What is in Kelvin's Head?

That Damn Magnificat

16/04/2022

A sermon preached in St Mary’s Cathedral on Good Friday 2022

There’s something about spending these three hours in a church dedicated to Mary.

Through the year, we often get particular joy from keeping the Marian festivals. We’ve got more music in the choir library about her than about any of the others who accompanied Jesus in this life.

We sing with her the Magnificat every Sunday at evensong. We share her joy. We share her hopes for a world turned upside down. Where the mighty would what they deserve. At last.

In a church dedicated to Mary, because we pay attention to her, we get a unique insight into her Son Jesus. Because she was there. There at the beginning when he was born. There when he taught the learned teachers in the temple. There sometimes when he was teaching the rather more thick disciples and the adoring crowds. There when he performed the the first miracle – water into wine.

What did she think when that one happened?

Go my son. That’s the world we want. A world put right. A world where God breaks in and joy breaks out.

But the trouble for us is that having accompanied her through all of this, we now find ourselves in his company again.

Mary stands at the foot of the cross. It is almost unimaginable that she was able to stay. But presumably unimaginable for her to leave until it is over.

And a few other women comfort her and stand beside her in her agony.

And John, the beloved. He’s there too. Ready to take her in.

We enter into Mary’s experience when the going is good. How on earth do we enter into her experience today.

Can we see this day through her eyes or is it entirely beyond what we can bear to think of?

It is common in newsgathering to tell the story of disasters through the tears of parents weeping for their children. Mothers particularly.

A whole war may be too much to take in. A whole nation invaded is expressed in arrows on a map, nothing more. A whole cities get bombed and we struggle to know one from another. It happens over there.

But a mother’s tears at a crucifixion…

Harder to ignore. Harder to walk on by.

Theological concepts are broken by the crucifixion.

Theories of how we are reconciled to God circle the crucifixion scene like vultures.

They are too big to grasp. And they offer no comfort to a mother weeping either.

What does she think as she stands there?

Can she think? Can she process this?

Raw. Present. The pain. The agony. The tears.

Three hours is long enough to think. This is a cruel death for those being crucified. This is a cruel death for those watching.

I’ve been haunted by a question this year as I try to keep company with Mary at the cross.

Did she hold fast to what she had believed about God – all the things that she had taught him?

Or did it all break down on that day?

One of the things that I love about Mary is that her spirituality seems to be about two things which she ties together.

The world being put right is one of her themes.

And the joy of singing God’s praises is another.

Now you can find plenty of other saints who loved those things. But Mary uniquely brings them together.

My soul magnifies the Lord. And my spirit rejoices in God my saviour.

He has shown the strength of his arm. And the proud and the mighty and the rich have got their comeuppance at last.

It is joyful spirituality. Full of cheek and full of fun.

And oh, how often when I hear Jesus giving clever answers that bring God right into the lives of people who need God most, or when I see him turning over the tables of those who are corrupt, I think, I bet he got that from her.

But as she stands at the cross, what on earth goes through her head.

What questions does this hell scene raise for her.

Does she keep repeating to herself again and again, “The mighty will be brought low. The mighty will be brought low. The mighty will be brought low”.

Or is it worse than that.

Does she loose faith with it all today?

As she looks on and smells death all around her does she call on God.

We have no words from Mary on Good Friday. Nothing is recorded from her.

I don’t know what she said.

But I guess that had it been me, I wouldn’t be singing of the goodness of God nor of a world put right.

I’d be thinking, “Shit! The bastards have won. I wish I’d never brought him up the way I did. What could I have done differently? I should have taught him to keep his mouth shut more.

That damn Magnificat. Look where it has got him.

I sang, God has filled the hungry with good things.

But I’ve not eaten in hours and I never want to eat again. My stomach is in knots as he twists and turns in agony.

I sang, from this day all generations will call me blessed.

But from this day all generations will call me cursed.

I sang about God sending the rich and the mighty and the powerful away empty.

But they’ve won. They’ve won. They’ve beaten him.

`I sang, He has come to the help of his servant Israel.

But God hasn’t come to his aid. He hasn’t turned up at all.

I sang about the promises that God had made to our forebears to Abraham and his children forever.

But he has forgotten me today.

It is finished.

My song is finished.

And I’ll never sing again.

10 responses to “The morning after the day before”

Neil Oliver

19/09/2014

Kelvin, I agree with much of what you’ve said here, particularly your paragraph on the merits of the Better Together campaign. I truly hope the energy in campaigning for a socially just Scotland and in the wider UK can continue.

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Rosemary Hannah

19/09/2014

The problem with more powers for local government is that it is the least trusted and most corrupt wing of government, even in many places where one instinctively feels it ought to be a voice and a power for change.

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Derek

19/09/2014

I hope you’re right but given the most recent WM polls from last week a likely outcome for Scotland is that there will be another Tory govt elected next year, and an EU referendum after that – who knows what will happen with UKIP. I wish there were signs for the reforms you mention but I can only sense self interested political party manouvering. I hope there’s a wider movement for local democracy and dispersed power that follows on from the yes campaign. I feel like yesterday was an opportunity missed but am still hopeful.

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Isobel

19/09/2014

Thankyou for this – today seems a little dreich.

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Christine McIntosh

19/09/2014

I shall continue to bang on about the immoral and absurd retention of nuclear weapons by what is going to continue as the UK – especially when the only place to keep them seems to be on my doorstep. There you are – moral high ground and nimbyism in one neat parcel.

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Fiona

19/09/2014

Absolutely Kelvin. I believe that the vast majority of the Scottish electorate agree on the things we want to change. We just have different ideas about how best these changes can be effected. I’m sad that people are still posting on social media that the “other” side are, to paraphrase, numpties.

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Jimmy

19/09/2014

The so called “middle class” turned their noses up at a possible egalitarian state.

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1. Christine McIntosh
  
  20/09/2014
  
  It was also, sadly, people of my generation who overwhelmingly voted to stay in the past.
  
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Kim

20/09/2014

Liked your post.Hope there is no Glasgie “kissin”this w/e.personally I’m glad it’s a No vote so the Queen won’t need Her passport to stay at Balmoral.

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Alan McManus

20/09/2014

Glaesga in Scots. Glasgie in Liverpool (I have no idea why). And it’s not our ” “kissin” ” you have to watch but our smiles. I liked what Kelvin said on Twitter about the need for a commitment for social justice not just reconciliation. otherwise it’s the tyranny of niceness and papering over the cracks. It was “truth and reconciliation” in SA and although our situation is in no way comparable, theirs can still inspire us.
I think Kelvin also put his finger on what’s been wrong with this referendum: odd bedfellows. We’ve had people voting one way out of international socialist solidarity; greed; fear; or not a little sectarianism (I witnessed this at a polling station outside Glasgow and I suspect it was a factor in S. Lanarkshire). we’ve had people voting the other out of think-global-act-local values; community values; Anglophobia; or nostalgia for The Corries (I really hope no-one was influenced by Mel Gibson but I suspect there were some).
Therefore, to be cheery about the turnout is valid but to be complacent that we all voted for social justice in our own wee ways, is not. The referendum didn’t make the choice clear. It was a leap of faith into an unspecified future of going it alone versus business as usual or perhaps unspecified changed with an unspecified timetable – the latter becoming (as YES voters predicted) more and more unspecified as the days go on.
Speaking as a YES voter, this is what helps:
1 young people got involved in politics
2 the majority of people I know, whatever they voted for, voted for noble reasons
This is what doesn’t help:
1 mixing up the Union of the Crowns with the Union of the Parliaments
2 using the USA and ‘secession’ as analogous to the UK
3 the retrospective admission by NO voters of the greed and fear of much of the NO THANKS campaign – admission before the vote may have stopped YES voters feeling so patronised
4 lack of admission by YES voters that Anglophobia was a factor for some voters in this referendum, and continues to be a reality in Scotland
5 political commentators using metaphors of torture for holding people accountable
So, to do my bit for truth and reconciliation, I admit that I was so busy being really angry at people dismissing my thoughtfully worded comments as Anglophobic, that I neglected to publicly take on board that this kind of prejudice is quite real in my native country and that it is especially incumbent upon us as Scots to stamp it out.
I’m sorry about that and I pledge to do better in future. Please don’t hold my feet to the fire. I’m vegetarian and my shoes will quite possibly melt.

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