What is in Kelvin's Head?

A man had two sons…

30/03/2025

This sermon was preached on the fourth Sunday in Lent – 30 March 2025. I’ve not preached very often on the parable of the Prodigal Son as we usually baptise on this Sunday. As I post it, I tip my biretta towards the wonderful Amy-Jill Levine whom I have encountered teaching on this parable. She always gets me thinking…

Once upon a time, many years ago…

It was a dark and stormy night…

A long time ago, in a galaxy far away…

You wouldn’t believe what happened that day, which seemed like a day just like any other…

They are clichés. Tropes. Repetitive pattens. And they tell us to listen up. There’s a story about to begin.

These are some of the ways in which stories begin in the English language. I suspect that there will be people here who will know how stories begin in other languages too.

And to Jesus’s listeners, he would have immediately grabbed their attention with his opening line. It was obvious that a story was about to be told.

“There was a man who had two sons…”

It is a classic start to a middle eastern story. My guess is that most of those listening to him when he first told the story would have immediately tuned in to the story with a connection to the many times in the Hebrew scriptures that there are stories about older and younger siblings. Cain and Abel. Isaac and Ishmael, Esau and Jacob, Leah and Rachel. Joseph and his coterie of many brothers, and Aaron and Miriam and their younger brother Moses. Those are the more famous ones but there are others. Manasseh and Epraim, Serah and Perez, Adonijah and Solomon.

And the more you know about those stories, there’s something that you would automatically presume if you heard a story that begins begins – “A man had two sons…”

If you heard a story that began like that then you knew, pretty much from the beginning that the good guy in the story, the one who is going to come out on top is going to be the younger brother.

Scripture is riddled with stories in which the unexpected sibling is the good guy.

Those first hearers might have been brought up a little short.

For the younger son doesn’t seem to me to ever turn out to be the good guy in the story at all.

There is an interpretation of this story which sees him sinking deep into a sinful life and then repenting and going back and being forgiven. And we are served up this story in Lent, when repentance and forgiveness are what we focus on. But the longer I’ve read this story the less I’m convinced that the boy actually does much repenting at all.

If ever I’ve got something difficult to say, I’ll rehearse a little speech in my head first and that’s what the dissolute boy does here. His problem is that he’s hungry and his little speech seems to me to be a rather conniving way to get his father to feed him.

Some people see the prodigal as a model of repentance. But I’m not convinced.

Even the words that he does get out of his mouth. “I have sinned against heaven and before you…” are more of a formula than an apology. (And they echo the words of a decidedly unrepentant Pharoah to Moses in the Exodus story that all Jesus’s hearers would have known well).

So I see the prodigal as being dissolute and a rather too clever for his own good.

If you betted on him turning out to be the good guy, your bet might not be feeling terribly safe at this point in the story.

And you know what?

The father loves him anyway.

The father just loves him and shows that love in ways that were obviously offensive to the boy’s rather prim older brother. And the father loved him despite even that.

His father adored him. And loved him. And welcomed him home.

And for me, I think that is what is at the heart of this story. The prodigal isn’t welcomed back as a redeemed sinner. He’s welcomed back home.

Stories of finding a welcome where one doesn’t deserve it or expect it are stories with the gospel hard wired into them.

This is a congregation made up quite significantly of people who might not have expected to find a place here. Lots of us come from different religious traditions. Some of us come from no religious tradition. Some of us have lived our lives bowing to ideologies that rub up uneasily against the teachings of Christianity. Some of us have bowed to the false gods of wealth and materialism. Some of us have bent the knee to the gods of power and control. Incel culture, much talked about at the moment, is a part of that. (And I know that some of us have been bound up in that world at times in our lives).

Do these things need repentance? Yes of course they do. We can only be whole when we put things right.

But you know, God loves us anyway. Whatever the state of our souls, whatever the extent of our sincerity, whatever is going on inside, God already loves us anyway.

That is the glorious scandal that those who explore spirituality eventually come to discover. There are many who teach that God’s love is a matter of justice and that that God needs to be appeased for our wrongdoing if we are ever to find our way to heaven.

I don’t see it that way. I think God loves us anyway. The sun goes on shining. God goes on loving.

Scooping us up with a warm embrace when we least deserve it. Welcoming us home.

But of course the story doesn’t end there.

I’m not sure that we know the end of the story.

The story of the prodigal begins with an obvious storyteller’s trope. But it doesn’t end like that.

If Jesus said, “And they all lived happily ever after” we’d know he was done.

And we would know how things turned out between the older and the younger brothers.

Did the father’s profligate generosity teach the elder brother how to live and forgive? And did the prodigal himself turn his life around for good?

Jesus doesn’t give us easy answers and leaves the story unfinished.

And I think he’s asking, “How would you end the tale?”

How would you end the story?

In the name of the ever-loving Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

Fathers, God, love, Prodigal Son, storytelling

10 responses to “The Church of England and its Bishops”

Joan H Craig

20/11/2012

You put it well, and I agree with all that you say. In one sense it is a very sad day for priests who are women. In another, parity is crucial 🙁

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Patrick Smith

20/11/2012

I am not a regular C of E communicant now but have been so in my life and I unequivocally support the proper human rights entitlement of women to serve equally as Bishops.I think that the women priests appear to have been too inclined, cap in hand, to compromise that would still have deemed women bishops, as second class.This Vote, according to some of their spokespersons was as far as the talented women priests could get, amongst the conservative antis, in the C of E.

Surely,that in our enlightened world men do not hold a monopoly on either the aspiration to achieve good in their work or to eclipse human goodness in prayer,mission and faith in the ranks of the C of E? The Bishops and Clergy have seen that women are now do one third of active work in the C of E but do not have parity at the top table.

Why is it the case that women are ordained in the US and NZ and have served their communities equally, as men, over 20 years? Whereas, in the C of E at home, the vision of the Laity Synod threatens to derrogate the status of women, as if the clock had been turned back into Victorian times and before the Suffragettes had started their quest for universal suffrage and equality in work for women.

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Duncan MacLaren

20/11/2012

Nigel McCulloch said in the debate, “If you wait for the perfect piece of legislation, you’ll be waiting for ever.”
I can understand the principled position that you don’t want to pass flawed and discriminatory legislation: but I can’t help thinking this would be better than acquiescing for another 5 years in an even more discriminatory status quo.
Had women bishops been voted in, they would have had five years to demonstrate practically to their opponents that they were competent, valuable, indispensable, talented and undeniably called leaders in the church. Instead, we now have the task of creating legislation the opponents will like even less (because it won’t make space for their position), and then trying to get it voted through. And five years of practical experience – perhaps the best argument – wasted.
If there were six lay liberals (the margin of votes) who voted ‘no’ on principle this evening, I wonder how long before they will rue the day? Principle is all very well, but possession is nine-tenths of the law. Had women been granted this possession, we could have spent the next five years chasing down the discriminatory clauses: as it is, we are back to square one. Barren theological argument now prevails over the witness and example of flesh and blood women.

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1. kelvin
  
  20/11/2012
  
  I understand that view, Duncan. I’d agree with it if there was any evidence in the last 20 years of anyone either trying or succeeding to eliminate the flying bishops that were created last time around. It is much, much easier to create good legislation than to repeal, tinker and undo bad legislation.
  
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2. Augur Pearce
  
  21/11/2012
  
  As I see it part of the problem was the large number of Synod members who wanted to see women bishops but thought that unity was more important than principle, and were therefore prepared to compromise. The ideal scenario would not have been rejection of the Measure, but an amendment to get rid of the discriminatory clauses. That wasn’t possible because the ‘unity party’ (for want of a better name) would have allied with the fundamentalists to defeat it. I hope that those who made up this ‘unity party’ will now realise the time for compromise is past and support legislation which, as you say, the opponents will like even less because it wonâ€™t make space for their position. I believe such legislation would pass, but would lead the fundamentalists to dissent from the C of E and form their own conventicles (as many have done before them, for better reasons). There would then be some hope of the General Synod addressing other equality issues, such as marriage…
  
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Tim

20/11/2012

Could it be said that it spent too long cooking?

The impression I get is that the SEC was quite decisive in dealing with the Covenant earlier.
What I’ve seen with the CoE looks like internalized via-media meeting a half-open door – and no wonder some people use the word “irrelevant”. As such, I’m wondering if it shouldn’t have simply been “women bishops, yes or no?” a while ago and then there wouldn’t have been such clumsy inaccuracy of reporting, at least…

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Ritualist Robert

21/11/2012

I have to say, regretfully, that I am relieved it didn’t pass because, imho, it allowed for far too many ‘provisions’ for so-called traditionalists. Their arguments seem to be based on one of the most vile theological concepts ever invented – ‘taint’ – though, of course, nobody admits to it. I understand the Evangelicals’ objections (though I disagree with them), but I am flummoxed by things like the ‘traditionalist’ catholics’ demand for ‘flying bishops’ (a concept which fails any test for catholicity) and attacks the very basis of Anglican Church structure and order – that of a bishop acting as the Ordinary in his/her diocese. Choosing one’s bishop based on whether one likes their theological outlook is quite a novelty, but it’s one that the so-called traditionalists insist on being allowed. Moreover, to claim to be catholic surely means to support the Church. When the Church of England ordained women for the first time surely it was up to those catholics who disagreed to either (a) conform their minds to the mind of the Church – surely the duty of anyone who calls themselves catholic – or (b) to have enough integrity to part with the Church and find another spiritual home.

Instead we have so-called traditionalists promoting what are essentially congregationalist novelties whilst claiming – falsely, I believe – to be catholics, all the while arguing for a distinctly non-catholic version of the Church.

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Justin Reynolds

22/11/2012

If politics is ‘the art of the possible’ then surely all liberals should have backed the measure, whatever its flaws. The notion that one day we will all be marching hand in hand towards the sunlit progressive uplands is somewhat fantastic, I think.

Everyone who joins the C of E, or indeed the SEC, knows what kind of church it is: essentially progressive (as witnessed by the Synod vote) but with significant minorities opposed to change. And it isn’t like a political party where arguments are conducted in the field of political philosophy and politics with a realistic hope that the mind of the party might change decisively over time in one direction or other. In the case of the church disputes are necessarily more intransigent, concerned with the interpretation of revelation and long standing traditions. These disagreements take decades, indeed centuries, to resolve, in so far as they can be resolved at all.

Perhaps those who can’t live with compromise, be they conservative or liberal, should consider whether they are actually in the right denomination at all, rather than hoping that one day – sooner rather than later – everyone will agree with them. It’s often noted that conservatives can go Orthodox or Roman Catholic, as indeed some have. It’s less often suggested that liberals might consider Unitarianism or Quakerism. I say that as a liberal who has at various times wavered between those two – and others – and Episcopalianism. I’ve ended up as an Episcopalian, but I did so knowing full well the intractable nature of the disagreements besetting the denomination, and that I had to live with them or simply go elsewhere. It seems to me that Christians are far too sentimental and attached to particular denominations.

Also, with respect Rowan Williams’ tenure can hardly be seen as an ‘abject failure’. Everyone knew he believed in conciliation and compromise when he was selected. His liberalism on a number of issues only formed a component of his theology. And his intellectual contribution over the past decade to British national life has been significant, particularly in regard to political and economic issues. His archepiscopate has gone some way towards restoring Anglicanism’s intellectual credibility: witness the tributes from secular as well as religious quarters on news of his retirement.

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Seph

22/11/2012

Apparently Diana Johnson MP (Lab., Hull North) is planning to bring a ten-minute rule bill in the new year which will include a clause calling for women bishops. Parliament could succeed here where General Synod failed.

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Rosie Bates

02/12/2012

Check out Bristol Diocese action re Vote of No Confidence in Synod! How lovely on the mountains are the feet of Him who brings Good News! Hope the rest take note and follow a fine example. Hope in this Advent message. Bishop Mike was an Area Bishop in Oxford Diocese and likely to be very clued up to certain of their Synod Reps games which cannot be stopped before July without reform or, at the very least, tough love.

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