• Sermon preached on 28 September – Who do you think you are?

    Who do you think you are?

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

    “Hello, can you help me, this is ICM and we are conducting a telephone poll in connection with the recent referendum would you be willing to answer some questions.”

    And I said yes – and the questions were mostly about whether or not I’d found it easy to vote in the referendum (I had) and about whether or not I had any concerns about widespread fraud having taken place (I had no concerns at all).

    When I said I had no concerns, she asked me why? Why did I have no concerns?

    Well, I know people who were there, I said – people from both sides who were at the counts and who saw what took place. And I was involved myself.

    It took quite a long time to answer all the questions but it went fairly smoothly until the end when she said, “Can I ask you some questions about who you are?” I agreed to this and readily gave away my age and all kinds of other information that one doesn’t normally dare ask someone in polite conversation.

    “And can I ask you what job you do?”

    “Yes, no problem, I’m a priest.”

    “Thank you sir – oh, I need to ask you what kind of priest. (more…)

One response to “Eid, Pride and Abraham’s Sacrifice”

  1. Tim Avatar

    As one who grew up(?) in churches leaning toward the view “it’s a tough story for a tough world, how else would God be just?” in varying degrees, I agree the face-value-narrative understanding of the story is repellant.

    One thing stood out for the first time during Sunday’s reading: the plurality in Abraham’s line – “…and we will return to you”. I’ve been idly wondering about that since.
    It doesn’t make the story wholly acceptable as Abraham still ploughs on ever closer.
    But if one’s goal is to find a “by faith, Abraham” in there, better to say it’s the prior confidence that things will somehow work out well (which I thought was how Hebrews was trying to define it), than to locate the commendable quality in violence (which, by rabbiting on about resurrection, Hebrews does).

    In the absence of other clear & wholly mitigating contexts in which to place the story, certainly it’s simplest, easiest and probably best to file it under “that’s how they saw God back then” and move swiftly on.

    Oofft.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Previous Posts

  • Extra Sunshine

    Unless I take steps to cope with it, I’m someone who is inclined to get the winter blues. I realised a number of years ago after returning to Scotland from London that I was tending to get very run down in the autumn. Couldn’t shake of infections and generally felt a bit limp. At the…

  • Book recommendations

    I received an off blog message from someone asking me to recommend books. This was the question. Can you recommend any books that might help me understand your understanding of our faith – it seems so attractive, so open, compassionate and real. Oddly enough, I find that quite a tricky question. Even though I review…

  • Sermon – 11 October 2009 – Job

    Here is this morning’s sermon. There is a short hiatus near the beginning whilst microphones were sorted out. Fortunately one member of the congregation decided that she did want to hear me preach rather than just see me preach and waved her arms until it was sorted out. Many thanks Peggy. In the name of…

  • Sermon for St Francis 4 October 2009

    Here is the sermon preached yesterday for St Francis That Gospel reading is our jumping off point this week because it was a jumping off point for St Francis himself. It was on hearing this gospel that his manner of life was changed. He heard it and believed it was a call directly to him…