• Sermon preached for St Mungo – 13 January 2013

    I have to confess that for most of my life I did not give St Mungo much of passing thought. I certainly encountered him when I was in primary school up the road in that I remember a wonderful Primary 5 teacher in Bearsden making us do a project on the great urban conurbation that we were living so close by. The topic was Glasgow and thus we all had to draw our own version of the city crest – the bird, the tree, the bell and the fish – each representative of miracles in the lives of our patron saint.

    After that I didn’t think of him again until a couple of years ago. During the time after Bishop Idris had retired and before Bishop Gregor started, there was a period of time when there was no bishop around to go to civic events. These ended up being divvied up between the Dean and the Provost and perhaps the Synod Clerk, to ensure that the Episcopal Church was represented at events which needed a bigwig.

    I don’t know what I expected when I entered the ordained ministry of the church. I certainly didn’t expect to be a stand-in part-time bigwig going to events like that.

    However, it can be fun – so long as you learn to smile and nod a lot you go far (more…)

8 responses to “Passion Sunday Sermon”

  1. Allan Ronald Avatar

    Thank you for this excellent sermon.

  2. Pam Avatar
    Pam

    Thanks for this sermon Kelvin. I now know more about spikenard than I did (which was nothing much!). And I also like the Gandhi reference.

  3. Diarmuid o Avatar
    Diarmuid o

    Very thoughtful.. Love the Quote on the smell of justice.. Love etc. thank you!

  4. RevRuth Avatar

    According to my sources spikenard is a sharp smell, somewhere between mint and ginseng. Now you see, I had it more myrrh like, more heady. But I can see that mint and ginseng would be better at covering up rotting body smells.

  5. kennedy fraser Avatar
    kennedy fraser

    Our associate priest (Bryan Owen) managed to get a spikenard candle for his sermon on Sunday

    1. kelvin Avatar

      AND WHAT DID IT SMELL OF, FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE?

      1. Ruth Avatar
        Ruth

        As it’s the same family as Valerian, it may smell strongly of smelly feet – and (like Valerian) send cats into a state of frenzy…..

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