What is in Kelvin's Head?

Can the Epi Scopal Church speak of the love of God?

08/10/2018

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Identity matters. It always has of course but these days it seems to matter a huge amount.

And one of the most difficult things for Scottish Episcopalians is to explain to others who we are.

The name doesn’t help of course.

Scottish Episcopal always sounds a bit more like an Edinburgh based insurance company than a part of the church universal. And the simple truth is that a lot of people have never heard of us, or if they’ve heard of us have no real idea who we are.

Tricky names make things difficult.

My name is one that lots of people get wrong. One of the great advantages for me in living so close to Glasgow’s greatest, if not widest river is that I live within the only few square miles of the world where I seldom have to spell my name to people.

This came home to me once when I was gearing myself up to do a national broadcast on the BBC. And I could hear the continuity announcer in the headphones I was wearing introducing me live on air as the Very Rev Kevin Holdsworth. I sighed deeply just before the red light went on ready for me to be bright and perky to the nation. And I heard him finish his sentence with, “… the Very Rev Kevin Holdsworth, from St Mary’s Epi-Scopal Cathedral in Glasgow”.

The Epi-Scopal sounds more like a procedure that you would have done at Gartnavel than an identity that you would want to be known by.

The truth is, we’ve not been doing terribly well as a church with getting people to know who we are.

My view is that this is one of the biggest jobs that the Scottish Episcopal Church has on its hands at the moment. No-one is going to learn anything about the love of God from us if they think we are an insurance company or a ghastly piece of medical equipment that goes up your nose, down your throat or ….

No, let’s not think about where else an Epi Scopal might go.

But it is a job that can be done. We can reclaim our space in the public life and consciousness though probably not by being meek and mild.

This week I found myself being asked to talk to dozens of young LGBT activists who were gathered in Edinburgh for a conference. I was asked to join a human library. The idea being that the young people could come and speak to all the exhibits and hear our stories and ask us question.

I know of no process more clearly designed to make you feel ancient. But the young people treated us all like national treasures and had good questions.

And they all wanted to know what church I came from.

And I tried to explain.

Are you like the catholics? Yes

Are you like the Lutherans? Yes

Are you a bible church? Yes

Are you a Reformed Church? Yes.

It was a little puzzling for them.

Until they started asking questions that were a bit like the questions that were being put to Jesus in the gospel this morning. Then we started getting somewhere.

Well, what do you think about marriage? Who can be married? What do you think about divorce? What does your church teach?

And I found that my identity was being seen through the lens of what they thought were decent ethics.

And I don’t really have a problem with that.

I think our ethics – the way we behave are our calling cards. People will remember us by the way we behave at least as much as by what we say.

I find it interesting that religious groups in Jesus’s day found their identities in what their leaders taught about marriage.

And I find it interesting that Jesus is sitting down with his disciples and giving his take on marriage and talking about how it is changing.

Marriage was political then as it is now. Jesus is in the part of the world where John the Baptist had his head cut off for challenging Herod’s marital behaviour. His answers to the questions here are not just about what the man or woman on the Jerusalem omnibus is to think about marriage and divorce but had political overtones.

Jesus is using language which might put him at risk from harm – which may be why some of his teaching about it seems to be done in private with just the disciples.

As I was preparing this sermon, I saw others on social media having trouble trying to work out what to say about it. Mark 10 is a difficult chapter for many to preach on.

I think that it is no problem at all if we are prepared to accept and preach boldly and with confidence the truth, which is that the body of Christ today teaches things differently about marriage than the person of Jesus did when gathered in private with his disciples.

We don’t believe that someone who is divorced is committing adultery when they remarry. That was one of the questions the young activists asked me this week.

We believe and teach something different to Jesus in his name because we believe in our day that the love of God commands us to have compassion.

We live in a place and time where we teach that God’s love compels us to recognise that sometimes people need another start, and recognise that sometimes the ending of a marriage may prepare the way for new life better than staying in something that is not working, abusive and painful.

And we do so in Jesus’s name believing that we are following him in sharing compassion and love in the world, notwithstanding these few verses of Mark chapter 10.

I believe that the Jesus who said, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. “ would do the same if he lived in our day.

I’ll probably never convince the fundamentalists.

But then you never can.

Last week’s gospel included the line that if your eye sins you should pluck it out.

Cedric nudged me in the ribs and pointed at the preacher and said, “but he’s got two eyes, why should we listen to a word he says”.

My response to that gospel is always the same- Never trust a two-eyed fundamentalist.

And maybe that can shine a light on Jesus’s words that we hear today. Maybe the same sense of Hebraic hyperbole is going on. If you get married, stay married he says and does so with a force that seems downright unreasonable now but in his day was part of the daily rhetoric.

But then he says, “oh, and let all the little ones come unto me”.

And he loves them and he blesses them

I know where I hear most the God of Love in today’s the gospel as I read it in our times.

And he took them up in his arms, laid his hands on them, and blessed them.

Our identity in the world will be found when we can do the same.

In the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit. Amen.

divorce, Scottish Episcopal Church

41 responses to “The Columba Declaration”

Edward Andrews

11/02/2016

As Anglicans get down to the important issue of the niceties of Theology, lets get into the broad brush situation.
The relationships between the Churches of the Celtic tradition and the Southern tradition have been fraught since the 7th Century (Whitby). Part of the whole question surrounding the war of Independence (and before with King David was teh independence of the Scottish Church.
The irony is that the present attempt is to bring the Churches of the united Kingdom together may well blow back on them. While the Kirk today doesn’t mean much in Scotland the most secular part of the UK I’m not convinsed that playing footise over Bishops is going to impress the older members – the ones who voted No.
The fact is that the Scottish Episcopal Church has the Anglican franchise in Scotland. It is an authentic Scottish Church (especially if you ignore the instances when it has gone to England for Episcopal ordination.) and to negotiate over its head about something so sensitive it at the best discourteous.
Those of the reformed tradition don’t get wound up by the antics of a few Episcopalians. We seek whatever degree of true unity is available to us, but do not see the need for uniformity. I spent some very pleasant years as a guest of the Scottish Episcopal Church when the climate of the Kirk became unattractive to me, and am grateful for the table fellowship which I received.
The site of two big boys presuming to set things up is not pleasing. For the information of those who want to get up tight about the real presence, that is what the reformed tradition believes, we are Calvinists not followers of Zwingli. I am not going to seek to discuss which Greer philosopher we get our understanding of existence from.

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Father David

12/02/2016

Father Ron: let us not forget that the great Arthur Michael Ramsey was born an ecumenical baby. His maternal Grandfather was Vicar of Horbling in Lincolnshire and his paternal Grandfather was a Congregationalist Minister. His Anglican Grandfather baptised him and when in adult years he visited Horbling parish church he was deeply moved when standing by the font – the place where this great man of God began his Christian pilgrim journey. However, as a child he worshipped with his family at the Congregationalist church in Cambridge. To the great benefit of the Church of England and the Anglican Communion – the kind of High Jinks that took place next door at Little St. Mary’s proved to be an attractive magnet and so the pull of Anglo-Catholicism brought to us a spiritual giant and a contender (in company with William Temple) for the title of the greatest Archbishop of Canterbury of the 20th century and a man who yearned and longed for Christian Unity.
Edward Andrews: Even as we all long and hope for the unity of all Christians your words are wise when you point to unity not uniformity.

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Keith Barber

12/02/2016

Cynic I may be, but my first response is to ask what is the hidden agenda. For I’m pretty certain there will be one, whether it’s about trying to create an ecclesiastical bulwark against disintegration of the UK or get ++Welby an ally or two in the aftermath of the huge and hostile reaction to the Anglican Primates’ decision to punish TEC (sorry Kelvin) for its moves towards inclusion of LGBT people.

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1. Jeremy Bates
  
  13/02/2016
  
  Or perhaps it’s like the Easter-calendar announcement–a convenient way of changing the subject, at Synod and elsewhere.
  
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Father Ron Smith

12/02/2016

Whatever the motivation for this ‘secret’ accord with the Church of Scotland; simple courtesy would require that the Church of England promoters consult with their Episcopally governed equivalent in Scotia.

Another point is this; do the Presbyerians realise that they may have signed up to the catholic premise of recognition of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Holy Communion? Are they happy with that?

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1. Edward Andrews
  
  12/02/2016
  
  Well actually the Presbyterians believe “Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements, in this sacrament, do then also, inwardly by faith, really and indeed, yet not carnally and corporally but spiritually, receive and feed upon, Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ being then, not corporally or carnally, in, with, or under the bread and wine; yet, as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in that ordinance, as the elements themselves are to their outward senses.” You will see the word real is there. Don’t know what the 39 articles say you believe.
  Those of us who are big on the real presence use the Platonic rather than the Aristotelian understanding of reality.
  
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  1. Father Ron Smith
    
    12/02/2016
    
    Not believers, then, in con-substantiation? Freely translated as bread and wine ‘together with’ the Body and Blood of Christ? Note, not the more literal trans-substantiation, which would nean the disappearance of the bread and wine. (although as some of my more scientific friends would say, this is a tautology.
    
    What all must agree on, though, is that some members of the Church of England, and many of its constituent partner Churches of the Anglican Communion, do have a problem with the ‘Real Presence’ – a reality that, for me, and I suspect most Anglican Catholics, means that the substance of the bread and wine consecrated at the Eucharist is truly “The Body and Blood of Christ” in accordance with the dominical instruction: “This IS my Body, my Blood” (Not, you will notice, “this REPRESENTS my Body, my Blood”). ‘A Sacrament is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace’ – this saying sums it all up pretty well, I think
    
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    1. Kelvin
      
      12/02/2016
      
      I think it is time to draw the discussion about the real presence to a close on this comment thread. It is hardly the main point and I’ve never ever known a comment thread about transubstantiation to be constructive.
      
      Comments on the Columba Declaration welcome. Comments trying to explain what transubstantiation *really* means – not so much.
      
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      1. Edward Andrews
        
        12/02/2016
        
        Thank you Kelvin. As I see it the C of E has come poaching in your preserves. This is wrong and unhelpful. If there were going to be Anglican/Presbyterian dialogue the SEC should be the lead player. I have my own problems with the declaration as a Member of the Church of Scotland who seeks an end to the United Kingdom. However as a Catholic Christian I am in solidarity with my SEC brothers and sisters who have been left out of the loop. Both the Cof E synod and the Kirk’ General Assembly should reject the document, but I don’t suppose that they will.
Augur Pearce

16/02/2016

A contribution to the ‘establishment’ discussion: In my book the terms ‘establish’ and ‘Church of England’ both have more than one meaning. ‘Establish’, for example, can mean ‘set up, bring into existence’ (sense E1), or it can mean ‘endow, privilege’ (sense E2).

Most people who use it of the C of E use it in sense E2, and they understand the C of E (in what I might call sense C3) as an association with its own rules, distinct from the English nation but privileged by law in various ways (with some concomitant obligations).

In fact I think this describes the C of S position fairly well, but is quite wrong as regards the C of E. The C of E (I contend) is not distinct from the kingdom of England, it is that kingdom ‘wearing its spiritual hat’ (sense C1). England, as church, has various spiritual responsibilities to discharge, and in order to do so, it establishes (=creates; sense E1), by its law, a complex of specialist institutions, offices, rules, and assets which itself becomes known derivatively as the C of E (sense C2).

One clear example of how the C of E (in sense C1) and the C of S have been differently understood from very early times is found in comparing Richard Hooker’s well-known words ‘There is not any man of the Church of England, but the same man is also a member of the commonwealth, nor any man a member of the commonwealth which is not also of the Church of England…’ with the Church Act 1567, declaring those ‘quha outher gainsayis the word of the Evangell ressavit and apprevit as the heidis of the Confessioun of Faith professit in Parliament of befoir in the yeir of God 1560 … or that refusis the participatioun of the haly sacramentis as thay ar now ministrat, to be na memberis of the said Kirk within this realme now presently professit’.

The Church of England, in short, is simply England; the Church of Scotland is a privileged sectional group.

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1. Seph
  
  17/02/2016
  
  If this be so, it strikes me as uncomfortably caesaropapist. This may be one of the things that makes me uncomfortable when I am down south and find myself in a C of E church.
  
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