What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached on 26 August 2012

    Here’s what I said this morning:

    Jesus said, This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like that which your ancestors ate, and they died. But whoever eats this bread will live forever.

    In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

    I was trying to think how to relate to this idea of the bread of our ancestors and I remembered a childhood holiday.

    For some reason, my parents had taken my sister and I for a holiday on a farm in south-west Wales. It was a great place to have a holiday. Lots to do on the farm and lots of places to go in that lovely area.

    And I remember my father getting a notion.

    He decided, quite out of the blue that if we were on a farm, then we needed to bake our own bread. I’m not quite sure how his logic worked because the farm in question was in the business of breeding pedigree Hereford bulls. But that doesn’t matter. He decided that bread needed to be baked and bread on the table we would have.

    So we went off to an old working flour mill to buy flour because my father didn’t do things by half when he got a notion in his head.

    And back we came to bake the family loaf.

    There was kneeding. There was proving. There was shaping. There was baking. There was a wonderful rich smell. (more…)

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4 responses to “St Augustine”

  1. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    I like the painting very much, but, forgive me for my ignorance , what is this “explains much” of which you speak? Ohh, and the literal minded in me says – even as a baby – as the child of Monica of Hippo – he was still Augustine of Hippo.

    Reply
    1. Kelvin Avatar
      Kelvin

      Surely at this point he was Augustine of Tagaste if he was of anywhere.

      Reply
  2. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    So beehive hairdos are that old? The things you learn from art. If that Tardis that sells coffee outside the Botanic Gardens actually worked, I would go back and kidnap that straitjacketed infant, materialise at Woodstock and hand him over to the nearest couple of flowerchildren. Just imagine a Church with no Jansenists and their ilk! Okay we’d have to do without Pascal but just think what Glasgow would be like without You-Know-Who glowering over it. From Clyde Street.

    Reply
  3. Alan McManus Avatar
    Alan McManus

    I’ve just lost ‘What Theologian Are You?’ which I’d reached through a suggestion above, however I did the quiz and though I often thought ‘yes, but I wouldn’t put it that way’ and came up with a tie between Charles Finney (of whom I’m entirely ignorant) and AUGUSTINE! With Calvin a close third. I’m doomed. It’s predestined.

    Reply

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