What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon for Dedication Sunday 2014

27/10/2014

26 October 2014 – Dedication Sunday from Kelvin Holdsworth on Vimeo.

You have come to something that cannot be touched – in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen

I suppose I should give the full verse of the text that I want to preach on this morning. The verse I’ve chosen comes from the letter to the Hebrews and the portion that Wolfgang read to us a few moments ago.

You have not come to something* that can be touched, a blazing fire, and darkness, and gloom, and a tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.

I suppose it takes a certain kind of preacher to dare to preach on the verse that refers to a voice whose words made the hearers beg that not another word be spoken to them.

But I guess I’m that kind of preacher anyway.

But I really want to leap off from that first phrase – You have come to something that cannot be touched.

For today we are celebrating our Dedication Sunday – a day when we step outside the usual cycle of Sunday readings and set aside some time to give thanks for what we have around us.

And I’m being deliberately ambiguous about that – for I give thanks not simply for the building around us but for the building that is the saints of God in this place who are all around us as we worship together each week.

St Mary’s the building can certainly be touched. Indeed if you touch it in some places a bit of it will flake off which you can take home for a souvenir. But today I think we are doing a bit more than giving thanks for lumps of sandstone.

For you have come to something that cannot be touched. You have come instead to Mount Zion – the city of God itself.

By the time the Epistle to the Hebrews was written people were gathering together in groups to worship Jesus Christ. The idea of the weekly gathering to worship was already established amongst the Jewish people and adopted by those who found God through their experience of Jesus. But it was important to remind them even at the beginning that they had come to something that could not be touched.

I remember asking one of you a while ago what it was that he thought bound everyone at St Mary’s together. He thought for a moment and said, (more…)

5 responses to “On being bought and sold”

Tim

19/07/2012

I’m contemplating it – too much instability coming up in the next couple of months though.

You might find http://www.ethicalconsumer.org/buyersguides/money/bankingcurrentaccounts.aspx interesting – the CoOp don’t seem to score all that highly, although obviously better than established big names.

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Pam S

19/07/2012

I did move my account and our joint account about 18 months ago – from Lloyds to the Co-op!

My reason was what appeared to be a policy to get as much money out of me as possible, culminating in imposing an accumulating daily penalty for a going a very small amount overdrawn on one account by accident when I was ill. The charge amounted to much more than the original overdraft. They didn’t inform me of this for several days and the basic attitude was ‘well that’s your lookout’. They knew that there was enough money in other accounts to cover it.

I knew about ethical banking before that – our son is a great advocate of ethical banking and had suggested we moved to the Co-op several times – but it was only a personal experience of what I considered unethical behaviour which damaged me personally that gave me the impetus to do it.

Many years ago when my father was struggling financially, his branch of Barclays called him in to tell him off about his overdraft. He went straight across the road to another small local bank called Martin’s, asked if he could transfer his overdraft there and they lent him the money to close down the account at Barclays. He always said that Barclays had to eventually take over Martin’s to get his custom back!

One thing I did find with moving banks though – it was actually not quite as straightforward as I was told it would be – there were several standing orders and direct debits that didn’t get automatically transferred so there were a couple of months of companies contacting us to tell us we owed them money! However it was all fairly easy to sort out on the phone. Also we were on a lower overdraft limit for the first six months so if you need to use the whole of your current overdraft limit every month it’s best to be clear about what you’re being allowed.

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Tracey

19/07/2012

I bank with the Clydesdale because I work for them, and they require you to have your salary paid into a Clydesdale account.

I wonder if Howard’s branch of Lloyds is being sold to the Co… I really hope so, for hunners of different reasons.

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Helen

19/07/2012

I wonder how ethical the co-op bank actually is. I have had a preference for shopping at co-op supermarkets because of their ethical stance,until the recent revelations that they are among the worst offenders for driving down the price of milk below the cost of production. Fair trade and ethical have to apply to the uk too.

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1. Jo
  
  20/07/2012
  
  The Cooperative have just increased the price they pay to milk producers, in response to concerns raised. As to the bank, “more ethical than any of the other high street banks” is about as good as it gets right now.
  
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