What is in Kelvin's Head?

Easter Sermon 2021

03/04/2021

Lent has been long enough.

This Lent particularly has been long enough.

Just over a year ago we locked down in the middle of Lent. And it feels as though that existence has been going on in one form or another ever since.

Most people have embraced the need for the lockdown lives that we have been living. And this itself is a miracle that we should not ignore.

Collective altruistic action on such a mass scale to protect life and human flourishing is a miracle of no small stature.

But Lent has still been long enough.

We have known discipline in our lives from last year’s Lent to this year’s Lent like never before.

And Lent has been long enough.

One of the ways that I’ve learned to keep holy week is to look for resonances of the Passion stories around me in life today.

Back on the streets of Jerusalem, one of the stories of holy week that always troubles me is that it is the same crowd that cries hosanna in the streets that goes on to cry crucify.

This year it is the same society that clapped for carers in the streets that has been unable to agree decent pay and conditions for those whom they once applauded.

Lent has been long enough.

Back in Jerusalem it is an out of town African – Simon of Cyrene who carries the weight of the cross on Good Friday and then disappears from view.

In our own times, black and ethnic minority people in our land have carried the weight of the corona pandemic in far more disproportionate numbers than they should have done. And that fact seems to be disappearing from view.

It is no help for a government report to claim there is no structural racism in society when black and ethnic minority folk have been dying in greater numbers than everyone else.

Indeed, that kind of claim is what structural racism looks like and sounds like.

Lent has been long enough.

Back in a garden close to Calvary a stone is rolled in front of a tomb by a group far too small to have been the only mourners at Jesus’s funeral.

And dear God, have we known the tomb this year? And how we have known the pain of being banished from the sides of those whom we love, as they have lived, and died and been buried.

Lent has been long enough.

But Lent, in our tradition, doesn’t go on forever.

It comes to an abrupt end with startling news – that Jesus Christ is risen from the grave. Death is not the end. All that we ever assumed is turned on its head.

Jesus is alive. And with us. And nothing will ever be the same again.

The discovery of the resurrection on that first Easter day was hard to comprehend. It is hard to comprehend now.

Yet for two thousand years, Christians have proclaimed that death does not have the last word, that all that rots the human Spirit is defeated, that new life is our heritage and our hope.

New life is the new normal.

The Easter proclamation means – and has always meant, that the old normal wasn’t working. Something new – so very new is here.

And yes, you can feel and know that it is real it in our own times too.

The resurrection is proclaimed in the kindness of strangers – and there has been much of that this year.

The resurrection is proclaimed in those searching for a new and sustainable way of living on this earth.

The resurrection is proclaimed when those fighting for justice taste its sweetness.

The new normal is faith and hope and joy and love.

And it is all, yes all that we need in our lives today.

I see it when the flowers bloom from an earth that was frozen and hard and cold.

I hear it in the song of the robin and the wren.

I feel it as love, wherever love is found.

Jesus is risen from the grave. The old has passed. Lent has been long enough.

New life – the new normal is here.

A year ago, I thought that as a congregation we were in serious trouble. How could we survive being locked down and closed?

As a congregation we thrive on meeting new people every year and sharing with them the open, inclusive, welcoming love of God that we proclaim in this place.

I thought we would be facing serious decline because no-one would be turning up in lockdown.

In fact, people have continued to turn up – online for some, in person for others.

And there are people worshipping both online and in church this Easter who simply were not around last year.

This is what I want to say to anyone who is discovering Jesus for the first time.

Christians don’t always get things right. We bumble along, just like the first disciples, misunderstanding God, betraying the new life that we hope to live into and make a mess of all kinds of things.

But we have met, in Jesus Christ, someone who has changed us and whose message matters so much more than that.

God loved us enough to want to join in with all the mess and dirt of our world. In the person of Jesus, we get to know God with a human face.

He shared all our sufferings and sorrows whilst he was with us on earth.

All the reality of human struggle and human pain.

And he is risen from the grave.

From beyond the tomb, he calls us to live as new people. People for whom life is the new normal, love is the new normal. Joy, goodness and peace are the new normal.

And nothing will ever be the same again.

You want to know whether all this is true?

Well, if Christ were not risen from the grave, we would not be gathered here.

Especially this year.

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.
  
  Reply
  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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