What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • We’ve a feast on our hands

    Corpus 7

    We’ve a feast on our hands today at St Mary’s. Today is a day set apart in the calendar of our church on which Christians may give especial thanks for the institution of Holy Communion. It is the very last of the festivals whose date changes according to Easter. Because Easter was early this year, so today, Corpus Christi is earlier than it often is too.

    Corpus Christi is related to Holy Week in another way too. The day on which Communion was instituted in the church is Maundy Thursday. That’s when we remember the Last Supper in the Upper Room. The Last Supper is perhaps confusingly the First Communion.  (Or at least it is if you discount the other eucharistic meals in the gospels where Jesus breaks bread and shares it, such as the feeding of the five thousand). Maundy Thursday though is a day when we’ve got so much to think about and so much going on that we tend not to think about the supper itself. We get so quickly caught up in the story of Jesus’s arrest in the garden, trial and crucifixion the next day that we don’t have much time to ponder, or indeed, celebrate, the meal itself.

    Hence, Corpus Christi. We get the chance today to rejoice in the meal.

    I used to go across to celebrate Corpus Christi in Edinburgh with Fr Kevin Pearson. Sometimes we would make it a trip for servers and other hangers on. Indeed, on one ocassion, Fr Kevin invited me to preach. When Fr Kevin became Bishop Kevin a couple of years ago, I decided to have a go a reviving the feast in the west and started to celebrate it in Glasgow. And today, I’ve asked Bishop Kevin to come and preach at it.

    It is a fairly complicated, wizz-bang kind of liturgy with much to think about. However, the essential ideas are easy to grasp. Firstly that God is really present when the Eucharist is celebrated. Secondly that God comes amongst God’s people and walks with them. Thirdly that it is OK to be joyful and happy. Indeed, joy is at the core of what we do.

    So, Corpus Christi.  A sermon from Bishop Kevin. Flower scattered (no, strewn!) before the Lord of Heaven and Earth. The glorious Vierne Messe Solonnelle from the choir. And joy for everyone.

    Kick off 7.30 pm. All welcome.

    [There’s a facebook event here: https://www.facebook.com/events/467625339986048/ if you want to invite facebook friends)

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15 responses to “The Trump of Judgement for Liberals”

  1. Guy Avatar
    Guy

    I heard someone talking on the radio who had looked at actual voting data (wherever such people get that from). Predictors of whether someone was a Trump voter, though by no means decisive ones, were whether someone earned more than $50000, had never gone to college or had done so but dropped out, was male, and over 44 years old. But there were people in those categories who had voted for Clinton as well. Even the much spoken of Hispanic vote was not as big a predictor of voting preference as thought and there were too many women who hated Hilary Clinton for misogyny to be the overarching factor.

    The stand out predictor which went across all categories was colour, whites going for Trump, up to %58.

    This vote was an anti-Obama backlash from people who couldn’t quite forgive the fact that an African-American had been running the show for eight years, whether the racism was of the vitriolic nasty sort or the more urbane sort that says that some of the other lot are probably ok, but only as long as we don’t have to actually mix with them and they’re somewhere else, it amounts to the same thing. The analyst speaking referred to a sort of nostalgia for when whites seemed to be in overall charge of everything.

    As to our response: as far as I can see the reason American politics is so vitriolic is because Liberals and Conservatives hate each other and also want to remake the other side in their own image.

    Love the other: well very gospel, but pretty darned hard when you struggle to even like xenophobic misogynistic lgbt-haters, let alone love them!

    Love might be the attitude that those of us who call ourselves Christians have to struggle towards, but I’m less sanguine than Kelvin is on this one and the verse that keeps going through my mind is the bit in Ecclesiastes about there being a time for this a time for that.

    Sometimes conflict is inevitable and has to be fought to a finish. You can’t react to the kind of person who shouted out at Trump’s victory speech “jail Obama” on the basis of well, six of one and half a dozen of the other. And such people aren’t exactly amenable to sweet reason.

    On the other hand sometimes people have just to be left alone. Forceably trying to remake the other in your own image just antagonises.

    I think our response has to be to discern the difference between the two situations. And to redouble our efforts to make sure that a Trump can’t become Prime Minister in the UK.

    Reply
  2. Eamonn Avatar
    Eamonn

    A prophetic and timely warning, Kelvin. What Trump represents is on the way to becoming a global phenomenon. The tone of his rallies, and the chanting of mindless slogans, is all too reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s. The fact that his election has been welcomed by Marine le Pen and other far-right leaders in Europe speaks volumes.

    Reply
  3. Guy Avatar
    Guy

    Something to think about: when it penetrates the general consciousness that the majority of white conservative evangelicals voted for Donald Trump, what if anything will be the fall out for Christianity as a whole?

    Reply

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