What is in Kelvin's Head?

  • Sermon preached on 1 July 2012

    The sermon this week seemed to interest people quite a lot – more so than anything I’ve preached in months, I think.

    Here’s what I said:

    Quite a number of years ago, I went to visit priest who had just begun working in one of our congregations – it was someone whom I had enjoyed having on placement with me during her training and together we were looking around her new charge.

    As I looked around, I noticed that the church had an unusual set of Stations of the Cross. They had obviously been done around about the 1920s and were rather stylish images. There was a touch of the art deco about them and I said to the new priest, “Ooh, look at those, you could make quite a feature of them, they need lighting better – you should be showing them off and making much of them”.

    “Hmm,” she said. “Look at little closer”.

    And as I looked, I saw what she was trying to draw my attention to. (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

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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

Previous Posts

  • SCOC – Come mourn with me awhile

    Have spent part of the afternoon reflecting o­n the life and death of SCOC, the Scottish Churches Open College with Jayne Scott, its Principal. I was involved in it, by convening the committee which oversaw the degree programme. It is so sad that the college is being closed this year. I still believe in the…

  • Learning to Blog

    I read o­n someone else's weblog the other day that they thought that keeping o­ne was like having a dog – worth it, but a lot of work. I guess that is true. The number of page views is increasing as each day goes by and I have hardly told anyone about this yet, which is…

  • Eco-congregation

    I'm just about to go to a meeting about the eco-congregation project with our local Green Apostle. The Green Apostle in question led a great Nature Walk last Sunday for members of the congregation. 14 people turned up and had a wonderful hour looking for the holy at Doune Ponds. I am in awe of how…

  • Wednesday morning

    I remember someone o­nce saying a little unkindly of Richard Holloway (the retired Bishop of Edinburgh) that he never had an unpublished thought. Blogging can seem to be a bit like that. A whole new culture which will affect some of the things that I care about very much, for example, both politics and religion.…