What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon – 16 February 2014

16/02/2014

Here’s the sermon that I preached this week. I always like a difficult gospel to try to do something with. This week the gospel was Matthew 5: 21-37

This is one of those gospel passages that just makes some people groan and turn off. It seems at face value as though we serve a moralising Saviour who has values that none of us will be able to live up to.

You know that dreich gloom that pervades Scottish theological thinking – well it is based on passages like this. We’re all sinners. None of us deserve to be loved. We’re all at risk of getting it in the end. Don’t be angry for that is tantamount to murder. Don’t look fondly at someone you shouldn’t because that’s already adultery. Rip out your eyes and pull off your hands. We’re all miserable sinners anyway so we might as well be blind miserable sinners and if we are going to be blind miserable sinners we might as well be blind miserable sinners with no hands either. Maybe if we take such extreme measures we won’t commit adultery. No-one will have us if we’re ripping bits off ourselves anyway, but that’s alright because we don’t deserve much anyway.

There’s a sense of gloom in the local psyche. A maudlin way of understanding religion that is at its happiest being gloomy and knows that we’ll never live up to who we should be anyway.

Maybe it comes from the weather.

But it exhausts me.

Is that what religion is all about? Is that who we really, truly are?

The only thing that ever perks me up about preaching on this text is that it is another excuse to trot out the best theological one-liner in all of the Christian tradition – which is: never trust a two-eyed fundamentalist.

But let’s have a look at this gospel and try to reframe it a bit and see whether there’s some good news tucked away in there.

First of all, let’s list what we’ve got.

Jesus talked about murder, debt, hatred, adultery and telling lies.

What we’ve got here is the first five minutes of every episode of Eastenders. (Or Downton Abbey for those of you who live in Hyndland).

It’s funny, isn’t it. When we read it on a Sunday in church it seems terribly harsh stuff. Put it on the television and it becomes entertainment.

We mustn’t forget that going from preacher to preacher in those days was part of the entertainment of the day. And we mustn’t forget that soap operas with all their unlikely plots reflect human reality.

Now, they might be a bit far fetched. They might be a bit over the top. They might tend towards hyperbole in the way they help us make moral judgements about their characters. But then that’s Jesus’s way of teaching too. He and the other preachers of his day. Over the top illustrations. Hyperbole. Laying it on thick. These were the ways that preachers used to make an impact and get people to remember their teaching.

And with Jesus it worked. For we are still reading it now.

Part of what Jesus is doing is telling his hearers that motives matter as much as actions.

Now, we have to beware here. The black and white way that Matthew tells stories can tempt us down paths where we might be unwise to go. The Pharisees are wrong – Jesus is right! The letter of the law is bad – the spirit of the law is good! – Jewish Law bad! Christian freedom good!

And before we know where we are we’ve constructed a mindset that sees Christianity as better than Judaism. That sees Us as primarily better than Them. And it is on such ground that the weeds of anti-Semitism and discrimination and prejudice flourish and grow.

We need to tiptoe our way through this territory with more caution.

The truth is, Jesus was Jewish and both a keeper and an interpreter of the law. And to state the perfectly obvious, Jewish people were and Jewish people now are living lives that are full of freedom, grace, humour and joy.

What Jesus is doing in his teaching, and this is part of the sermon on the mount, don’t forget, is stepping right into the thick of the debates of his day and taking a stance.

I happen not to agree with all he says here about marriage and divorce and adultery. And I can say that freely from the pulpit because our church doesn’t agree with him. Years ago now we changed our marriage discipline because the church didn’t agree with Jesus in this passage. But he wouldn’t expect all his hearers to agree anyway. He is getting stuck into debates about the law that were an essential part of Judaism. He is engaging in contemporary controversies about marriage and divorce and arguing it all out in public. He is stating a view and taking a stand.

The big mistake is to read off these pages a hard-hearted morality for ourselves and try to live by it. If we do we’ll not just be sinners we’ll be particularly miserable ones.

Remember the big themes and apply them to the world around you and you won’t go wrong. He says it is about our motives after all.

Always remember when reading the Sermon on the Mount that it starts with a demand that we see life from the margins.

Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.

Blessed are we if we realise that we don’t have the power within us to live up to the narrowest of demands of any moral code.

Blessed are we if we grasp the bigger picture seeing life from the point of view of the marginalised and weak and try to live up to the task of building the common wealth of God’s kingdom rather than getting too muddled up in making morality into a religion.

It never was, you know. Not one that ever satisfied anyone anyway.

I don’t think it is correct to listen to this teaching about marriage and adultery and divorce and think it is merely a harsh set of rules for people to live by today that seems to be all judgement and no compassion.

I think it is correct to see Jesus getting stuck into the controversies of his day and remembering his example get stuck right into the controversies of our own.

Jesus argued about marriage in public. So must we.

That’s what has been going on in public for the last few years. And we have a new settlement. Our parliamentarians have decided that marriage is to be open to more couples than once it was.

I’ve been at the heart of that debate. And I have huge respect for all those who have made it happen. I’ve respect too for those who have taken different positions to mine in public. I respect those with whom I’ve been in public and feisty disagreement.

I have less respect for so many of our religious leaders who have sat on the fence over the questions facing us about marriage and who continue to try to do so. Sitting on the fence and hiding in the pack mentality of Episcopal collegiality.

Those who sit so firmly on the fence are at greatest risk of getting splinters where they least want splinters to be.

The bigger picture in all that debate is that fidelity, love, passion and delight are still what people hope marriage is all about.

And the bigger picture of the sermon on the mount is that God sees things from unexpected points of view.

Today, partly because of my advocacy of same-sex marriage I’m named in Scotland on Sunday as one of the people on a new Pink List of influential gay people in this land.

And I’m excited and thrilled to be recognised that way. And excited and thrilled to be listed with people who are so powerful.

But today I read from the sermon on the mount which always reminds me that it isn’t all about power at all. And it isn’t about Us and Them either. Life, true life starts when there is no such idea as a Them.

The message I take from this morning’s gospel is that Jesus engaged in his world and that gives us a mandate for engaging in our own.

And the bigger picture I take from the sermon on the mount is that justice, equality, liberty and love are the tools Jesus used to fashion his engagement with that world and they are all on offer still.

Justice, equality, liberty and love.

Try living life by those mandates this week. If you do, you’ll find yourself closer to that joyous kingdom of God than you’ll ever discover by any amount of gloomy religion at all.

In the name of the God, Creator, Redeemer and Holy Liberator. Amen

bishops, equal marriage, fences, LGBT

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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