What is in Kelvin's Head?

Christmas Sermon 2022

25/12/2022

This is the sermon that I preached at Midnight Mass in St Mary’s Cathedral in Glasgow for 2022.

This was reported in the Herald here: https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23213007.glasgow-clergyman-hits-rwanda-policy-christmas-service/

And in the Daily Record here: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/scots-church-leader-brands-tory-28812715

Why is it always night?

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

She said, “I don’t get it. Why is it always night?”

“What?” I said.

We were just yards from Times Square buzzing with people. A space that never gets dark, lit perpetually by vast garish advertising slogans bidding all the world to come and buy.

But in the church there was dimmed lighting and the whiff of incense and a dark blue ceiling with stars painted overhead. I felt right at home but they were the only stars to be seen for miles around.

The service was about to begin.

“I just don’t get it” my friend said, gesturing upwards with her eyes. “Why is it so common to have stars painted over the altar? Why is it always night in so many churches?”

One of the things that unites so many of the readings that we have at this time of the year is that something seems to be going on in the sky. Whether it is the shepherds experiencing angels glorifying God in the highest or the Magi from the East following a star, one of the ways that the biblical writers tell that something was up is that all the characters have their eyes on the heavens. Even John’s beloved prologue, our gospel tonight, devoid of ox and ass, stable and inn and all the characters of the nativity is insistent that the light has come. And the light shone in the darkness and the darkness has never
put it out.

Now Christmas is a time of magic and mystery and of gift giving. And so I bestow upon you all right now, the ability to travel through time and space and witness the progress of a weary couple making their way to Bethlehem. A donkey carries one of them.

They are familiar to us all. We know exactly who they are.

But as darkness falls, though they’ve each heard the whispers of angels, they don’t know just how their story is going to unfold.

Darkness falls quickly in the Middle East. It can suddenly become cold.

As they look up they undoubtedly see stars above their heads. With no electric light around, the sky would have been darker. The stars would have been more spectacular.

A starlit sky is the backdrop to how we imagine Bethlehem.

It isn’t just churches that have stars painted on their ceilings. Sometimes you find them in synagogues and mosques and even on the ceilings of Turkish baths.

In so many places, the night sky is painted to show us the very holy of holies.

The stars are above us here. And why not? For this is the place in which we celebrate that God enters the world – Christ born in flesh and blood. And this is the place where we enter into that same drama as Christ is born to us also in bread and wine.

Why not celebrate that drama here? Or in any of the churches of the world. For though Christ was born but once in a borrowed room in Bethlehem, that same Christ is born thousands upon thousands and
thousands of times as Christ is born in our hearts as we draw near to God and God draws near to us.

The stars mark the holy of holies – even stars that have a rocket painted amongst them as ours have.

And this birth is always celebrated at night. But this birth means that it is always daytime in God’s world. The night will never overwhelm the light of day.

No matter the depth of the darkness, the light has come. No matter how hard we find it to find hope and love and laughter, God’s love has shone into this world. No matter the extent of human misery and meanness, God’s tenderness towards the world radiates from that manger through time and space and circumstance and is utterly, utterly real.

The true light, which enlightens everyone, has come into the world.

In the depths of this winter, there is much that could make us feel miserable. I find it difficult to believe that government policy on asylum could be even worse than it was a year ago. And yet… the current proposals to send asylum seekers to Rwanda for “processing” and settlement remind me just how sinful human beings can be.

The Rwanda asylum policy may be legal but it is immoral

But faith isn’t about how bad things are. It really does celebrate how good God is.

The birth that we celebrate teaches us that there is always hope, always the possibility of change. God changes the whole cosmos by coming at night to Bethlehem. And as religious people I think we are called to collaborate with a God who doesn’t ever seem to give up on this world or write it off. There is always hope.

Now, I just gave you the power to swoop backwards and forwards though time and see things fresh and new.

Come with me as I leave the church with its starry ceiling and walk back out through Times Square and along Forty Second Street finding my way home through the city that never sleeps.

At every road junction in midtown Manhattan at the moment, a religious group has put up stickers on the back of the traffic lights that you see as you stand on the sidewalk waiting to cross the traffic. They
simply say, “Messiah has come”.

Now, they are not put there by a Christian group. They are put there by a very small group which claims to have found a Messiah who has lived within our lifetimes.

I remember that this night not because I think that they were right. But because those stickers made me think about what any of us should do if we suddenly discovered that we knew where the Messiah had was to be found.

For that is our claim tonight. In this birth in Bethlehem, we believe the Messiah has come. Not the kind of Messiah anyone expected. We find tonight a Messiah who is vulnerable. A Messiah who is defenceless. A
Messiah who gurgles.

If we believe in this babe, what shall we do? The light of heaven shines on our faces as we gaze at the saviour of the world in the Christmas Crib.

Christmas shows us that God can do anything.

And we are made in the image and likeness of God.

The love God has for us has been given to us to share.

Stars are above us. Shepherds and animals and a puzzled, exhausted pair of parents are beside us.

Anything is possible now. For the Word has became flesh and lived among us.

What has come into being in him is life, and the life is the light of all people.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness can never overcome it.

Amen

Midnight Mass, Rwanda

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