What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Brexit – Five First Quick Thoughts

    • My first thoughts on waking to the news of the result of the referendum on membership of the EU are not with the markets nor about sovereignty but with individuals. In particular, my thoughts are with the considerable numbers of members of my own congregation who have come from the rest of the EU to make a home here and indeed those who have moved the other way and who are living in other European countries. There will be considerable numbers of people feeling very uncertain about their own place in the world.
    • My second concern lies with those who will be the poorer for this decision. Financial volatility seems destined to affect the poor disproportionately. So far I hear no discourse in the media about the least financially secure. One of the reasons that this has happened is that there has been a collapse in trust in the ability politicians in much of the UK to speak for policies that would benefit most of the people.
    • I don’t think that the economic questions facing Scotland got any easier overnight. The calls for a second independence referendum are surely coming our way but on what terms? A Scotland in Europe hitched to a pound out of Europe? An independent Scotland committed to a Europe that fractures even more? Neither position is terribly attractive. It seems to me that there will be further attempts across Europe to persuade countries to leave the EU. That becomes much more likely after this vote.
    • I fear that there are more referendums heading our way whilst hating that way of making political decisions. We have representative democracy so that our representatives get to slug things out primarily so we don’t have to do so ourselves. Sadly I suspect there may be quite a lot of anger coming the way of our politicians. To some extent this result reflects the existence of quite a lot of anger already. However, politicians stand between the tyrant and the mob keeping both at bay.
    • The most frightening thing I saw over the last few days was the relatively powerful in the country having no contact at all with the disaffected majority. Again and again I heard people of the intelligentsia (a group I’d have to acknowledge I belong to as a card carrying member) saying that they simply knew no-one at all who wanted to leave and didn’t believe that it could possibly happen. We are divided and in ways I fear.

    There will be more to say later.

    Very much more.

    ,

4 responses to “To be an Episcopalian is not to be respectable”

  1. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    Superb take on this difficult story from Matthew, and the other stories of Jonathan Daniels and Robin Angus. Thank you.

    Reply
  2. Philip Almond Avatar
    Philip Almond

    But Mark records Jesus as saying, ‘Permit first to be satisfied the children;for it is not good to take the bread of the children and to the dogs to throw[it]’. That word ‘first’ tells us that Jesus already knows that there will be a ‘second’, that his ministry will extend beyond the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

    These words of Jesus also suggest that ‘I was not sent except to the lost sheep of [the] house of Israel’ refers to this phase of his ministry.

    Also, if the following incidents were earlier in time than the incident of the healing of the woman’s daughter, your

    ‘In that moment, she seems to know his mission to save the whole world considerably better than he did. And she changes him. He thinks again’.

    is disproved.

    Luke’s account (chapter 4) of the visit to Nazareth, because Jesus’ reference to Naaman and the widow of Sidon suggest that he was aware that his mission, like that of Elijah and Elisha, would extend beyond the covenant people.
    Matthew’s account (chapter 8) of the healing of the centurion’s servant, giving rise to Jesus’ ‘And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth’.
    Jesus’ explanation (Matthew 13) of the parable of the tares of the field: the one sowing the good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world (my emphasis); the good seed are the sons of the kingdom; the tares are the sons of the evil one.

    What are your reasons for being sure that these three events are later in time than the healing of the woman’s daughter?

    Reply
  3. Martin Reynolds Avatar
    Martin Reynolds

    We do not live for the poor, we do not live with the poor, we do not identify with the poor.
    We wear silk vestment adorn ourselves with elegant titles and eat at the best tables and are welcome in the highest corridors of power.

    Reply
  4. Sarah Lawton Avatar
    Sarah Lawton

    Kelvin, thank you for your email today pointing back to this sermon. I appreciate your pointing to Jonathan Myrick Daniels, who was a friend of my parents. My mother always felt she had a part in his death, I think, because she was one of the organizers of the seminary group that responded to the Rev. Dr. King’s call for church leaders to go to Selma, and it was she who persuaded Jon to go. One of her last acts on this Earth was to help put his name on our Church’s calendar (first reading, General Convention 1991). But then, we are baptized into Christ and therefore each other, which is I think what you are saying in this sermon. That means we are implicated in the ills of this world but also share in Jon’s martyrdom. We live in the hope of resurrection but the way there is through the utter scandal of the cross. Jon in his latter months of life rejected theologies of complacency and also self-righteousness as he committed himself to a ministry of presence.

    Martin Reynolds, there is no question our particular church tradition has some history with money and power. My own little congregation identifies strongly with the poor, the folks sleeping rough right outside our doors, and the immigrant families of our neighborhood. Our Sunday services can be a little chaotic as a consequence of the varieties of folks in various states of mind who come on a Sunday, but our spiritual life as a congregation is pretty good; it honestly feels like a gift to be there in the communion circle. We’re a longtime LGBT congregation, so I think it’s part of who we are to have economic diversity and also a rejection of traditional social masks. We’re also deeply rooted in prayer, which is how we got through worst of the AIDS years and all the funerals.

    Reply

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