What is in Kelvin's Head?

Bathsheba, our Sister

27/07/2015

Here’s the sermon I preached on Bathsheba on 27 June 2015

Sermon preached by Kelvin Holdsworth on 26 July 2015

It so happens that later today I’m going to be on the television in a short slot on Songs of Praise. Blink and you’ll miss me – it won’t be long.

From time to time I get the chance to be on both television and radio. And I’ve learned to treat them very differently and prepare what I have to say to suit the medium.

Generally speaking, I really like doing radio work because, as people often say, the pictures on the radio are far better.

Its true. Radio is about painting pictures and television is about telling stories.

And I think Radio and Preaching are very similar, which is why my preaching is very visual. My aim is to get you to see things in your head as I’m speaking.

And so I find today my own gaze turning over to my left as I look amongst the high windows of the church for one of the protagonists of the Old Testament story which is what I’m going to preach about today.

For every day, he catches my gaze when I’m over there saying morning prayer and you can’t see him from where you are, so this is going to be like radio with me describing him.

As I recite the psalms at Morning Prayer, as often as not, I’m looking up at him. David in Stained Glass. High and mighty. Bearded and wise. Colourful. Powerful. Present.

He’s a familiarly figure to me. As I recite God’s praises using words that he himself wrote, I have him directly in view, God bless him.

King. Poet. Warrior. And downright naughty but do utterly beloved rogue.

He’s a complex character. Though peaceful in stained glass. He is portrayed playing the lyre he made music with as a younger man in order to calm King Saul’s insane rages.

He concentrates on his lyre. Making music. As I look at him I wonder who he makes music for now. For Saul? For Michal his first love. For Jonathan his great love? For Bathsheba his great…. Well, what was it? Was it love? I’m not so sure.

And as he makes his music up there in stained glass I fancy him hearing us reciting his psalms down below.

As I gaze up and him, I imagine him gazing down at me.

But as I look in his direction, I see him dropping the lyre and transported. Transported out of the stained glass and standing on a balcony on a rooftop.

And he’s not looking down at me, he’s looking down at someone else entirely. Yes. Bathsheba on her own roof taking what she suspects is a private bath.

And we’ll leave him there for a moment. Gazing. Desiring. Lusting after another man’s wife.

And we’ll think about her.

It suddenly occurred to me on Friday that though I’m relatively used to seeing David depicted in stained glass, it is at least interesting that we don’t have a corresponding picture of her. She’s a significant figure in her own right in the events that were to follow today’s story.

Is it, I wondered, that we are prepared to forgive him in our collective memory and put him in stained glass simply because he is a man. She, the floosy, not so much.

I’m not sure.

Anyway, on Friday morning, I decided to take a look around the known world for Bathsheba and see if I could work out what she looked like. Now, google has an image search these days. You put in a search term and instead of giving you links, it gives you pictures.

So, into the search box, I typed Bathsheba’s name and pressed the button and immediately was taken aback by what I saw.

Immediately, I encountered the flesh.

Picture after picture of a rather voluptuous figure.

Breasts bare. Rising from baths, fountains, bathing ponds.

Curiously, she seemed rather pale and western looking. I fancy that her peely wally skin wouldn’t survive terribly long on the beach at Saltcoats, never mind on the rooftops of Jerusalem.

But the overwhelming impression was the sheer amount of bare flesh.

And somewhere in most of the pictures, King David casting a sly eye over what was on offer to him in the heat of the day.

My mind boggled at the ogling. It was as though google had suddenly become booble.

And I realised in an instant that we are very used to reading the story of Bathsheba from King David’s point of view.

We are used to reading the story of Bathsheba from King Patriarchy’s point of view. Where women are to be goggled at and ogled at. And owned and taken and possessed.

As I looked at all these medieval manuscripts and more recent paintings containing all these naked Bathshebas I realised that I was seeing transmission of the male gaze through time.

So many monks in scriptoriums painting saucy Bathsheba in the margins and passing the books down from one to another through the ages. What fantasies she must have conjured up just from reading the story.

And remember we had a story a couple of weeks ago of David leaping about in the dance and losing his clothes. But guess what, there are far more bare Bathshebas in the manuscripts and far, far fewer naked Davids.

Women and men are not equal in our tradition.

And once you see such inequality you can start to make the tradition change. (Because that’s what traditions do – they change surprisingly often when people want them to).

I’ve often said that that by a long way, the greatest change that the Scottish Episcopal Church has made in relation to marriage was to produce a liturgy a few years ago where the two participants were equals. A man and a woman getting married in our modern tradition are married as equals and it is a huge lurch away not only from biblical tradition and Victorian traditions of human relationships with which I sometimes think we are obsessed.

This morning’s gospel was the story of the feeding of the five thousand. Well, I think it was the story of the feeding of the five thousand and one. Or five thousand and two. Or five thousand and three.

For what it is trying to tell us is that there is always room for another at the picnic.

(And that’s a metaphor for heaven by the way).

As we re-read the stories of old, we need to read them from different perspectives and I want you to try to read the story from Bathsheba’s point of view this morning.

Manipulated by a powerful man who then murdered her husband in order to take control of her. And then ogled through the ages by churchmen who should have known better.

We must listen to her, for women are trafficked seemingly more and more. Too many are treated as things rather than people because they don’t measure up to the false expectations of patriarchy. Those with power in their hands still refuse to help us build a world based on fairness and human dignity for everyone.

So, I invite you to think again about Bathsheba. Let her prompt your prayers this week. There’s room for her at the heavenly picnic. And it is time her experience is listened to.

And in case you were wondering, there’s room for you too.

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