What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached on Trinity Sunday 2014

    The truth is, I’ve not preached on Trinity Sunday. I think I have preached on Trinity Sunday in my time at St Mary’s but certainly not many times and certainly not for a number of years.

    You see – I’ve been in charge of the preaching rota.

    But lo. Here I am having spent a couple of weeks off sick, now back to work. I’m grateful to colleagues for picking up various bits of work whilst I was indisposed.

    One of those bits of work that I had to ask someone else to pick up was devising the preaching rota….

    …and here I find myself – first Sunday back at work, preaching on the Holy Trinity.

    Am I fighting fit? Yes!

    Am I cowed by having to preach on the Trinity? Certainly not. (more…)

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

  1. Tim Avatar
    Tim

    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.

    Reply

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