What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon for Dedication Sunday 2014

27/10/2014

26 October 2014 – Dedication Sunday from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

You have come to something that cannot be touched – in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

I suppose I should give the full verse of the text that I want to preach on this morning. The verse I’ve chosen comes from the letter to the Hebrews and the portion that Wolfgang read to us a few moments ago.

You have not come to something* that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.

I suppose it takes a certain kind of preacher to dare to preach on the verse that refers to a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.

But I guess I’m that kind of preacher anyway.

But I really want to leap off from that first phrase – You have come to something that cannot be touched.

For today we are celebrating our Dedication Sunday – a day when we step outside the usual cycle of Sunday readings and set aside some time to give thanks for what we have around us.

And I’m being deliberately ambiguous about that – for I give thanks not simply for the building around us but for the building that is the saints of God in this place who are all around us as we worship together each week.

St Mary’s the building can certainly be touched. Indeed if you touch it in some places a bit of it will flake off which you can take home for a souvenir. But today I think we are doing a bit more than giving thanks for lumps of sandstone.

For you have come to something that cannot be touched. You have come instead to Mount Zion – the city of God itself.

By the time the Epistle to the Hebrews was written people were gathering together in groups to worship Jesus Christ. The idea of the weekly gathering to worship was already established amongst the Jewish people and adopted by those who found God through their experience of Jesus. But it was important to remind them even at the beginning that they had come to something that could not be touched.

I remember asking one of you a while ago what it was that he thought bound everyone at St Mary’s together. He thought for a moment and said, (more…)

5 responses to “Evensong for Advent Three”

annie t

14/12/2009

Couldn’t agree with you more about ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’. It was sung, at his own request, at the great Michael Mayne’s Funeral in Salisbury Cathedral and the preacher on that occasion said the following: ‘And perhaps most of all, those strands of simplicity and humility that are the harbingers of gratitude and grace caught in three musical choices with which we celebrate Michael’s life today. Elizabeth Postern’s ‘Jesus Christ the Apple Tree’ – if she never wrote another piece (and I know nothing else by her), this wonderful essay in simplicity would earn her reputation.’ I’d like it sung at my own.

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emma

14/12/2009

Evensong is wonderful. Compline is almost as good…. “Brethren, be sober, be vigilant……”.

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fr dougal

14/12/2009

I remember the then Provost of St Andrew’s Cathedral Aberdeen Donald Howard describing Evensong as being “like a relaxing soak in a hot bath after a busy Sunday”. He had a point.

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Martin Ritchie

15/12/2009

When I lived in Glasgow I travelled from the darkest southside to St Mary’s for evensong most weeks. Now, I’ve been to many stunning evensongs in grand cathedrals and college chapels over the years but St Mary’s Glasgow is hard to beat for the intimacy of the experience and the absence of pretension – as well as the high musical standards! Keep up the good work.

With you on Jesus Christ the Apple Tree. Great text. I’ve recently used a setting in the Oxford Book of Flexible Anthems which uses a traditional folk melody to stunning effect – even simpler than the Poston, but just as effective!

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Harry Monroe

18/12/2009

Our little choir, Angelus Singers, was formed, and still exists, to sing Evensong in churches where no choir exists.

In my write-up about the value of Evensong, I said that..’You cannot go away angry, after Evensong’, and I still believe that.

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