What is in Kelvin's Head?

Farewell to Oliver Brewer-Lennon – a sermon preached on 18 August 2024

19/08/2024

Jesus said, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost ends of the earth. When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight.”

Oh Oliver. If only your manner of going was the same as that of our Lord. Jesus is simply surrounded by a cloud and then he is gone.

If only I could shake the thurible at you and surround you with a cloud of incense only for you to appear from a similar puff of heaven over in St Michael and All Saints freshly minted as their new Rector.

Jesus does not seem to have had to go through much admin in his departure.

He didn’t need to think about handing over his keys – he’d already given them to Peter some time ago.

He didn’t need to book the removers to remove all his stuff in a wagon – foxes have holes and the birds have their nests but the Son of Man never seemed to have a need for a place in which to put all his mid-century modern furniture and his other half’s Hornsea pottery mugs and strange Apple computers that I will never understand, so there was nothing to take with him in the cloud when he moved on.

He didn’t need to clear out his office. He didn’t need to clear out his desk. He didn’t need to give up his email address. He didn’t need to hand over his University Chaplain’s keycard. And he didn’t need to change any of his login details for anything.

He was just … gone.

Oliver – it turns out that you and Jesus are not in fact the same.

And you are having to do something this evening which Jesus, when he moved on never seemed to do.

You are saying goodbye. Our Lord, rather surprisingly, never did. It is one of the most significant things about the Great Commission that he gave his disciples. He told them what to do but he never said goodbye. Somehow he knew something that they didn’t yet know- that he would be with them always.

This is the day that you have been working towards for some time now. And although I know that you are looking forward to your new role in Edinburgh with great anticipation – for it is the thing that you want to be doing and need to be doing, I also know that you’ve been anxious about today for it does mean saying goodbye.

Goodbyes are tough and I know that there is much that you have come to love in Glasgow and much that you and Joe have loved here.

I don’t know what you knew about the city before coming here. Maybe you looked it up.

The city has several slogans that have been attached to it. The first that we know of us the motto.

The motto of the city is “Let Glasgow flourish”. The full thing is “Let Glasgow flourish by the the preaching of thy word and the praising of thy name”.

Well, you’ve lived up to that. You have helped this cathedral in this city flourish.

Your job when you came here was to help me and to help this congregation to build itself up. It has not been the rebuilding that we expected to do. For just months after you arrived the world fell apart and we were no longer building the congregation up from a strong and stable base but building it pretty much from scratch all over again.

And I’ll never forget you saying to me with absolute confidence on the day that the first lockdown was announced, “Don’t worry, I know exactly what we need to do…”

It has taken considerable effort to rebuild this congregation and to build the new ministry that we have shared at the University of Glasgow. You were not in fact the Son of Man, the ruler of the Universe, the King of Kings or the risen and ascended Lord, but you were the perfect person to help us to do so much. You and I have had an unusual working relationship and along with others who are here this night and people who can’t be here, I’ve much to thank you for in helping us flourish, much of it by your confident preaching of God’s word and your passion for praising God’s name in worship.

Another of the slogans that Glasgow used for many years was “Glasgow’s Miles Better”.

That slogan never said exactly where Glasgow was miles better than. (But I’m pretty sure we all know the answer to that).

Oliver, I rejoice in your positive outlook. I rejoice that you can look at the church and think that it can always be better. And that you want to offer to God the very best that human beings can offer. You are not frightened of trying to do things well and of offering gold quality worship.

As you have done that here others have come to join you in doing the same. As you do that in Edinburgh, others will join you in doing it there. It is who you are.

I thank God for your commitment to doing things well as a mission strategy and hope that is a prayer-borne infection that others will catch from you.

Oliver, you can’t just zoom off in a cloud like Jesus. You have goodbyes to say tonight, you have things to do in order to get yourself to your new responsibilities. But before you go, know this. You have done what you came here to do. You have built this congregation up. You have loved us and we have loved you for coming here to share this strange and bewildering five years with us.

You have shared the love of God with us. And that love will remain here amongst us and help us flourish in the future. God doesn’t say goodbye,

But the time has come for you to go and share the same love of God with others.

Oliver, God is calling you to a congregation that I have much love and affection for. My sadness at you leaving here is tempered by my joy and delight that you will be the priest at St Michael and All Saints’ Tollcross.

They need you. And you need them too.

Oliver. Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
In the name of Christ. Amen.

farewell, Glasgow, Great Commission, Oliver Brewer-Lennon, Scottish Episcopal Church, St Mary’s Cathedral, St Michael and All Saints

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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