What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon preached on 17 August 2025. (But should it have a content warning?)

22/08/2025

I wonder whether you have heard of a place called Edinburgh.

It is a place about 50 miles away from here.

And it is a wonderful diverse, international city…for at least three weeks a year.

Now the East of Scotland and the West of Scotland are different one from another.

Amongst other things, religion is different over there to over here.

I’ve always said that if you preach the same sermon in Edinburgh and Glasgow and say something funny, in Edinburgh you have to give a warning that there’s a joke coming up by saying, “And that reminds me of a joke…” and only then do they have permission to laugh.

In Glasgow however… [everyone knows the punchline before you get there]

Anyways, those three weeks are upon us when Edinburgh is en fete. And yesterday I took myself over for the final service of the Festival of the Sacred Arts that has been running for the last few weeks. I’d missed everything else but there was a special service to round it off in a church not unknown to me, being conducted by a former vice provost also not unknown to me with good music and scattered flower petals and our Blessed Lady Mary much to the fore. And I’d decided it was right up my street.

So, I looked up the details and decided to go along.

And something hit me between the eyes when I looked up the details on the Fringe Website.

It was a warning.

Alongside every show in the Fringe programme they publish warnings in case you might be upset about something.

Different shows have different warnings.

Warning: Offensive language.

Warning: Graphic nudity from the beginning.

Warning: Not suitable for under 18s.

And Choral Evensong at the end of Festival of Sacred Music bore a clear warning next to its listing.

I wonder if you could guess what the content warning was for Choral Evensong.

It said, “Warning: Audience Participation”.

Now, I think that it is really interesting and really quite funny that you have to warn people that there might be Audience Participation at a service of Choral Evensong.

I went along and sure enough, forewarned is forearmed. We were all indeed expected to belt out the hymns.

How ridiculous I thought, to give such a warning on a website…

Warning: Audience Participation.

Warning: Audience Participation.

Some through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight.

Well, that’s a bit more than belting out a few hymns.

Warning: Audience Participation.

Others were tortured, refusing to accept release, in order to obtain a better resurrection. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword.

Audience participation.

Faith has always required audience participation.

And yes, probably does demand content warnings.

The great paeon to faith from the Epistle to the Hebrews that we’ve been reading over a couple of weeks is one of the great rhetorical passages of scripture.

We come, it declares, from a heritage of faith which has made demands. Which has included audience participation of the greatest and most profound kinds.

The heritage of Christianity should carry content warnings.

And health warnings.

And life warnings.

And yet that is the paradox.

Even knowing the risks of professing faith in God publicly, people have through centuries lived out their faith through persecution and tribulation.

For they have found within their faith something worth living and dying for.

The next bit of Hebrews that we get next week declares that we have come to the City of the Living God.

Let me give you a content warning.

To approach that City and to draw close to that Living God is to risk profound change.

The Christian faith neither promises that everything will be nice, nor that everything will be easy nor that everything in your life will be unchanged if you take it seriously.

Just the opposite.

Jesus is laying it on thick in the gospel today. He knew that people living out his message would cause division and not bring immediate unity.

And he speaks realistically about how that can feel within communities and families where faith is not shared.

What Christianity offers is change. Change for every one of us who takes it seriously. Change to the world around us. For yes, we hope to see a world transformed and transfigured and born anew.

We believe in ethical living acknowledging our that we are creatures made in the image of a loving God. And we believe in a Saviour, who taught us to try to be so kind, so peace-loving and so good that it would enrage a world that is hell bent on a quite different set of values and ethics. And we believe that God’s spirit inspires us to seek ever new ways of proclaiming the kingdom of justice and joy and our beloved saviour announced to the world.

And yes, we are a people who want others to join in. For this way of living we have found is good for us and good for the world around us.

If you are trying to put this altogether, and trying to work out what living as one of God’s friends is all about, then come and talk. And remember, we’re going to be running a Christian basics course sometime between now and Christmas where it will be possible to explore the extraordinary claims that the Christian faith makes.

Perhaps you are trying to work out for yourself a way of living the Christian faith.

Well, here’s a content warning for you. Audience participation isn’t optional. It is a requirement of being one of God’s beloved.

And the kinds of things that Christians have encouraged one another in since our Lord himself walked the earth don’t change much through the centuries.

Learning to worship together and catching a glimpse together of a God who lurks in this world longing to love us more.

Learning to pray together and learning to pray alone.

Learning to read scripture with all our God given gifts of intellect and holy common sense.

Learning to be generous and to recognise that time and money are gifts we have been given that are enriched and not diminished when we in turn give them away.

Learning to light candles in the darkness. And to see a scattered flower petal as being one square inch of this world where the whole of God’s glory shines.

Learning to be holy. Learning to love. Learning to be still. Learning to see that the world will only make sense when tyrants and megalomaniacs are toppled over and the lowly lifted up.

This is the way of life that Jesus invites us to participate in.

It is not without cost and it is not simply for spectators. It is certainly not for those who never want to join in.

And we who are Christians believe it is worth heaven and earth.

For Jesus in his love and compassion simply says this: “Who is with me in this journey? Who will walk in my way?”

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

AMEN.

Content Warning, Edinburgh Festival, Festival of Sacred Arts

47 responses to “Why saying No Thanks is the progressive option”

Richard

15/09/2014

Fascinated by the ethnicity/cultural comments so I’ll leave the economics alone for the time being. I’m a mongrel with a bit of Irish, English, Scottish thrown into the mix. I was parachuted into the Highlands from darkest Englandshire as an infant. My initial experiences at primary school were- well, an experience. I was ridiculed. Snowballs contained sharp objects. Someone setting light to ones’s jumper is an unpleasant experience, all the more so when one happens to be wearing it at the time.

Physical attacks- being pinned to the ground and punched in the face until it turns purple while a healthy crowd gathers round chanting “put the boot in!” Which they did. Freely and liberally.

High school would be different. Except on day one each child had to recite- in the music lesson- the poem “It’s a braw, bricht moon licht nicht the nicht”. At the end of the lesson I was thrown fully clothed from a bridge into the River Lossie.

The reason- accent.

Being stubborn, I became a Scots lawyer and devoted most of my spare time working for charities for the hardest pressed in Scottish society. I made lifelong friends with many Scots and am proud to be their friends. Together we climbed all the Munros, enjoyed the history and freedom of open bothies and howffs, and I had the privilege of fishing some of the finest rivers in the world.

The current referendum is a matter for each individual in the voting booth. I am clear and certain that many are motivated by a cultural love of their land and people, justifiably and rightly so. However, I am equally certain that many will be motivated by racism (look no further than the recent visceral response to the BBCs poor journalism, namely where to deposit one’s TV licence). The ballot box isn’t concerned with motives but in the totting up of yeses and nos, but I have lived the experience of racist bullying and I know it’s still there. I still tense up when I hear the “joking banter” of the rugby terraces variety.

It is right and proper that there is a referendum. We are all being asked to face up to a new reality and that is good, whichever way the vote goes. It is, however, important to recognise that there is an underbelly and that it is ugly. Polite society will deny its existence. I can tell you it is very real, and it is very painful.

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1. Ruth
  
  16/09/2014
  
  Yes it’s sad how even the nicest of people are turning spiteful, petty and vindictive, as fear of the promised utopia being snatched from their grasp swells to obliterate their rational minds. Their desire for a more just society in Scotland has been manipulated and exploited ruthlessly and as the feverish excitement rises it’ll be ugly whatever way the vote goes.
  
  Reply
  1. Tim
    
    16/09/2014
    
    It’s a natural matter of psychology that, once people make their minds up, they get more entrenched in their view and only seek evidence to support the adopted position. That some will lack the self-control to keep strength of feeling in check is certainly unfortunate but to a large degree inevitable, sadly.
    
    Reply
Paul Hutchinson

15/09/2014

I’m a Northern Englishman with exclusively Northern English ancestry for at least two centuries, living in Northern England. Whilst I can appreciate so much of the motivation for voting yes, I stand with Kelvin on this. Those of us who live north of the Humber need Scotland to be with us, and not across the border. We well understand that Scottish life (I think of church, law, and education, the three areas with which I have most contact) is distinctive, and we certainly can see all the frustration that arises out of government policy over the last 35 years; but Scotland is part of the solutions to the problems of Britain, and without it, the progressive case for the rest of us seems almost impossible to make. No, of course, I don’t have a vote on this, but I feel that the English elites have not made the case that Scotland’s nearest neighbours would want them to hear. Bravo Kelvin – of course I agree.

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Colin Souter

15/09/2014

http://t.co/AoNHm1g6JL

I hope you read these comments, that you read this link and that you understand you are buying into the propaganda machine that is Westminster. We can help people through a more socially just and equitable society but that means starting to “eat the elephant” in bite sized chunks. What we can achieve in an iScotland can be a catalyst for change elsewhere in the UK. It’s not about turning our backs, it’s about giving people the confidence to see what can be accomplished successfully…..

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Alan McManus

15/09/2014

I was about 7 when I learned the word ‘lemman’, when another little boy asked me in the playground in Scots if I had a girlfriend. He went to work in a soap factory as he couldn’t anglicise as easily as I could. I went on to gain more degrees than sense and encountered that word again when my sister was studying the Middle English. 300 years of aggressive anglicisation meant that when Scots children used our rich linguistic legacy from sources as diverse as Norman French and the Hanseatic League we were ridiculed not affirmed. That obsessive educational mindset has hardly changed today. The bland ubiquity of the White English middle class discourse exerts a normalising power of erasure of the cultural diversity of the UK. Racism is evil as is all oppression. We are not nasty bairns in some narrowminded kailyard masquerading as a school. We are a people striving to free ourselves from cultural domination. We are sick of charges of racism and tire of repeating ourselves that independence has NOTHING TO DO WITH BEING ANTI-ENGLISH!

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1. Tim
  
  16/09/2014
  
  My word you have a huge inconsistency error there. Objecting to a `bland ubiquity of the White English middle class’ and yet it’s not anti-English?
  
  You should supplement your identity-based argument with some other reasons, lest your path lead to the dark side.
  
  Reply
  1. Alan McManus
    
    16/09/2014
    
    Tim if you’re going to quote me (inevitably someone was going to play this victim card) then do so correctly. The last four words in your truncated quote are adjectival. The noun is ‘discourse’. Dominant discourse need not be bland but in its attempted erasure of the diversity of all other discourse, it becomes bland. Why? Because it relies on phatic communication: what is said is not important. What matters is that always and everywhere that voice is on the air.
    Critical theorists have identified the same phenomenon with Anglo-American discourses. Why is this news to the thinking people who read and contribute to this blog? Perhaps because naming the historical and continuing English colonial attitude to Scotland is such an inconvenient truth that people prefer to divert this discussion down the rabbithole of utter nonsense.
    An example of which is ‘our’ PM pleading ‘heart, mind and soul’ for Scotland not to leave the UK. Thus confusing 1707 with 1603. He doesn’t care about the difference because he doesn’t care about history. What he does care about is power. You’re uncomfortable because I dare to state clearly that there is an abuse of power in the UK and it’s based on class, race, accent, nationality (and all sorts of other categories). The White English middle class, at least those who are complacent in their performance of niceness, are surprised to find that others find their assumptions patronising. And by the way can we all stop using ‘dark’ and ‘black’ as synonyms for evil?
    This strategy of excursion from the unanswered issues brought up by Jo, Robin, Derek, Adrian, Christine and Cliff is a bore. Can we stop now? If you’re not going to address them, or even consider them, then read this written by a good friend of mine from Bristol living in Scotland (no it’s not JKR!): http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2014/09/13/drumchapel-conversations/
    
    Reply
Richard

16/09/2014

I agree with Kelvin’s suggested model of a more Federal union, and yes, Ruth, it is sad.

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Rosemary Hannah

16/09/2014

Of course most Scots are not anti-English. Of course a significant minority are. Of course this campaign has made more Scots anti-English and some already anti-English and Scotland, especially in rural areas, a harder place to live with an English accent.

But Kelvin’s arguments are not about this, and it would be good to get back to substance. I am an internationalist and do not see how voting for separatist nationalism can possibly be squared with that. We are not a colony. We have direct representation in the national parliament.

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Steven McQuitty

16/09/2014

While perhaps not decisive on this debate, one factor that should at least be taken into account is the impact this will have on Northern Ireland. What is left of the Union after a “Yes” vote will be unstable. I can’t imagine a de facto English Parliament in Westminster wishing to retain the union with Northern Ireland given the expense and trouble this has caused in the past. Those who may wish to de-stabilise things further in NI might well resort to the tried and tested [and successful, it turns out] means of politically motivated violence. A well placed dissident Republican bomb in England would no doubt encourage the English to say, right enough is enough – you are on your own. There is, in my view, a significant chance that Scottish independence might well lead to the collapse of the Northern Irish political settlement giving rise to a return to violence. Unionists in Northern Ireland will be feeling particularly vulnerable [which rarely leads to good things] and there will some Irish Republicans who will not be able to resist stirring that particular pot to see how things end…

I suspect most Scots won’t consider this their problem but it will be if they have to deal with an influx of Ulster-Scots “refugees” returning home after a 400 year sojourn in Ulster [with tongue only half in cheek].

I visit Scotland regularly, love the country, and see it as the most confident, progressive and beautiful part of the United Kingdom. I would love to live in Scotland. I wish the best for Scotland, whatever the outcome, it will always have a place in my heart. My children will continue to be subjected to Munro-bagging, beaches on Mull and Harris, the National Museum of Scotland and Blackwell’s bookshop on Chambers street!

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Tim

16/09/2014

Kelvin,
You once tweeted at me that [paraphrase] waiting to get everyone to get on-board was the opposite of progressive leadership.

Here, you’re advocating letting a massive opportunity pass by in a desire to improve the lot of a greater majority (with no mechanism for such on the table) – and yet you’re calling this progressive. I’m afraid this does not compute.

Wikipedia: “Progressivism is a broad political philosophy based on the Idea of Progress, which asserts that advances in science, technology, economic development, and social organization can improve the human condition.”

I guess it’s up to each to decide whether the current choice constitutes an advance, but that simply degenerates to affirming your position regardless of whether it’s progressive or not.

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Elizabeth

16/09/2014

I’m still undecided, but I appreciate the postitive, progressive vision for being better together presented here, after growing rather weary of negativity and fear-mongering.

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Alan McManus

17/09/2014

Outside Tesco, across Maryhill Road from McDonalds, along from the Police Station and the JobCentre, about half a mile from St Mary’s and half a world away, a group of YES campaigners and a smaller group of NOs, side by side, shout slogans and laugh and wave banners and flags and cheer passing car drivers honking in support of one or the other. North Kelvinside, the posh part, is content to display some YES and a very few NO stickers – it’s not done here to make a fuss. The scene outside Tesco only sounds raucous to ears unaccustomed to emotional display. What I hear and what I see is that the people of a place often considered a problem are alive to the possibility of making a difference. Their agency is sought after, Prime and First Minister appeal to them. Their vote counts. Whatever the result of tomorrow’s vote, whatever their continuing problems, this experience of agency is part of the solution.

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