What is in Kelvin's Head?

A man had two sons…

30/03/2025

This sermon was preached on the fourth Sunday in Lent – 30 March 2025. I’ve not preached very often on the parable of the Prodigal Son as we usually baptise on this Sunday. As I post it, I tip my biretta towards the wonderful Amy-Jill Levine whom I have encountered teaching on this parable. She always gets me thinking…

Once upon a time, many years ago…

It was a dark and stormy night…

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…

You wouldn’t believe what happened that day, which seemed like a day just like any other…

They are clichés. Tropes. Repetitive pattens. And they tell us to listen up. There’s a story about to begin.

These are some of the ways in which stories begin in the English language. I suspect that there will be people here who will know how stories begin in other languages too.

And to Jesus’s listeners, he would have immediately grabbed their attention with his opening line. It was obvious that a story was about to be told.

“There was a man who had two sons…”

It is a classic start to a middle eastern story. My guess is that most of those listening to him when he first told the story would have immediately tuned in to the story with a connection to the many times in the Hebrew scriptures that there are stories about older and younger siblings. Cain and Abel. Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob, Leah and Rachel. Joseph and his coterie of many brothers, and Aaron and Miriam and their younger brother Moses. Those are the more famous ones but there are others. Manasseh and Epraim, Serah and Perez, Adonijah and Solomon.

And the more you know about those stories, there’s something that you would automatically presume if you heard a story that begins begins – “A man had two sons…”

If you heard a story that began like that then you knew, pretty much from the beginning that the good guy in the story, the one who is going to come out on top is going to be the younger brother.

Scripture is riddled with stories in which the unexpected sibling is the good guy.

Those first hearers might have been brought up a little short.

For the younger son doesn’t seem to me to ever turn out to be the good guy in the story at all.

There is an interpretation of this story which sees him sinking deep into a sinful life and then repenting and going back and being forgiven. And we are served up this story in Lent, when repentance and forgiveness are what we focus on. But the longer I’ve read this story the less I’m convinced that the boy actually does much repenting at all.

If ever I’ve got something difficult to say, I’ll rehearse a little speech in my head first and that’s what the dissolute boy does here. His problem is that he’s hungry and his little speech seems to me to be a rather conniving way to get his father to feed him.

Some people see the prodigal as a model of repentance. But I’m not convinced.

Even the words that he does get out of his mouth. “I have sinned against heaven and before you…” are more of a formula than an apology. (And they echo the words of a decidedly unrepentant Pharoah to Moses in the Exodus story that all Jesus’s hearers would have known well).

So I see the prodigal as being dissolute and a rather too clever for his own good.

If you betted on him turning out to be the good guy, your bet might not be feeling terribly safe at this point in the story.

And you know what?

The father loves him anyway.

The father just loves him and shows that love in ways that were obviously offensive to the boy’s rather prim older brother. And the father loved him despite even that.

His father adored him. And loved him. And welcomed him home.

And for me, I think that is what is at the heart of this story. The prodigal isn’t welcomed back as a redeemed sinner. He’s welcomed back home.

Stories of finding a welcome where one doesn’t deserve it or expect it are stories with the gospel hard wired into them.

This is a congregation made up quite significantly of people who might not have expected to find a place here. Lots of us come from different religious traditions. Some of us come from no religious tradition. Some of us have lived our lives bowing to ideologies that rub up uneasily against the teachings of Christianity. Some of us have bowed to the false gods of wealth and materialism. Some of us have bent the knee to the gods of power and control. Incel culture, much talked about at the moment, is a part of that. (And I know that some of us have been bound up in that world at times in our lives).

Do these things need repentance? Yes of course they do. We can only be whole when we put things right.

But you know, God loves us anyway. Whatever the state of our souls, whatever the extent of our sincerity, whatever is going on inside, God already loves us anyway.

That is the glorious scandal that those who explore spirituality eventually come to discover. There are many who teach that God’s love is a matter of justice and that that God needs to be appeased for our wrongdoing if we are ever to find our way to heaven.

I don’t see it that way. I think God loves us anyway. The sun goes on shining. God goes on loving.

Scooping us up with a warm embrace when we least deserve it. Welcoming us home.

But of course the story doesn’t end there.

I’m not sure that we know the end of the story.

The story of the prodigal begins with an obvious storyteller’s trope. But it doesn’t end like that.

If Jesus said, “And they all lived happily ever after” we’d know he was done.

And we would know how things turned out between the older and the younger brothers.

Did the father’s profligate generosity teach the elder brother how to live and forgive? And did the prodigal himself turn his life around for good?

Jesus doesn’t give us easy answers and leaves the story unfinished.

And I think he’s asking, “How would you end the tale?”

How would you end the story?

In the name of the ever-loving Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Fathers, God, love, Prodigal Son, storytelling

10 responses to “Where does the Church of Scotland stand?”

Robin

21/05/2013

I understand your sentiments, but both on this issue and on the ordination of women in the Church of England the weary words of Mrs Boyle in Sean O’Casey’s ‘Juno and the Paycock’ in reply to her son, who scorns the Irish Free State and wants an Irish Republic or nothing, are inclined to come to mind:

“To be sure, to be sure — no bread’s a lot better than half a loaf.”

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Nick Brindley

21/05/2013

I think you’re right to think this is a disastrously wrong-headed attempt to avoid having to think the issue through, although we may not agree on what would be involved in such thinking (almost nobody agrees with me!)

I think we need to revisit some pretty fundamental problems on the nature of the moral authority of the Bible, the meaning of “salvation” and what ministry is to make any real progress with this issue and there appears to be depressingly little appetite to do this in a spirit of mutual trust and of trust in the leading of the Spirit guiding our interpretation of scripture

http://loveswork.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/failing-to-be-biblical-reflections-on-church-of-scotland-sexuality-debates/

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Frank keefe

21/05/2013

This is what happens when you water down Gods truth so the secular world will think what a progressive church you are.When a small secular wedge is pushed under a church door you can bet a larger one will be pushed under it in the not to distant future.I believe a liberal minded church like the Church of Scotland is more dangerous to the Christian faith than atheists like Richard Dawkins and his followers. Jesus found it hard to convince the Pharisees of their misguided beliefs if He walked our earth today He would find those modern day Pharisees in the Church of Scotland even harder to convince.

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1. Rosemary Hannah
  
  21/05/2013
  
  Well, there you go – I think the exact opposite – that Jesus, who plucked corn, and healed, on the Sabbath, would be out partying tonight with all sorts of disreputable people. The Pharisees were the people who stuck rigidly to the law, breaking it even as they kept it. Jesus was the one who re-interpreted it.
  
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  1. Frank keefe
    
    21/05/2013
    
    I find it amazing how those who look for sin to be accepted would try and use Jesus to back them up.First Jesus said the Sabbath was made for man not man for the Sabbath.The Pharisees abused Gods law with their legalism.Its why He said about the rescue of a sheep on that day.He didnt re-interpret it He was showing them how it SHOULD BE KEPT as God ALWAYS intended it.Its the church who is doing the interpretation and Jesus certainly wouldnt be “out partying” such disrespect of our Lords holiness is often the way with liberal ” Christians” Instead of the church being a light to the world that worlds darkness is putting out that light.
    
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    1. kelvin
      
      21/05/2013
      
      Bless you for your faith, Frank. May it bring you happiness and joy.
      
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Graeme Cowie

21/05/2013

It’s a fudge, no doubt. And one which, far from preserving the “traditional” Kirk actually serves to undermine it in a number of ways, particularly concerning the status of “doctrine” and who gets to determine what it is, or at least what practical meaning it is for something to be “doctrine” rather than merely a personal religious sentiment. Explicitly to permit complete deviation from “doctrine” by congregations is not very Presbyterian, and the “traditionalists” either didn’t seem to realise that, or they care about preserving substantial doctrines at the expense of, well, what makes the Kirk the Kirk.

To an extent, though, you could see it coming. I think the traditionalist wing sensed they would lose if it was a straight choice (unfortunate phrase) between 2A and 2B, and so tried to push for something that retains a symbolic attachment to historical doctrine whilst letting liberals have the lion’s share of the cake they want, which is to be able to ordain those in committed same-sex relationships and to be done with it. I know for a fact that a fair whack of liberal commissioners were swayed by 2D (not including my parents, who are CofS ministers who voted with option 2A), many seeing it as a way of letting the traditionalists have some sort of phyric victory whilst in fact enabling ministers to be in civil partnerships without any lasting problems. It is much more likely that 2D will make it through Barrier Act procedure now that it’s got the traditionalists’ name on it, and notwithstanding the extra year it’s going to take to turn it into a proper overture, I think the consensus of the Kirk is that they really want to stop talking about this.

The new system ought to be fairly robust once the Legal Questions Committee have had their teeth dug into it. The clear intention was conceded by the movers that they did not intend for Presbyteries to be able to discipline or annul decisions made by Kirk Sessions seeking to be allowed to appoint ministers in civil partnerships, and for a lot of liberals (and actually, a lot of those on the conservative wing too) this will be seen as a critical part of the compromise if it is to be laid to rest. My only real concern is that if the traditionalists are for any reason unhappy with the implementation by LQC it could lead to the whole debate re-opening in GA 2014.

It’s clearly not enough for many liberal ministers, elders and members of the Church of Scotland, for whom this still presents a partial sense of “separate not equal” for congregation and minister alike, and it probably makes it more difficult for the theological position of the kirk formally to be moved away from same sex relationships being sinful, now that the “practical harms” are in a significant sense out of the way, but by Church of Scotland standards, it’s a major step forward for a very broad church, and one which has probably saved it from a major schism (though a handful of churches may still leave over and above The Tron and Gilc South). For those of us in the Kirk 5 years ago, this would have been virtually unthinkable, and momentum has picked up since the Rennie case 4 years ago. The good fight goes on, and hurdles remain, but if it gets through Barrier Act procedure I think the practical objectives, in a Kirk which already offers substantial liberty of personal opinion in matters of doctrine which do not enter into the substance of faith, have largely been met, albeit in a roundabout way.

For more of my thoughts on this matter, see:

http://www.predictableparadox.co.uk/2013/05/church-of-scotland-religious-progress.html

and

http://www.predictableparadox.co.uk/2013/05/presbyterianism-cracking-at-seems-cost.html

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Margaret of the Sea of Galilee

22/05/2013

And it still does not properly address how LGBTQ people (single or in civil partnerships) will be dealt with (dealt to?) when they offer themselves to Presbyteries as feeling called to the Ministry of Word and Sacrament. Will they be asked about their orientation? Questioned? Interrogated? What responses will allow them to or prevent them from pursuing that call?

Who is this Albert Bogle anyway – is he about to become the first to be beatified by the Kirk and for what exactly? By-passing (even disregarding) Kirk “Order”, convincing his important friends to let him bulldoze ahead and his less important friends to print off 700 and something copies of a Deliverance which is incoherent and unimplementable.
Off to read Revelation for other signs of The End Times…
.

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Peter W Nimmo

25/05/2013

Kelvin, you make lots of good points in your post. But just to clarify- what is the doctrine and practice of the Scottish Episcopal Church on this issue? Does your doctrine approve of persons in civil partnerships being clergy, and is that put into practice?

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1. kelvin
  
  25/05/2013
  
  Yes – there are quite a number of clergy in civil partnerships. In England, Anglican clergy in civil partnerships are supposed to declare that they are “celibate”. That isn’t the case in Scotland.
  
  The pension scheme in Scotland recognises Civil Partnerships by giving such partners the same benefits as wives or husbands in marriages. Civil Partners also are treated in the same way with regard to housing as a straight spouse if a relationship breaks down.
  
  Any candidate for ordination who is in a Civil Partnership is expected to be honest about that at selection.
  
  The bishops of the church announced a few years ago that they would not consecrate anyone as bishop who was in a Civil Partnership. They were clear at the time that this was a moratorium. However it is not clear to me whether that moratorium still stands. I do expect there to be questions about that at the coming Synod.
  
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