What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached for Lent 1, 2013

    Here’s the video.


    And here is the text:

    One of my favourite stories about St Mary’s is one that I’ve heard several versions of. It concerns one of my predecessors as Provost here.

    He had been here for a couple of months and thought that things were going OK. And then suddenly a letter appeared from a member of the congregation. (It may be that person is still here and just about to write to me in similar terms, so I’m taking a risk in telling this story).

    The gist of the letter was that its author listed the many ways in which the worship of the congregation had changed in those three months.

    See here, the letter writer wrote – see all the changes that you’ve made.

    And in the letter there was a list. In the version of the story I like the best there were 90 points listed but I don’t know whether we should allow a little bit of exaggeration in the telling.

    And the Provost in question had to confess (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

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