• A sermon for Y’All

    Here is a sermon that I preached on Sunday. You can find the audio here. (This one is more fun to listen to than to read, I think).

    I have learned in the course of my travels that it sometimes takes people a few minutes to atune to the way I speak. I’ve learned that people sometimes need a few sentences before they get used to my accent – the way that I speak.

    And of course, it works the other way around too.

    I am getting used to listening to the sounds of voices that I am not used to hearing. And of course, coming to here, the first time I’ve been in the South has meant me having to listen extra carefully.

    Before I came on this here I decided to lose weight and get fit. Over the course of a year I managed to lose 30 pounds. What I hadn’t realised was that when I came to the South, the hospitality would be such that I would put those 30 pounds back on. During breakfast.

    Whilst I was eating that first breakfast, I had something to ponder. For the very first night that I was here I had the strangest of dreams. I’ve been up at Sewanee, the University of the South. It is a beautiful university and an excellent seminary and I was their guest. That first night, I dreamed that I had encountered angels. It is a strange dream to have these days though it would not have been particularly unusual in Biblical times. [Indeed, one might think that a very great deal of John’s Revelation, part of which we heard this morning, was just such a dream].

    Anyway, I woke up on my first full day in the South absolutely sure that I’d encountered angels in my dreams. And as I came to, I desperately tried to remember what they had been saying. I knew that something was important. I tried and tried.
    However, to this day, I can’t remember anything of the conversation.

    I do remember one thing though. (more…)

7 responses to “C of E Border Crossing”

  1. Eamonn Avatar

    I’m fizzing too! It’s not helped, either, by those of our own members who refer to us as ‘the English Church’.

  2. agatha Avatar
    agatha

    That is completely outrageous! Maybe the SEC should have talks with the Muslims and then we could declare Fatwas.

    Or is this the CoE’s off the wall attempt to solve the women bishops/gay bishops question by moving to nae bishops?

  3. FrPaulB Avatar
    FrPaulB

    As an English Anglican I’m pretty embarrassed. So much for the “Anglican Communion” we’re supposed to be busy preserving by setting up covenants and writing letters.

  4. Martin Ritchie Avatar
    Martin Ritchie

    Well, maybe this is a good thing for the SEC? At least we are not being lumped in as “Church of England” which is perhaps a step forward. The future for “state” churches in the UK seems to me to be shaky to say the least, so perhaps it’s to the benefit of the SEC to not be part of that! It is rather surprising that there is no mention of the SEC in the “history” part of the paper, other than a cursory reference to the continuing episcopalian element after 1690. Maybe all this means that we should feel completely free to reject the Anglican covenant as totally irrelevant and a hindrance to the mission of the SEC?

  5. fr dougal Avatar
    fr dougal

    I’m heading for the West Port to saddle up! Bring back Clavers and the dragoons!

  6. John Lindsay Avatar
    John Lindsay

    The CofE CofS meetings have been going on for a very long time as two national churches. The recent report is actually designed to include the SEC – check facts with ICRC or read the report itself!

  7. kelvin Avatar

    Hi John, nice to hear from you.

    I’ve read the report and was not impressed by it. I suppose I am glad that the SEC is to be included next time, something that I acknowledged above that was to happen.

    I’m entirely unimpressed with the C of E appointing one of their bishops as an emissary to the C of S though. Very much border crossing. Very inappropriate.

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