What is in Kelvin's Head?

A sermon for BBC Radio 4 – 7 July 2024

07/07/2024

We were asked to produce a service to be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 7 July 2024 a few weeks before the General Election was called. The service had to be recorded in advance as the date for the broadcast fell within choir holidays. Once the election was called, I soon realised that the service would be broadcast amidst all the Sunday morning chatter about the election result. So, that meant trying to think about how to speak into that situation without actually knowing the result of the election. That’s not an easy thing to do but I soon realised that we have skin in the game here. People from St Mary’s have been involved in the election as candidates, activists, tellers, agents and pundits. This is part of what we do here. I wrote most of the script for the service, which can be found here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020xkw but the reality is, these things are a team effort and some of the wording needed to be very carefully chosen for this one. I was the preacher for this service, and this is what I had to say:

The thing that I remember most is crawling around on the floor. That and the feeling in my stomach. People refer to stomach churning moments. I never knew what that felt like until that moment.

I asked people to pick up all their bags and coats and shuffle their chairs. And I got down on my hands and knees just to check one more time that nothing had gone missing.

I was looking for a bundle of votes that might, just might, have fallen off the counting table onto the floor.

20 years or so ago, that bundle of votes meant the difference between victory for me and victory for a political opponent.

The imagined bundle of votes on the floor never existed. Victory wasn’t mine that day and I soon had to concede that someone else had won. Less than 20 votes were between us after weeks of frantic campaigning.

There is something incredibly moving to see votes being counted and stacked up in your favour. And it is gut wrenching – there’s no other word for it, to miss out by just a few votes.

Our procedures for choosing leaders, using stubby pencils to mark slips of paper seem a long way away from David being chosen as King of Israel by the acclaim of the people. But there’s things to learn even from that account.

David and the people entered into a covenant with one another. And that word, Covenant is laden with meaning as it echoes the various times that the bible speaks of a covenant being made between God and the people.

Speaking of the relationship between leaders and those looking for leadership as a covenant relationship is to speak of the trust between them as being nothing other than sacred.

A covenant sets boundaries on what someone can do. Sacred boundaries.

I’m not involved in party politics now. But when election times come around and I get to cast my own vote, I have a strong sense of the deep, deep significance in casting a vote in a land where everyone gets to be involved if they choose. That does feel sacred to me. Who I vote for is my business. The act of voting feels like an immense responsibility – an act of faith in a common desire for our land to be governed well.

And as I vote, there’s one thing that I long for, for all who stand in elections. And that’s also a deeply biblical notion – I long for all those seeking to make decisions on behalf of others, to be blessed with wisdom.

ANTHEM: CALL OF WISDOM – Will Todd

Lord of wisdom, lord of truth, lord of justice, lord of mercy. Walk beside us down the years, ’till we see you in your glory …

I’ve stood in quite a few elections. Elections to public office and elections within the church. And looking back, I started doing it by standing in student elections whilst I was in college.

More often than not, things have not gone my way. Losing elections seems to be one of my hobbies.

And I’ve learned you get better at losing elections as time goes on.

I’ve also learned that having wisdom and having a win are not the same thing.

Indeed, many of the biblical writers are, at best, ambivalent about the powerful, but passionate in proclaiming that God’s love is particularly poured out on the powerless and the weak.

In one of the readings that we heard this morning and which will be read in many churches today, we hear of Jesus feeling powerless himself and then starting to send out his disciples to proclaim his message – a message of repentance, a manifesto for changing everything.

Repentance means nothing other than changing everything and turning yourself around to face a new direction.

But those disciples who were sent out with this message were far from being the powerful of their day. They were mixed up, muddled up and much of the time they didn’t seem particularly bright. They were argumentative and squabbled about who was the most important. They got themselves into factions and when Jesus really needed to depend on their loyalty they all ended up running away.

And yet, these were the ones who carried a message of love from God to the world. These were the ones who brought good news to the world. These were the ones who did indeed turn the whole world around with the stories that they spread about the Saviour whom they each knew intimately.

As they carried that message, somehow they knew that God was with them wherever they went. Somehow they knew they were cared for and nourished and beloved. The love they knew, was the grace of God that they had seen in Jesus and which Christians still see and proclaim with confidence and love for the world today.

When everything seems mixed up and muddled up. God still loves us. When there is fighting and division, God still loves us. When we need to know love most. God’s love is right there.

Worship and prayer often connect people with that love. And prayer connects us with all who are in need. My colleagues Oliver and Maggie now lead our prayers for the world.

BBC Radio 4, church, general election, Kelvin Holdsworth, Sermon, Sunday Worship

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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