in society’ Christians are seen as opposing these reforms. The priority for the churches appears to be to gain protection for those who oppose such reforms. Imagine if that had been the approach to apartheid.
My own experience gives me hope that things are changing. Our local church got a new vicar who immediately began to pray for the defeat of the Equal Marriage legislation, got up petitions and lobbied. His views on women priests were no more in tune with ‘decent society’. In common with many churches these matters had not really been properly discussed. It was heartening how many members did openly contest his views and a significant portion of the congregation felt so strongly the eventually relocated to other churches. There is a good deal more support for liberal values amongst church goers than is popularly conceived.

My view is much the same as expressed in the Independent’s editorial this morning which endorsed Tim but added the rider that : ‘It will be for Mr Farron to make clear to party members, the public at large, and this newspaper, that his faith can indeed be reconciled with a liberal view on matters of birth, marriage and death.’ If faith is the opposite of certainty then I have enough to believe that can be achieved but if would be of assistance not only to Tim but to others struggling to reconcile their faith with liberal views if more church leaders provide a Christian narrative as effectively as did Michael Ramsey and Trevor Huddleston did in their day.

http://birkdalefocus.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/influencial-divine-former-libdem-ppc.html

Reply
Andy

18/07/2015

Personally, as a non-Christian, I find the attack on Tim Farron’s Christian faith distasteful, even disturbing. With the issue of gay marriage, something I wholly support, it is clear to me that Farron was trying to protect freedom of religious thought whilst also legislating for LGBT equality. There is nothing illiberal about that. Freedom of religion is one of the most fundamental human rights, and something liberals should defend. Any definition of liberalism which does not include freedom of conscience, is one I have no interest in supporting.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  18/07/2015
  
  Thanks for commenting, Andy.
  
  I’m not aware of people attacking Tim Farron’s faith. I am aware of people questioning whether someone who apparently has anti-gay views is an appropriate person to represent the Lib Dems as leader.
  
  When it comes to the vote about the registrars, that can either be interpreted as defending religious thought or as defending discrimination. I come to the latter view because if I substitute a couple who are gay for a couple being say mixed race (something many people would once have objected to on religious grounds) then I see clear discrimination at work.
  
  It is a strange day when people are arguing (as some are) that the leader of the Liberal Democrats has the right to hold distasteful views about gay people in private so long as he defends their rights in public. He does have that right but not the right to be taken seriously as well.
  
  Reply
  1. David Evans
    
    18/07/2015
    
    Sadly there have been many who have been attacking Tim’s faith, some directly and some more with disdain. Comments such as listening to his sky fairy are not uncommon. Also portraying his views as apparently anti-gay are without doubt over egging it massively as opposed to the simple fact that as a liberals we should all have views which take into account the “balance of fundamental values of liberty, equality and community” and that this inevitably leads to differences of judgement on lots of individual issues, but do not undermine the fundamental decency and liberalism of many people like Tim, who have proved it over a great many years.
    
    Reply
David Evans

13/11/2015

Kelvin,

It is a great disappointment to me that you have not come back to me with any further reasoning in response to my post on 30 June 02:19. Have you changed your views, reinforced them with new vigour or simply moved on?

Reply
1. Graham Evans
  
  13/11/2015
  
  David, perhaps you could clarify what your substantive point is. Having reread the whole thread it’s certainly not clear to me.
  
  Reply