What is in Kelvin's Head?

Easter Day Sermon 2024 – It is started

02/04/2024
It comes in waves, grief does.

It is not a constant thing. And when you think that you are moving on another wave can hit you by surprise and leave you right back in the place you were trying to crawl out of.

A big part of my life over the last 18 months has been adjusting to a world in which two of my friends are no longer present. Unexpected deaths, relatively young. Lives cut short. Ministries in the church unfinished. And friends left behind.

I am a friend left behind.

And so I find as I approach the Easter story this year, that my eye is drawn very strongly to those who make their way to the tomb to anoint the body of the Lord. Those who were grieving.

The gospels tell of a number of people who make their way to the tomb in the first light of the day. Women first and foremost in their love. And in their grief.

What are they thinking as they make their way to the tomb? Well, I don’t just know what they are thinking, I can feel it.

Waves of grief, numbness and despair.

Grief comes in waves.

And in those depths, grief is a most bitter companion.

I will admit to not having always been myself when I have felt those waves of grief. I have not been the person I’d want to be.

And this year I have found myself not living in the kind of world that I want to live in either. There is much that leaves me grieving for a better world that we glimpsed and then saw snatched away.

The continuing Russian war directed against Ukraine has destabilised a Europe which seemed to have found the way of peace.

The ongoing horror in the Middle East has not simply destabilised the world, it has disturbed our minds and made peace – salaam and shalom feel agonisingly out of reach.

Warmongering, terrorism and the weaponizing of civilians leave me grieving for the world I had hoped for. For too many months, gross injustice in Gaza has been played out on our newscreens, For too many months kidnapped hostages have been away from all whom they love.

It is easy to feel that hope has been killed, and has been buried forever in a cold, stone-sealed tomb.

But comes the dawn and come the women to the tomb.

They come weeping. They return rejoicing.

The news that they proclaim on Easter Day is that death never has the last word. And hope triumphs when all seems lost.

Have we ever needed to hear the news of Easter more – that Jesus is risen from the grave, that despair doesn’t win, that green blades of growth rise from all that seemed buried and gone.

Grief comes in waves. But so does love.

And the waves of love that spread out from what those women shared in the first light of the first Easter Day changed their world, change our world and will go on changing the world as we spread it ever further.
- God has not forgotten the broken hearted.
- God has not forgotten the grief-stricken.
- God has not forgotten those for whom despair has become almost who they are.
That wave of God’s love did not begin on Easter Day, for it is as old as time, but Christ risen from the grave is when we witness its greatest triumph.

Love, hope and belief in new life are not optional extras for Christian people. They are the reason we are who we are and do what we do.

Despair and grief are real, even the bitter grief of hopes dashed. But the story of who we are doesn’t conclude by the side of a grave. Our story begins at an empty tomb.

Yes, the world is a mess.

But it has you and I in it and we know by the story that we preach and proclaim that new life is our inheritance and our hope. Things never have to remain the way they are.

This year will be a year of great change in this world. Momentous change. This is the year in which more people will vote in elections than have ever done since the democratic era began.

Every part of the world needs people in it who believe in a better world, a world where justice for the poor, integrity for those who govern and kindness for the troubled are the building blocks of the world we wish to see.

This year our election process in this country could well be a painful and hurtful time.

It demeans us all when an election is portrayed in the simplistic banality of a phrase such as stop the boats. Such language threatens those who need help most and diminishes us all. It is the language of the tomb. We need to move the conversation away from Stop the Boats towards Stop the Hatred. Xenophobia, fear of foreigners and naked racism are already dancing behind the words of too much electioneering.

But ultimately it will not win.

Good people believe in better things.

God’s people believe in better things.

Sometimes hope feels like something you have determinedly try to drag out of yourself. Sometimes though it bursts forth from no-where. A wave of love joy, hope and peace bursts unexpectedly from our inner tomb.

The promise of Easter is not that new life is possible it is the promise that it is inevitable.

And I believe it.

Christians believe in a better world than we already have. We believe in a world where the poor are fed, the lonely are comforted and the sound of war is heard no more in any land. We believe in salvation – the healing of the world.

The story that we are caught up in as Christian people on Easter Day is the story of salvation. And salvation is not the church bobbing around on the waves of this world plucking a few lucky souls to safety. Salvation is the great wave of God’s love that will sweep us all home.

Early this morning, we baptised people into this story, confident that they will bring new life into this world and confident that they will rise with Christ.

Early this morning we lit a fire and brought candlelight into this church to proclaim that gloom will not win. Light and glory will cast every shadow away.

Early this morning, Christ rose from the grave. Not only is death not the end but new life is real. The wave of God’s love has reached all the world. It has even reached us here. It has come to you.

I believe in things worth believing in.

New life for all. Love, joy and peace in abundance.

And I believe that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave. For if Christ were not risen from the grave then we would not be gathered here, in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen
Easter Day sermon, waves

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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