Sermon for RSCM Music Sunday

Here’s what I said on Sunday evening for the Royal School of Church Music – Music Sunday Massed Choirs Evensong

Video available here.

Just a few thoughts before our prayers – a few thoughts about what we are doing here tonight.

I had it in mind to preach such simple things tonight. I was going to take as my starting place the story we heard of David playing his lyre to sooth Saul’s soul when Saul the King got crazy with his violent rages.

My intention was to come up with a great paean of praise to music itself. For we do celebrate Music Sunday here.

I was going simply to stand here and list the glories of the West End Festival that those of us who live in this city are enjoying and to sing the praises of the Royal School of Church Music under whose banner so many good things happen.

I had it in mind to stand here like the conductor at the end of the Last Night of the Proms and to list the glories of our summer days. Of concerts and happenings and sung services and festival masses. And to cry for the glories of music, for music is inherently good.

But something happened as I was sitting down to write this rhapsody of words in praise of music. [Read more…]

It’s Time

Just watch this video – there’s people and places that you may well recognise.

I’m very pleased to be one of the faces in the video above, which has been produced by the Equality Network to galvanise the last months of the campaign for equal marriage in Scotland. Political leaders, celebrities, thinkers and so-called ordinary folk are uniting around the idea that same-sex couples should have access to the same rights, priviledges and responsibilties as straight couples.

It’s time for the law in Scotland to allow same-sex couples to marry. It’s time for the law to be changed to allow a couple to stay married when one goes through a gender transition. It’s time for gay and lesbian couples to have not merely the same rights as straight couples but also the same social status. In short, it is time for change.

The video has been many months in the planning and producing. I think it is exciting, joyful and a credit to all involved.

One of the most impressive thing about the equal marriage campaigning in Scotland is that it has been relentlessly positive.

I was partly preaching about this yesterday, the day that the Sunday Mail (which is not the Mail on Sunday!) came out gloriously in favour of the equal marriage campaign with a double page spread and an excellent leader column. The Sunday Mail is the widest read paper in Scotland, the Sunday sibling of the Daily Record. I’ll post that sermon on here in a day or two. For now, I’ll just watch the video above one more time.

Equal Marriage is mainstream. Not, as someone suggested to me recently, merely the concern of a tiny minority.

This is an idea whose time has come.

Update
Beth’s blogging about this too – she was there!
And so is Christine McIntosh – she thinks it is time for change