What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Ditching the sermon – a dialogue for Holy Innocents

    dialogue with bishop
    This morning I decided to ditch the sermon in favour of a dialogue with Bishop Gregor.

    It has been a difficult Christmas in Glasgow with a major tragedy in the centre of the city as people were doing their last minute Christmas shopping. Bishop Gregor was himself there in the square just after the incident involving the bin lorry. In this conversation he describes what he saw, what he was asked to do and how he responded.

    Together we reflected on how Christians find God.

    This happened in the context of the Sunday morning Sung Eucharist instead of a sermon. It seemed the right thing to move the Feast of the Holy Innocents back to this day, it having originally been scheduled to be celebrated here tomorrow morning.

    As I said at the beginning of the service, Jesus wasn’t born into a fairy story, nor into a Christmas card – he was born into  the real world and sometimes we need to think about what that really means.

    Here’s the video:

    Dialogue between Kelvin Holdsworth and Gregor Duncan in Glasgow on 28 December 2014 from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

    , ,

4 responses to “Here is the sermon…”

  1. Beth Avatar
    Beth

    I remember that workshop being done as part of an LGBT group meeting. I was slightly skeptical about it in the beginning, but ended up getting a lot out of it and thinking about God in ways that I hadn’t consciously before.

    Reply
  2. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    FWIW, in order to dot some `t’s and cross some `i’s, my sensibly heretical book The Five Gospels colours all the speech black apart from the saying about women grinding corn (which merits a grey, at best). Ie, none of the text goes back to any historical Jesus, with the apocalyptic context added by the gospel authors; the `thief in the night’ is an Christian saying of the early churches (witness other epistles, written before Matthew, where the image appears) and therefore probably planted, in that order, in Matthew.

    I guess taking what you most charitably will out of the passage is entirely reasonable, then. 🙂

    Reply
  3. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    (I had to read that, and a bit from Romans at church up here, too… was “interesting” turning a blind eye to it. 🙂

    Reply
  4. Tracey Avatar
    Tracey

    Thanks for that Kelvin. When I read that Gospel at the 8:30 service, i remembered the severe fundamentalist church I was brought up in as a child, and it made me uncomfortable. Reading your comments, I remember my first few visits to an Episcopal worship service and remembering how joyful and non-scary it was, and being amazed by the fact that I didn’t have to be afraid of God. Thanks for the reminder.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • uniting/dividing dioceses

    Material is proposed which would allow discussion about subdivision, union of dioceses when there are less than 7 bishops in post. +Bob speaks against it. +Mark speaks next as he has a lot to do with Argyll and The Isles. He has told A and T I that they cannot be divided when a Canon…

  • Canons Committee

    Puts forward a canonical change putting NSM office holders in same place as Stipendiary office holders regarding retiral at 70. This will not affect nsms who are not office holders – ie associate clergy or assistant clery

  • Faith and Order Board next

    +Brian introduces work of the board. Speaks about SEC joining tripartite talks with C of England and C of Scotland. First meets in November this year. Presents Doctrine Committee report . draws attention to Grosvenor Essay being worked on regarding the Incarnation. Also notes work done on end of life issues. (Why was this not…

  • College of Bishops

    +Gregor speaks on behalf of the College. Gives outline of typical agenda of the College Overnight meetings start at 1030 am and goes on until next day. 7 sessions of one or two hours each. Business agenda and other topics come up. This is what they do…. Paper on end of life issues Tisec library…