What is in Kelvin's Head?

Scotland says “I do!”

25/07/2012

News is just getting to me regarding the news that the Scottish Government has said that it will indeed legislate for gay couples to get hitched.

I can’t help but feel immensely proud of all those who have come on board and made this the most positive campaign that I’ve ever been a part of.

Scotland’s head can be proudly held up high.

Several years ago, I took the decision that campaigningÂ on these issues within the church was not a terribly productive pursuit. Generally speaking most of my work in this area in recent years has been looking towards a change in the law. Quite a few of my friends thought I was mad. Many people thought it would come but not in my lifetime. I always believed this was possible within the lifetime of this Scottish parliament.

The focus will turn to the churches soon. They will each have their own decision making process to follow. The key thing for me is that no-one in the Scottish Episcopal Church should be forced to act against their conscience – one way or the other. We’ve lived with different views on the marriage of divorcees for long enough now to know pretty well how we might proceed peaceably.

There’s a lot more that I will say about all this later but for now, a great well done to all concerned.

(oh, and by the way, Vacancy: Husband. All reasonable offers considered).

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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