What is in Kelvin's Head?

A Christmas Message for the LGBT+ Communities

23/12/2015

This piece appeared first at Kaleidoscot, an online publication for Scotland’s LGBT communities.

The first Christmas after I was ordained nearly 20 years ago, I happened to come down sick before Christmas. My senior colleague had to take all the services instead of us sharing them and all I could do was drag myself to midnight mass and sit at the back of the church amongst the congregation. The lights were low, but as I looked around it seemed to me that something was different. Somehow, I realised, the congregation was a good deal more gay than normal. In the half-light I could make out several young gay couples scattered through the building whom I was not used to seeing.

“Ah yes,” someone told me after Christmas when I was feeling better, “they are children of the people who live here who’ve gone off to the cities to live an easier life. This is the only time we see them. Christmas Eve is always gay night here!”

It was the perfect metaphor for where we were in those days. Young people feeling that they needed to move away from home in order to live open lives with those whom they loved, returning rather uncertainly at Christmas to a town that had often been unkind to them. Meanwhile, I sat in their midst feeling like the ghost of Christmas past. Not just because I was feeling a bit under the weather either – for in those days I was closeted. No-one knew I was gay. Or at least, that’s what I persisted in believing. I thought I was the only priest in the village.

How things have changed now. These days as an openly gay priest, I lead a congregation with gay, lesbian, trans, asexual and bi members all muddled up with the straight folk. Young straight people bring their children to church because they want them to grow up in a religious environment where equality is the norm and gay rights can be easily spoken of and fought for. And a loud, jolly party sets off to march each year to celebrate Pride. Every week is gay week now.

There’s still a lot to do of course. Lots of church congregations still have not caught up with the good news that if you are open to everyone then it is far less likely that churches will decline and die. My own congregation has seen steady growth from all kinds of people since we started to advertise ourselves as open, inclusive and welcoming.

The church leaders who still have negative things to say about us are sounding more shrill every year that goes by. Anti-gay voices are simply not trusted by the mainstream now.

Even though change in the church seems slow, we’ve still got great victories to celebrate this year. It has just been announced that a majority of Church of Scotland presbyteries support the General Assembly call for ordained posts to be opened to married gay clergy as well as those in Civil Partnerships. Another decision awaits that church at their General Assembly in May – had the presbytery vote gone the other way there would have been no chance to move forward. In my own Scottish Episcopal Church this year saw a resounding vote to bring in a two year legislative process that could well mean we are doing same-sex marriages in church by summer 2017. And even in the Roman Catholic Church we’ve moved from a Pope a few years ago using his Christmas message to condemn gay marriage to one who more recently has shrugged off questions with his famous “who am I to judge?” quote.

I’m impatient for change and want justice to come faster. But that just keeps me fighting.

It is part of the Christmas story that inspires me. When Mary was pregnant with Jesus she sang a song of justice that is part of what moves me every time I hear it. “God has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.” We sing that song of justice every week in my congregation and I have it running through my mind whenever I go on a demo or a Pride march.

Intrinsic to the Christmas story is Mary who simply wants the world to change. With songs like her Magnificat that we have recorded in the Bible, you can imagine her singing feminist lullabies and protest ditties to the babe in the manger.

This year as I go to church at midnight mass, I’ll be praying with Mary for the world to become more just for all God’s children, gay, lesbian, straight, trans, bi wherever they are. In the year to come, let us commit ourselves to stand in solidarity with those who are persecuted wherever they are. And let us commit ourselves too to rejoice with those who rejoice in any kind of freedom won – couples now able to marry and individuals with rights they never dreamed of when they were young.

My world has changed since I went to midnight mass 20 years ago and it has changed for the better. I should have expected nothing less. God sent his son into this world at Christmas to be with those who suffer and to make merry with those with something to celebrate.

I’ve plenty to celebrate this Christmas and plenty still to work for.

May God bless you with both forms of plenty this Christmas and in the year to come too.

Midnight Mass starts in St Mary’s at 23.15 pm on Christmas Eve – with communion for everyone. www.thecathedral.org.uk

Christmas Message, LGBT, Scotland

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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