What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon – the Maker, Troublemaker, Peacemaker

19/08/2013

Here’s what I said on Sunday in the pulpit about that tricky gospel reading.

Not peace, but a division

Sometimes one reads the Gospel in church and everyone nods knowingly. You can tell that people think that what is being said is wise and good.

When we tell the story of the Good Samaritan, perhaps. Or the Prodigal Son. Or the stories of his response when people brought him those who were sick.

We hear Jesus being clever, holy and gracious. We see him healing and enlightening and blessing.

And we approve.

We approve of this Saviour for he is made in the image of all our hopes and our dreams.

This is a God whom we can like. He would not be out of place in our company. We would be honoured to take him home for tea.

But the truth is, Christianity is about something a little more than this. It is about following a Saviour who sometimes turns around and says things that we find tricky, difficult or bewildering. (more…)

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

Eamonn

23/08/2017

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

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Philip Almond

23/08/2017

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?

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Martin Reynolds

23/08/2017

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.

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Sarah Lawton

29/11/2017

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.

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