What is in Kelvin's Head?

What if Jesus chose the wrong brother?

30/11/2014

Can you just suspend your cries of heresy whilst you read this one blog post?

Because it will make you think, that’s why.

What if Jesus chose the wrong brother on whom to found his church? What would the church look like if he had chosen Andrew instead of Peter?

People rather like doing speculative history. As the world thinks about the time of war that raged a hundred years ago, there have been a couple of documentaries about what life would have been like today if the war had never been fought or if the outcome had been different. What if the bullet had missed Archduke Ferdinand?

Similarly, when I was last in London I saw a great play that imagined a Britain in which the present Queen had just died and came up with a drama about the chaos that ensued when the new King Charles III picked a fight with parliament and refused to sign Acts of Parliament into law.

The Labour Party, currently in the doldrums in the UK is haunted by the choice of leader they had to make a couple of years ago. People will always ask – what if they had chosen the other Milliband brother. Maybe they would have asked whichever brother had been chosen.

So, I ask you to think for a minute this St Andrewstide what life would have been like for the world if Jesus had chosen the other brother. Peter (“the rock on whom I will build my church”) and Andrew (“There is a lad here with five barley loaves and two small fishes”) were the choice he had.

The question is, what if Jesus (and we the church are the body of Christ in the world today so we might as well ask “..if we…”) had chosen not the person who was destined forever to be a gatekeeper but chosen one who had an instinct for hospitality and introductions?

So much of church life has been predicated on the power to open the gates of heaven. So much has been based on deciding who is in and who is out. We have a whole genre of humour that is based on what people say at the pearly gates to Peter to see whether they gain admission to the feast or not.

What if Jesus had chosen the other brother?

What if we had based our notion of church life on the brother who was particularly good at inviting others to help Jesus make eucharist? What if we had based our notions of church life on the brother who seemed to have a gift for introducing others to Jesus, not least his impetuous hothead of a brother Peter? For Andrew seemed to have a natural affinity for bringing people (including children, note) right into the presence of Christ. And it is Andrew who famously, with Philip, brought Greeks (ie foreigners, migrants, outsiders). Indeed, in that case, Andrew seems to have been the go-between – the Greeks approached Philip who didn’t know what to do and Andrew took them all off to the very presence of Jesus straight away, instinctively, impetuously even.

What if Jesus had chosen the brother with the impetuous, infectious, hospitable, personality instead of the one who always worried about whether he was right or wrong and who seems to have had a short fuse? What if he had chosen the brother who practised natural inclusive spirituality rather than the one who stands like a doorpost never able to stop judging people?

What would our church have looked like then?

Did Jesus wonder as he watched and waited and prayed in Gethsemane the night before he died whether he had made the right choice? Did he comfort himself with the idea that having picked a whole bunch of disciples, they couldn’t all make a hash of the task in hand? When the disciples slept and Jesus prayed, what did he hope for the world that was to have to learn of his message through the band of named apostles and the others (the women! the faithful weeping women who did last it out at the foot of the cross!) who were part of his movement?

I know it is uncomfortable asking whether Jesus ever got something wrong. Religions are programmed to believe that their founders got it right, preached gospel truth, knew exactly what they were doing.

But ours is a faith with a vulnerable God.

Can you even allow for the fact that he wondered?

And if you can, can you wonder whether the different personalities that Jesus surrounded himself with give us different moods, different ways of thinking about being Christ’s followers? Is this the time in the life of the church where the fulness of Jesus’s choices are realised and we begin to act as though all the gifts of his disciples matter if we are going to bring the kingdom in?

What would the church be like now if it had been founded on the brother whose intimacy with Jesus was such that he was happy to let him wash his feet rather than the brother who didn’t like to be touched?

This St Andrewstide, let yourself wonder what life would have been like if we had presumed that Andrew’s gifts were the way to extend and grow the church.

And give thanks for him.

He may not have been the rock upon which Jesus chose to found the church in those days.

But which brother would he chose today?

St Andrew, St Peter

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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