What is in Kelvin's Head?

Can you preach about the Road to Emmaus?

20/04/2015

This sermon was preached on 19 April 2015 in St Mary’s Cathedral, Glasgow using ideas that were also explored in the sermon preached for Fr Chucks Iwuagwu in Haslemere, Surrey.

Sermon preached by Kelvin Holdsworth on 19 April 2015 from St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow on Vimeo.

There are a number of texts in the bible about which it is almost impossible to preach. If I were to ask you which texts were there which preachers really shouldn’t attempt to tackle then I fancy that you might come up with some of the genealogies – the lists of who begat whom. Or maybe some of the more obscure purity laws in Leviticus which have little to do with our lives in a modern world.

And it is true – some of those texts are next to useless for anyone trying to preach the gospel.

But there are also a small number of texts about which sermons are pretty tricky for the opposite reason. If I’m honest, I’ve never heard (or preached) a sermon on the good Samaritan which actually improved on the story itself. It is the same with the Love Chapter – that glorious paean to love which St Paul sent to the fractious church in Corinth. No matter how badly it is read at so many weddings the ultimate truth shines out.

Love is patient, love is kind. (And that just can’t be improved upon.

And the same might be said of Psalm 23 – when did you ever hear a sermon on it that improved on the poetry or the pathos of the human condition so precisely observed.

And so it is with the gospel reading this morning.

The road to Emmaus is the Easter reading par excellence – it is familiar and comforting and disturbing all at once because it contains within it the surprise of recognising the Lord himself who appears, as is our experience with the breaking of bread and the fellowship that results from the breaking down of barriers between people.

But who can improve on the story?

What preacher ever beat Luke at his own game?

The answer, if there is one is to presume that we’ve never heard Luke telling of the story at all.

The answer is to put ourselves into the shoes – or probably the dusty sandals of the two who made their way to this place called Emmaus.

And the thing to remember is that they’ve not heard the story. They’ve no idea what’s about to happen to them much less any idea that we might still be talking about them these centuries later.

As they walk along, can we walk with them and overhear their conversation.

Before the stranger catches up with them, what are they saying?

Luke just tells us that they were talking about what had happened. Jesus had been put to death and Jesus had been buried. He was gone. No doubt there was a lot to talk about.

If we read this as pious Christians who know how the story turns out then we might presume that they were having prayerful discussions about how Jesus’s death fitted in with the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures. If we read the story as empathetic fellow travellers on a spiritual tradition we can probably see into their grief and share it.

But what makes us so sure that is what they were talking about.

What makes us so sure that they were not angry with Jesus for provoking just about everyone and finally going that one step too far and getting himself killed off long before his time.

They may not have been experiencing pious thoughts at all. They may have been really rather cross.

And surely they must have been wondering what was coming next.

They’d been part of a great movement. And they’d lost their Messiah – what comes next? Who will replace him?

How do you replace a Messiah anyway?

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? You just put an advert in the Church Times for a new one. Maybe that’s what they were talking about as they made their way along the road.

How to write the advert for a new Messiah.

I’ve got this week’s edition of the Church Times here. This is how those adverts usually sound.

• City based church seeks Messiah. Our priorities are missional leadership, imaginative outreach and children and young people. We seek a Messiah who has a personal relationship with God. (These adverts are all written in code).

• Here’s another one – Honorary Assistant Messiah needed for 8 rural parishes in Norfolk. House provided but no stipend. Must be self-motivated.

• Messiah required to be rector of beautiful rural parish in the Garden of England. Good schools, lovely people, well-appointed Rectory. Resolutions A, B and C have been passed. (That’s code for – no female Messiah’s need apply).

It is funny the things they put in these adverts.

If I’m ever tempted to read these out in the office on a Friday morning when the Church Times comes I have to make sure that there are no coffee pots near to the Vice Provost. He has been known to get over excited and break crockery in his fury at what they say.

You would think sometimes that the Christian Gospel had been spread for 2000 years by mission development plans, people able to accomplish goal based ministry and those who have a passion for “innovative work with families and children”.

Fortunately, I think that I worked out some time ago that this simply isn’t true.

The Christian Gospel is spread by kindness, good humour, by people who bear the marks of Christ in their souls to enable them to reach out to a world that needs to know more about God’s love. It is spread by the enthusiastic witness of those who know the love of God to be true and to be the most wonderful thing in the whole world. But somehow the adverts don’t usually mention those things.

The stranger reached over the table and picked up the bread and gave thanks and broke it and their eyes were opened.

Opened I suspect to the good company that he had been on the road. The good humour he had exhibited that made them invite him in. The kindness he had shown them at a difficult time. Familiar factors. Familiar signs. Familiar symbols.

And all of a sudden their eyes are opened. And all of a sudden he doesn’t seem to be there.

Or is he?

All of a sudden they have a burning desire to rush back to Jerusalem. All of a sudden they have a burning desire to tell their friends that all it not lost. Love has not died. Kindness has not gone. The one who broke bread with them before has broken into their world again.

They don’t need a new Messiah.

It is worth remembering sometimes that the church doesn’t need any new Messiahs. One was always enough and he’s still around.

Still around and still turning up where bread is broken, stories shared and God’s people with humour and kindness celebrate the greatest news in the world – that God is love.

Turned up there in Emmaus. And turns up here.

For if Christ were not risen, we would not be gathered here in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

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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