What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon at the Salvation Army in Clydebank

26/10/2015

Here’s what I said yesterday at the centenary celebrations for Clydebank Singing Company at Clydebank Citadel of the Salvation Army.

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in thy sight O Lord our strength and our redeemer.

Major, I wonder whether you’d mind me starting with a confession.

I know it is not the Salvation Army way but in the tradition that I come from, we have confession before we have anything. I tend to work a busy Sunday – I’ve already done one service this morning before I came here and I’ve got another regular one at 6.30 pm and sometimes I’ve got a couple more on a Sunday too. And all of our services begin with confession.

(To be honest, sometimes on a Sunday I just don’t get the time to go out and have a good sin between one confession and another – but that’s another story).

But the thing I have to confess this morning is that when I came through the doors of this place last night – I kept hearing people talk of holy things. Worship long past. Friendships made. Decisions to love God made here in this place and promises made here on this platform.

I have to confess that that wasn’t the first memory that I had. When I came through the door all I could remember was being chucked out of Sunday School here one week for being disruptive.

As it happens I can’t remember exactly who it was who turfed me out but it is a fair bet that it is someone whom I was sitting on the platform with last night. Sometimes God gives us the holy gift of forgetting things.

Major – I’ll try to make amends today.

A funny thing happened to me this week.

I got a year older. And I did it by having an unglamorous birthday.

Last Thursday was my birthday. No more for me the joys of being 48. From now on it is the waiting game that is being 49. What use is 49?

Fifty may be fabulous but there’s nothing glamorous about being 49.

But here we are celebrating a birthday that isn’t just glamourous it is exiting too – the 100^th anniversary of the Singing Company here in Clydebank.

It is a huge honour to be asked to say a few words this morning. In coming back here, I’m coming back to a place that I’ve not been in for about 35 years. (And I’m sure that the last time I was here it was 3 times bigger than it is today – I don’t know how you managed to shrink it). Other people will be here on this reunion weekend with their own memories and their own reminiscences of what it was like to be here a long time ago.

But my roots here go back a little further. My own grandparents were the corps officers here in the 1930s and so in coming to speak here today I’m returning to their platform. And that feels strange – not strange in an unpleasant way but strange all the same. I know all kinds of circles have been turning as people have turned up this weekend.

I couldn’t have predicted that I’d become a preacher when I sat here week by week and meeting by meeting. And certainly my Sunday School teacher (whoever it was) wouldn’t have predicted it for me either.

Perhaps that experience of being excluded was the start of the ministry that I have today for one of the themes of my life is to provoke people into thinking about who is being excluded and who is being left out. My default position is that no-one is ever excluded from the love of God. And if I learned that here one way or another then I’ve a lot to be grateful for in coming back.

But I can’t help my mind travelling back through time.

The Singing Company here has been a thread running back through the life of the corps here for 100 years. As such it has had a huge influence on a huge number of people.

As I think back through my own family history here I find myself thinking of the people who saw this town change. I think of my grandparents coming here as corps officers in confident times. And hearing the singing of a fairly newly formed singing company when they did.

I think of my mother being held as a baby in a shelter up the top of the town by parents as the bombs fell.

As they waited for the bombing to stop, they didn’t know whether her brothers, my uncles (also singing company members) would make it home from band practise.

I only heard that story this year – I’d never heard it before.

But the truth is, God doesn’t give us the gift of nostalgia – it isn’t one of the fruits of the Spirit. God gives us experience to prompt us to share in God’s loving works here on earth. That the kingdom may be brought one step closer every day that comes.

The story of my uncles picking their way up the hill really came home to me in recent weeks when I realised that the bombs are still falling on people. And that young people are not just trying to find their way to safety up Kilbowie Hill – they are walking across Europe.

And they need the same things my uncles needed. They need safety and security and someone to welcome them.

I think our task is to join with others in welcoming them in God’s name.

Inevitably this weekend, we think of both joys and sorrows. Of highs and lows.

As I stand here I think of all the things that happen to all of us that I know have been in the conversation of all who have come to this reunion weekend. Loves and partings. Births, and deaths and marriages and all the things in-between.

And there is one constant thing that we find people do through it all.

They sing.

This Singing Company has sung through changing times and through changing days.

Yet I’ve no doubt that there’s something at the core of what it does that has not changed at all.

For through all our sorrows and through all our joys we sing of a God who loves us.

I don’t know whether you are someone who comes here week by week or someone who has just turned up out of the blue for this reunion. I don’t know whether you can still remember the things that you sang years ago or whether your mind goes blank when you think about what you sang here. I don’t know who you are or why you’ve come here today.

But I do know that God loves you. And I know that simple truth was the very cause of setting up the Singing Company and the reason that people have given their time and their energy, their talent and their skills – simply because they’ve caught something of the idea that God’s love is real and God can be known and that the joy of the Lord is worth singing about.

And that’s all I’ve really got to tell you this morning. God loves you to bits.

It is the same message that my grandparents preached here. It is the same message that the singing company has sung about for a hundred years. And it is the same message that we take into the future. The love of God gives me hope that tomorrow will be better than today.

I’ve no real idea whether the Singing Company will be around in another 100 years. I hope it is but I can’t know what the future holds.

But I do know that in a 100 years it will still be the case that God loves human beings and wants everyone to be drawn into that love.

When we come to a reunion it is inevitable that we look at the way we’ve changed. But the truth is, when we sing together we find ourselves singing about things that haven’t changed at all. God still cares for us and God still loves us.

Last night the massed Singing Company sang through a concert where the love of God was the ever present theme.

We have only one life to live. And God has only one message to give.

Which is that all you need is love.

Love, love. All you need is God’s love.

Amen

10 responses to “Response from the College of Bishops”

Father Ron Smith

12/01/2015

Thank you, Fr, Kelvin, for making the contents of the SEC Bishops’ Response to the Letter from 50 people concerned about their attitude towards the openness of the Church to the prospect of its eirenic treatment of clergy and Church members – desirous of solemnising Same-Sex monogamous relationships in the context of Marriage.

It seems to me – an outsider, but a member of the New Zealand Anglican Church – that the Letter has challenged your Bishops to positive action on behalf of Christians – and others – who consider faithful Gay relationships to be equally acceptable to God as those of heterosexuals. The Church, surely, must act to affirm faithful monogamous relationships on both sides of the spectrum.

Let’s hope your General Synod will move ahead to affirm such relationships, so that the Church may get on with other aspects of its mission; knowing that human justice for ALL people is paramount in the propagation of the Gospel. If SEC is pro-active in this important matter, it can only encourage churches like my own – in ACANZP – to follow suit.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  12/01/2015
  
  The General Synod is, to some degree, inhibited from sorting this out until the bishops themselves decide to back a proposal which would allow all to flourish in the church.
  
  The synod contains the bishops and they have an effective veto on canonical legislation.
  
  I’m baffled at the moment as to why they have not rallied around a position which allows all of us, both those in favour and those against, to act according to our consciences in this area. I think that this is a position which would re-unite the church again. I know those who disagree with me on the substantive question about lesbian and gay relationships who are as mystified and as frustrated as I am that we are taking so long to deal with this and who, like me, want to get on with the business of letting Scotland’s people know that God loves them.
  
  Everyone I know says they want to come to a resolution which does not de-church other Episcopalians. The position that the bishops have taken comes very close to de-churching some of us and I remain greatly concerned for the Province as a whole.
  
  Reply
2. Christine McIntosh
  
  13/01/2015
  
  Amen.
  
  Reply
Pam

12/01/2015

From my reading, it’s a carefully worded document that attempts not to pre-empt what may happen at Synod. Talking to each other face-to-face is always better than written communication, in my opinion. This issue does need a resolution and I’m sure that people on both sides of the debate, in good faith, would want to honour each other. Bishops have a tough job but so do the people who don’t get the opportunity to attend Synod, for whatever reason.

Reply
Chris Hansen

12/01/2015

I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of being talked about by people who would rather not talk to me. This “listening process” that the C of E is going through is bull. They’ve been doing variations on that for years. Nothing comes out of it except more conversations. No progress is made thereby.

The trick is to push the bishops to take a stand and do some prophetic leading.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  12/01/2015
  
  The current process in the Church of England is related to the Cascade Process that we’ve had in Scotland.
  
  Some people have benefitted from the process here. There’s no getting away from that. It has been a good thing for some but by no means all.
  
  Some have felt very disappointed and upset that the bishops themselves now appear not to have been working in accord with the principles of the process itself.
  
  And some, like me who have been working for change in this area for years, were excluded from the design of the process and from its major set piece provincial event.
  
  Reply
FakePete

13/01/2015

I feel very angry reading that.

Reply
Steven

13/01/2015

Dear Kelvin

Interesting developments. Not much in that letter really.

What would you do if you were Primus?

The reality is the SEC has always (at least in my mind) been open to a more progressive stance on this kind of issue and yet does contain those for whom this would be (very?) difficult.

Would you seek to maintain unity by some kind of compromise (CoE and women Bishops) or would you forge on ahead with prophetic change leaving those who didn’t like it to make their own choices (like the Episcopal Church)…?

The New Testament Christians didn’t seem to care much for unity at the expense of integrity and justice.

For my own part I think it is better for churches not to try and fudge this issue (look at the terrible mess in the Church of Scotland) but to agree a position and then firmly pursue same, come what may. People would not tolerate an institution that allowed a minority of people to adopt racist positions and so it should not really be any different for those who want to maintain positions that discriminate against same-sex couples.

All this is – of course – easy for me to say.

Steven

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  13/01/2015
  
  What would I do if I were the Primus? Well that’s a good question.
  
  The first thing I’d remember is that the Primus is simply the spokesperson for the College of Bishops and doesn’t have the authority that, for example, an archbishop might think he possesses.
  
  I would however as a bishop argue in a favour of a solution which allowed people to act according to their conscience in this area. I don’t agree that people should be forced to “firmly pursue” a particular stance over this issue. It isn’t who we are. In fact I think the problem at the moment is that people are being forced to pursue a position that they don’t agree with and that situation is unsustainable.
  
  The reasons for not forcing people to marry gay couples are these:
  
  1 – No gay couple wants to be married by someone who has been forced to do so but who would really prefer not to.
  
  2 – It would be illegal anyway and our canon law determines that we will abide by Scots Law.
  
  3 – We already have a precedent with divorce – no-one is forced to marry anyone who is divorced, they can chose whether or not to do so. I think that is a reasonable compromise and it has served the church well.
  
  4 – I don’t think anyone should be compelled to marry anyone and that is the situation that we currently have.
  
  However there are some positive things that a Scottish bishop could do at the moment. Although I agree that same-sex marriages cannot take place in churches or be done by SEC priests until there is a decision made by General Synod I don’t agree that it is the case that someone cannot affirm allegiance to the canons of the church because they happen to be in a same-sex marriage.
  
  I think de-coupling those two issues is urgent.
  
  I would argue in favour of an equal opportunities policy for the church.
  
  I would try to seek a way of bringing forward a synodical resolution which would allow same-sex marriage, allow those who don’t want to be party to it not to have to be and I’d argue in favour of that as a godly compromise that would allow us to get on with our gospel business of sharing the good news.
  
  If I were the Primus I would probably be encouraging the College of Bishops to allow me to say publicly that we regretted that some people had been excluded from the Cascade Process and I’d seek to commit the College to a more consultative leadership style. In particular I’d want to say that there should never be a process about people that did not include them in the design of the structures of the conversation. I’d want to say that we would never construct a conversation about the ministry of women without women being involved, we would never construct a conversation about ethnic minorities in the church without appropriate consultation with people who belong to ethnic minorities and I’d commit the church never to make the mistake that has been repeatedly made of constructing a conversation about LGBT people without their involvement.
  
  If I were wise, I’d be learning a lot more about the experience of trans people because I’d realise that trans issues are inevitably coming our way.
  
  Does that answer the question?
  
  Reply
  1. Steven
    
    13/01/2015
    
    Yes, it does rather. Thanks.
    
    For the avoidance of doubt I would not advocate forcing anyone to marry anyone. When I said it is better to adopt a position and then pursue that I meant in terms of whether or not to permit equal marriage in the SEC (which is not the same as saying that all priests would therefore be compelled to marry gay folk).
    
    We have just filed an equal marriage petition in Belfast, so thoughts and prayers all welcome!
    
    Steven
    
    Reply