What is in Kelvin's Head?

And David Danced before the Lord in a Lightweight Kilt

12/07/2015

Sermon preached on 12 July 2015 – (click here for video)

Are you dancing?

And is it the dance of life or the dance of death?

Is it dancing in the streets with the people or dancing in palaces to please the tyrant?

This week’s pairing of Old Testament and Gospel has always seemed to me to be particularly fortuitous. You get two dances and they shine light on one another. Two sets of royal palaces. Two dancing figures. One figure skipping about the streets in his linen ephod to the scandal of the decent and well to do and the other shimmying about Herod’s palace casting all decency aside to bring a good man to his death.

The dance of Life or the dance of Death. Which will it be?

Well, inevitably, I want to come back to the dance that seems to me to be more filled with life than with death and so I’ll return to David’s dance in a minute or two.

Let me first though meander back almost 20 years in my memory to a particular dance – a particular ceilidh that I have in mind this morning.

Just over twenty years ago, I found myself at a ceilidh. I was a young man in my first job in the church and I was working in University Chaplaincy – a ministry in the church that I’ve been involved with a few times.

Now, those who are University Chaplains get invited to a big conference every couple of years. It is ecumenical and diverse. You get people from all kinds of traditions but who happen to be in University Ministry turning up. And they are an eclectic and quite interesting bunch.

Anyway, there I was at the Higher Education Chaplains conference. And on the last night there was a ceilidh band playing for a ceilidh or a barn dance or whatever you want to call it.

Now at that time, as I suspect is the case even today in England, University Chaplains were quite often people who had not fitted in, or more likely had been nudged out of parish ministry for one reason or the other – usually the other.

And it was the case at that dance that a number of the gentlemen chaplains wanted to dance with other gentlemen chaplains and a number of the gentlewomen wanted to dance with other gentlewomen.

And gradually over the course of a few dances it because obvious that people were just dancing with whoever they wished to dance with and a good time was being had by all.

A good time, until someone noticed. A grand old time was being had by everyone present until the leader of the dance band who was calling the dances noticed what was happening right under his nose and stopped the band and gave us all a bit of a ticking off. Except that rather than telling us that what we were up to was in contradiction with the book of Leviticus, he took humbrage at us because we were offending against the principles of the English Folk Song and Dance Society.

“Men dance with women and women dance with men” he said in exasperation as the dancers began to argue back.

“If men want to dance with men, they shouldn’t be doing it at a social dance” the poor man cried. “It is allowed in ritual dance but not social dance – you should all go off an become Morris Dancers”.

I suspect he grew up to become a bishop.

And as the floor of couples erupted in indignation asserting that they either wanted to dance with whoever they wanted to dance with or arguing even more loudly and more indignantly that they didn’t mind the fact that some people wanted to dance with whoever they wanted to dance with, I realise now that I was having two epiphanies.

Firstly, I can see very clearly in that incident some of the origins of me seeing that the struggle for equality between people was the part of the justice jigsaw that I wanted to be able join in with to help put the world back together in a way that made more sense than the way we’ve received it does.

And secondly – the realisation that some hierarchies just need to be broken down. Sometimes the people on the dance floor need to tell the caller what they need to hear in order to have a good time. Things don’t always need to be the way they’ve always been.

Hierarchy gets things done. At its best it can allow us to help one another – making laws that protect and encouraging us to collect money to providing welfare and nourishment for those in need. (Taxes are a good and godly thing remember!)

At its worst and most brutal though, hierarchy doesn’t just make the trains run on time, it kills prophets like John the Baptiser and threatens all who sing the songs of justice and dance the jigs and reels of freedom and love that the Lord of the dance would have us dance in the great heavenly ceilidh to which every child on earth is invited.

Let us take ourselves back to David dancing in the streets. What’s going on?

There are two standard interpretations of what was going on and they are both about hierarchy and I have a particularly Scottish interpretation of one of them that depends on how you translate “Linen Ephod”.

The first is to say that what’s going on here is that King David has divested himself of the royal paraphernalia and gone into the street in a linen ephod which was the standard wear of a priest of the temple. He’s chosen to rejoice in a religious way rather than a royal way and that somehow this is indicative of a king putting aside his majesty and being one with the people. (A bit like the story of the Queen and Princess Margaret sneaking out of the gates of Buckingham Palace on VE Day and dancing in the crowd without anyone knowing who they were). This interpretation would work for me if it were not for religion’s capacity for taking hierarchy and worshipping hierarchy itself rather than taking hierarchy and using it to enable people to worship. (And when you work in a job like mine with a pantomime title you need to work particularly hard at knowing the difference).

So I rather favour the second interpretation of all this which is that David’s wife scolded him for dancing in the street because he was dancing practically naked.

Such is the way hierarchical societies work. (“It is OK for the common people to have fun your Majesty but such things are not for you – and look you ruffians and rapscallions, the King doesn’t dance in the street so why are you causing such a rumpus”).

This works particularly well when you realise that perhaps the best interpretation of linen ephod for a Scottish audience is “lightweight kilt”.

David was dancing for joy and didn’t care who saw what he looked like. He was dancing before the Lord and didn’t care that he was letting his dignity slip a bit. He was dancing with such joy that care itself dropped away.

And I love him for it.

I’ve always said I’d rather be a priest who risked getting into more bother with God for saying yes to people than saying no to people. My vision for this place is something of the same. And that sentiment makes me forgive all David’s vulgarity and love him for all his joy.

If we are ever accused of being slightly vulgar in daring to care about things that real people care about, slightly over the top in our exuberant worship, slightly too ready to take to the streets to bring in the kingdom of justice and joy then we will find ourselves accused of dancing in good company.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Lord of the Dance.

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