What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Christmas Message from Bishop Gregor

    It is quite likely that people reading this blog won’t be aware of Bishop Gregor’s Christmas Message – I don’t think it was sent to clergy or congregations and it doesn’t appear on the diocesan website. However, it is quite a good one and so I’m putting it on here.

    gregor_duncanI heard a carol new to me last year at the Cathedral: All this time this song is best: Verbum caro factum est. That is, All this time this song is best: The Word was made flesh. (It only rhymes in Latin.)

    That carol is right, it is indeed the best song we can sing at Christmastide.

    But why? At Christmas I receive the odd circular letter folded into a Christmas card. I enjoy these letters, on the whole. Last year one came from people I used to know from Oxford days, way back in the 1970s. At the top it had a quote from the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth:

    We may choose to live without God. God has decided from all eternity never to live without us.

    Wow! That leapt out at me.

    You see, St John’s great proclamation that The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the best song we can sing, is the best song because in singing it we sing of God’s desire, of God’s choice, from all eternity, never to live without us. Remember, for St John, the story of Christmas begins with God, in eternity. In the beginning was the Word.

    Now, when you choose to live with someone, and especially when you commit to live with someone for the whole of the rest of your life, this is to do with love, a determined love that, as St Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. A love that is patient and kind and rejoices in the right.

    This kind of love is often beyond us – though often we can come pretty close to it – but it is never ever beyond God. This is how God loves us and if we can love a little bit like that well, then, we are showing something of God’s love in the world.

    The other thing is that when you choose to live with someone faithfully and truly, you are recognising something in the other person that is attractive to you, that gives you delight, that makes you want the relationship to grow and deepen. And that’s another reason why Verbum caro factum est, the Word became flesh is the best song. For it reminds us that God finds us attractive, seeks us out, wants his relationship with us, and ours with him, to grow and deepen until it comes to glorious flower. The song is about God and it is about us and it is all about love.

    I sang another carol new to me at the Cathedral last year:

    Lord, you are love beyond all telling,
    Saviour and King we worship you;
    Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
    Make us and keep us pure and true:
    Lord, you are love beyond all telling,
    Saviour and King, we worship you.

    The Word became flesh and dwelt among us – love beyond all telling – that is the heart of Christmas, the core of our celebration, the ground of all our hope.

    ,

5 responses to “Sermon preached on 14 March 2010”

  1. David | Dah•veed Avatar
    David | Dah•veed

    It is always interesting to me to travel the world from the comfort of my home on Sundays and get a feel for how different of our honored clergy approach a shared topic as we have the same readings in our Anglican worship. (Not forgetting that other flavors of Christians are also using those same readings as well.)

    Father Tobias Haller has a much different angle to this story in the form of poetry on his blog; The Elder Son and the Father’s Repentance

    Regarding Bishop David as you current ordinary, is that a canonical device of SEC, it seems different from how it is handled in TEC and so here in Mexico. When there is no diocesan bishop the Diocesan Standing Committee is then the ecclesiastical authority in a diocese and they can choose to “hire” a bishop for episcopal functions in the interim period until a new diocesan is elected and enthroned. The hired gun is often a neighboring diocesan, a resident or neighboring suffragan or assistant or they may even pull someone from retirement for a short period.

    I was happy, that as with you Father Kelvin, I had no trouble at all understanding +David’s accent! I see also that you have managed to repair that lean to your pulpit.

    When +David defined prodigal as extravagant waste I was immediately reminded of the writings of one of my favorite bishops, the blessed +John Shelby Spong at whose feet I studies one summer at Vancouver School of Theology. He often states, “God, who is the Source of Love, calls us to love wastefully.” God’s love for us is in the measure of extravagant waste and God calls us to love one another just as wastefully. As did the father in the parable.

    I cannot recall who of the Master Painters, but I know of a painting of the return of this Prodigal Son where the haste with which the father rushed to greet his son is represented in the fact that he is out in the road hugging his son in his fine clothes, but he is wearing mismatched shoes. I have experienced just such love and concern from my own Papá as I have seen him responding to emergencies in the middle of the night in our wee village and glancing down to see that he is wearing one shoe and a bedroom slipper!

    Pardon my rambles today, this simple sermon sparked many thoughts.

    Reply
    1. kelvin Avatar
      kelvin

      During an Episcopal Vacancy, it seems to be becoming common for someone to be appointed to be Bishops’ Commissary for the vacancy. This gives them delegated authority for administrative functions. The Ordinary, in such circumstances is usually the Primus though I think that the Priumus (or perhaps the Episcopal Synod) can nominate someone else to look after an Episcopal Vacancy.

      Reply
  2. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    Ooh, what’s a Priumus? (and yes, I googled – unsuccessfully – before asking!)

    Reply
  3. David | Dah•veed Avatar
    David | Dah•veed

    A Priumus is a typo. Nothing more.

    Reply
  4. ryan Avatar
    ryan

    Thanks! I did (genuinely) wonder if it was something different (like a collegiate group who make primus-like decisions in an empty see?) because of the “Primus though I think that the primus” (as opposed to Primus/s/he phrasing). Feel a bit D’Oh now.

    Reply

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