What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached on 10 November 2013


    What are you fighting for…in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit?

    The gospel reading that we’ve just heard is a very particular one. The question is – if a man dies and his widow marries his brother, and six brothers die and she marries her way down the family, whose bride will she be in heaven.

    What deep truth does this question and Jesus’s answer convey to us.

    Well, I wasn’t supposed to be preaching today and swapped a couple of days ago with one of my colleagues.

    The deep truth that this passage conveys to me today is always to check what the bible readings are before you agree to swap a date in the pulpit.

    I’m going to start from a different place though and work my way back to what is going on in the gospel reading this morning. For the question is not straightforward at all, never mind the answer. (more…)

    , ,

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

  • Richard Rohr

    Went to hear Richard Rohr at lunchtime today. He was talking about male spirituality. It was held in a local venue which was once a presbyterian church and which was packed for the occasion, which was very good. The event was called “A prayer, a pie and a pint”, which was interesting as they ran…

  • New SEC Bishop

    When I was supposed to be completing my training as an ordinand, and just before I was ordained, I went to spend some time with the Coptic Church. The Copts are the Orthodox Christians of Egypt. I went there because they have grown phenomenally in confidence and numbers whilst still maintaining their [oriental] orthodox culture…

  • Liturgical Formation

    We are going to be talking about Liturgical Formation next week at the General Synod. At a pre-synod meeting last night, I found myself wondering whether anyone else had the vague notion in their head that in some way, what happens in a cathedral is part of the liturgical formation of a diocese.  Does what…

  • Baptism update

    My co-star and I had an agreement this morning not to upstage one another. We managed to keep to this agreement, more or less. I did wonder whether his insisting on taking his shoes off so that he could paddle in the font was perhaps taking things a bit too far, but no, he rightly…