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…)

6 responses to “Carol Service”

Ritualist Robert

22/12/2008

Fr Kelvin, is there a link to a pdf of the order of service so we can all see it?

Reply
Kelvin

22/12/2008

I’ll try to post a pdf later today. I need to pick it up from the office and then bring it home to change it to pdf format. I also need to correct a couple of mistakes before I forget what they were.

I can’t post everything that was in the people’s hands for copyright reasons, but I’ll see what I can include.

Reply
Kelvin

22/12/2008

It was something like this, Robert.

Carol Service pdf file

Reply
Gordon

22/12/2008

And the Choir looked like this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gordonrasmith/sets/72157611524510670/

Reply
Layclerk

22/12/2008

In the service sheet, verse 3 of In the Bleak Midwinter has the wrong words.

The words as used by Harold Darke, and as sung as a tenor solo last night, from memory are:

Enough for Him whom Cherubim worship night and day,
A breast full of milk, and a manger full of hay,
Enough for Him, whom angels fall down before,
the ox and ass and camel which adore

OK, I shall remove my anorak now!

Reply
Stewart

23/12/2008

More pictures from the Carol service at:
http://bonnyton.fotopic.net/c1627814.html

and

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pencefn/sets/72157611423694339/

Reply