What is in Kelvin's Head?

A man had two sons…

30/03/2025

This sermon was preached on the fourth Sunday in Lent – 30 March 2025. I’ve not preached very often on the parable of the Prodigal Son as we usually baptise on this Sunday. As I post it, I tip my biretta towards the wonderful Amy-Jill Levine whom I have encountered teaching on this parable. She always gets me thinking…

Once upon a time, many years ago…

It was a dark and stormy night…

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…

You wouldn’t believe what happened that day, which seemed like a day just like any other…

They are clichés. Tropes. Repetitive pattens. And they tell us to listen up. There’s a story about to begin.

These are some of the ways in which stories begin in the English language. I suspect that there will be people here who will know how stories begin in other languages too.

And to Jesus’s listeners, he would have immediately grabbed their attention with his opening line. It was obvious that a story was about to be told.

“There was a man who had two sons…”

It is a classic start to a middle eastern story. My guess is that most of those listening to him when he first told the story would have immediately tuned in to the story with a connection to the many times in the Hebrew scriptures that there are stories about older and younger siblings. Cain and Abel. Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob, Leah and Rachel. Joseph and his coterie of many brothers, and Aaron and Miriam and their younger brother Moses. Those are the more famous ones but there are others. Manasseh and Epraim, Serah and Perez, Adonijah and Solomon.

And the more you know about those stories, there’s something that you would automatically presume if you heard a story that begins begins – “A man had two sons…”

If you heard a story that began like that then you knew, pretty much from the beginning that the good guy in the story, the one who is going to come out on top is going to be the younger brother.

Scripture is riddled with stories in which the unexpected sibling is the good guy.

Those first hearers might have been brought up a little short.

For the younger son doesn’t seem to me to ever turn out to be the good guy in the story at all.

There is an interpretation of this story which sees him sinking deep into a sinful life and then repenting and going back and being forgiven. And we are served up this story in Lent, when repentance and forgiveness are what we focus on. But the longer I’ve read this story the less I’m convinced that the boy actually does much repenting at all.

If ever I’ve got something difficult to say, I’ll rehearse a little speech in my head first and that’s what the dissolute boy does here. His problem is that he’s hungry and his little speech seems to me to be a rather conniving way to get his father to feed him.

Some people see the prodigal as a model of repentance. But I’m not convinced.

Even the words that he does get out of his mouth. “I have sinned against heaven and before you…” are more of a formula than an apology. (And they echo the words of a decidedly unrepentant Pharoah to Moses in the Exodus story that all Jesus’s hearers would have known well).

So I see the prodigal as being dissolute and a rather too clever for his own good.

If you betted on him turning out to be the good guy, your bet might not be feeling terribly safe at this point in the story.

And you know what?

The father loves him anyway.

The father just loves him and shows that love in ways that were obviously offensive to the boy’s rather prim older brother. And the father loved him despite even that.

His father adored him. And loved him. And welcomed him home.

And for me, I think that is what is at the heart of this story. The prodigal isn’t welcomed back as a redeemed sinner. He’s welcomed back home.

Stories of finding a welcome where one doesn’t deserve it or expect it are stories with the gospel hard wired into them.

This is a congregation made up quite significantly of people who might not have expected to find a place here. Lots of us come from different religious traditions. Some of us come from no religious tradition. Some of us have lived our lives bowing to ideologies that rub up uneasily against the teachings of Christianity. Some of us have bowed to the false gods of wealth and materialism. Some of us have bent the knee to the gods of power and control. Incel culture, much talked about at the moment, is a part of that. (And I know that some of us have been bound up in that world at times in our lives).

Do these things need repentance? Yes of course they do. We can only be whole when we put things right.

But you know, God loves us anyway. Whatever the state of our souls, whatever the extent of our sincerity, whatever is going on inside, God already loves us anyway.

That is the glorious scandal that those who explore spirituality eventually come to discover. There are many who teach that God’s love is a matter of justice and that that God needs to be appeased for our wrongdoing if we are ever to find our way to heaven.

I don’t see it that way. I think God loves us anyway. The sun goes on shining. God goes on loving.

Scooping us up with a warm embrace when we least deserve it. Welcoming us home.

But of course the story doesn’t end there.

I’m not sure that we know the end of the story.

The story of the prodigal begins with an obvious storyteller’s trope. But it doesn’t end like that.

If Jesus said, “And they all lived happily ever after” we’d know he was done.

And we would know how things turned out between the older and the younger brothers.

Did the father’s profligate generosity teach the elder brother how to live and forgive? And did the prodigal himself turn his life around for good?

Jesus doesn’t give us easy answers and leaves the story unfinished.

And I think he’s asking, “How would you end the tale?”

How would you end the story?

In the name of the ever-loving Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Fathers, God, love, Prodigal Son, storytelling

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
    
    Reply
    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.
      
      Reply
      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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