What is in Kelvin's Head?

To be an Episcopalian is not to be respectable

21/08/2017

To be an Episcopalian means not to be respectable.

This morning’s gospel reading is one of the most interesting of the stories about Jesus that are ever told. Even if we’ve heard it before, it still has the capacity to surprise.

He said what?

And what did she say in response?

A mother begs for healing for her daughter and the one we now recognise as king of kings and lord of lords brushes her off with a remark that reads very much like racism.

“I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”

Nevertheless she persisted and her cheeky reply has an edge to it. “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”

In that moment, she seems to know his mission to save the whole world considerably better than he did.

And she changes him. He thinks again.

Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for you as you wish.

The issue of race has been very much in our minds this week as night after night the news here has been filled with the events in Charlottesville in the United States and the obscenely inadequate response of President Trump to the racism and violence which occurred there.

The far-right mob that was saw on television was shocking to behold though for me not that surprising. The same forces which stoked that hatred were turned on us here at St Mary’s using the internet just a few months ago and we met under police protection for our worship for a while.

As has been the case at a number of times in our history, we were known then as a congregation to be not entirely respectable.

We are so used to seeing Jesus as the epitome of everything that it stops us short to hear his response to the woman we meet today.

Is he on the side of equity and justice or isn’t he.

The trouble is, then as well as now, that our notions of God can make us think that all that we behold in Jesus outshines all that is in the human heart. We think of him as perfect, eternal goodness, notwithstanding our view that he became fully human.

The danger of thinking of him in quite that way is that it might dazzle us so much that we cannot see the truth that God is in everyone. Everyone is made in the image and likeness of God and even the presence of Jesus next to someone should not drown that out.

And it doesn’t.

She speaks the truth. God’s truth. She has a conscience. She uses her cheek and guile and yes, maybe her sheer cussed desperation to challenge something that she knows can’t be right. She is not quite respectable and she doesn’t care.

And the Lord of Lords changes his mind. His heart is melted and he brings and end to suffering.

Never again do we hear of him attempting to turn someone away because they were not of the right people. Or indeed not the right anything. He ended up being the saviour for everyone.

God is with her as she speaks. God is with her even as she speaks the truth. And God is with each and every one of us demanding no less.

Even if it is the most righteous, Godly, holy person who confronts us with what seems to be racism, this gospel suggests that God will be with us as we confront it anyway.

The racism in the USA this week is real and must be confronted with the narrative of justice. It must also not blind us to such things here either.

Just up the road from here in the last 10 days there was a violent homophobic attack in a street in which I regularly walk.

Speaking truth to such violence can be costly.

My friends in the American church are trying to find the words today to speak truth and God’s wisdom to their situation.

They will be emboldened on this day by the memory of one of the people they have put in their calendar whose feast day falls today – Jonathan Myrick Daniels.

He is not so widely known here but he would be a good suggestion to enhance our calendar of saints too. He was a young Episcopalian seminarian who in 1965 answered Martin Luther King’s call to clergy and seminarians to go to Selma to work for Civil Rights.

Having been unjustly imprisoned, on his release he and those with him were attacked and he lost his life shielding a young black woman Ruby Sales. He died. She lived. And she went on to be a human rights advocate in Washington DC. He was a hero of the faith who died saving others. She is a hero of the faith who lives still, saving others still.

In the commemoration of his martyrdom today, I hope that our beloved Episcopalians in the USA find strength and courage and wisdom for this moment.

And so should we too.

For as I said, it is not just in the USA that such forces must be confronted.

I spent some time this week working on leaflets for the Pride march which some of us went on yesterday. As I was doing so, I went online to ask others for some ideas.

I was sent a piece of writing about the Scottish Episcopal Church written about 15 years ago which I’m going to end with.

It is from Robin Angus, one of the living saints of the diocese of Edinburgh.

He said this.

To be an Episcopalian means to be on the side of the poor and persecuted everywhere. For nearly a century our worship was outlawed, our churches were burned or raided by soldiers, our priests were banished, imprisoned or killed, our people harried and fined, informed against and ostracised. For this reason, it is the glory and honour of every Episcopalian also to be a Jew, a Palestinian, gay, black, untouchable, and every other kind of person who ever has, is, or will be persecuted or disadvantaged. This is why, too, Episcopalians glory in racial diversity, a tradition which goes far back into our history. Bishop Forbes of Ross proudly recorded how he had confirmed two young [black people] at one of his crowded Highland Confirmations in 1770, at a time when even to attend such Confirmations, let alone minister at them, was still a criminal act.

To be an Episcopalian means not to be respectable.

Remember that this day as you worship in this beautiful house of God in the oh so respectable West End of this glorious city.

To be here is to be part of something decidedly not respectable.

And as we give honour and love to God here in this place for an hour or two a week, it is our joy, our destiny and our delight to give love and honour to God as God appears to us in the faces of the souls we meet for every other hour.

That is who we are.

And if you are here this day or find yourself in any of our churches, then that is the kind of faith to which we call you.

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

Amen.

pisky, respectable, Scottish Episcopal Church, what is the Scottish Episcopal Church

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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