What is in Kelvin's Head?

In just three days…

12/04/2025

Every year I make a promise to people. I say that if they keep the triduum with me at St Mary’s then it will change their life and change their faith. I think that keeping the Triduum helps make sense of all that we do in church for the rest of the year. In just three days, you can learn things about the faith and why Christians believe the things that they do that are much harder to learn during the rest of the year.

The Triduum is the three days from Maundy Thursday to Easter Day. Although the various services take place over several days, it is really one big feast, which is what makes it so extraordinary when you keep it in one place and experience the whole thing. It really is life changing stuff.

A few years ago, I blogged about it, and it might be worth pointing people to those blog posts. There’s a few things we do a bit differently and I’ve changed my mind about one or two things too, but these blog posts do capture the essence of what we are up to.

Maundy Thursday
Veneration of the Cross
Three Hour Devotions
Good Friday Evening
Holy Saturday – all hands on deck!
The Vigil

I’d say you’d kept the Triduum with me if you come to the Maundy Thursday evening service, two of the three services on Good Friday (try for the three hours if you can), the clean and polish on Saturday and the early fire Vigil and the main Festival Mass on Sunday.

On Good Friday in the evening there will be a simple sung service of Night Prayer called Compline. On the Saturday evening we’re going to try something completely new. My colleague Maggie McTernan and I often go to a folk singaround in a local pub. We’re going to be leading a session of singing on the Saturday evening of Songs of Hope and Lament. People can bring a song to sing or simply come and listen to the singers and join in the choruses. (Only rule – no alleluias until Easter Day).

This year we are having a revival on Easter Sunday and there will be a number of people who will be baptised at the Easter Fire Vigil.

This is all open to anyone. You are just as welcome to participate if you have been at St Mary’s all your life or if you’ve never been. Some people come to keep these days here with us because their own church isn’t keeping them like this and they’ll be going back to their own church once Holy Week is done. That’s fine too. I’m also happy to answer questions as we go through these days about what it is all for. (The Saturday morning is a good time to talk).

It really is life-changing if you do it all and there are people around who will testify to just that.

Easter, Good Friday, Holy Week, Maundy Thursday, singaround, triduum, vigil

7 responses to “Sermon preached on 1 July 2012”

Ryan

02/07/2012

Excellent stuff! It’s worth noting I think that overt antisemitic caricatures, rather than being left in the 20s, were very much a feature of ”The Passion of the Christ”, much beloved of certain fundamentalist/evangelicals, whereas the Christ-analogy Bingo approach to the Jewish Scriptures popular in some quarters certainly supports a reductive misunderstanding of the Jewish religion (and so people?)

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Eric Stodadart

02/07/2012

Indeed, an excellent sermon although there’s no getting away from Jesus-a-good-Jew being critical of some aspects of some of the various streams of Judaism of his time. His comment on one particular way of tithing is a case in point.
Having said that, Kelvin’s Jewish scholar is spot on. Whilst we might learn about others by considering their friends perhaps we understand others more when we look at those whom they feel the need to denounce. In evangelical preaching I have perpetrated in the past ‘Judiasm’ was a convenient container into which I could drop criticisms of ’empty ritual’ or ‘salvation by works’ that my congregation probably could understand as coded references to Roman Catholic and liberal Protestant piety, respectively.
Projecting fears and taboos onto characters in a narrative is bad enough but, of course, real people are caught up in the out workings of such stereotypes. More positively, I think that figuring out who, for us, are ‘the baddies’ in the biblical texts – and on what grounds – is a salutary exercise. For me, that probably means starting with S. Paul. Not that I see him as one of the baddies but reflecting on what I might be projecting on to what I think are his theological off-days would likely be useful.

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Suz Cate

02/07/2012

Important message, artfully delivered. Thank you. I’ve been reading Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes–an excellent resource for considering your second question.

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Eamonn

02/07/2012

Oh, dear, Kelvin! I shan’t ever be able to recycle the sermon I preached yesterday, after reading yours. Thanks for sharing this deeper insight (said he ruefully).

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Marion

03/07/2012

Surely there’s also something important here about recognising that none of us is prejudice free – we just see our own targets as valid. The only way I’ve learned to manage anti-semitism within the church (and the scriptures) is to explore the underlying fear and to recognise that we all live with fear and insecurities. Having been on the receiving end of racial prejudice, I know how easy it is to dismiss it as ignorance – and of course, on one level, that is true. But we are all ignorant about how it is to live in someone else’s skin. I found it more difficult to deal with the people who told me ‘some of our best friends are Jews’ than it was to deal with the people who hurled insults. It seems to me that Jesus the Jew challenges us to recognise our fears and to allow the possibility of transformation if we can find the courage to acknowledge our true selves. Maybe a starting place is to recognise that difference is OK – or more than OK; through recognising difference we have the potential to learn and grow.

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Craig Nelson

05/07/2012

I feel Pharisees in particular get a very bad press from the New Testament which may not be fully warranted.

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Rosie Bates

09/07/2012

Wow, heard Matthew’s version of this Gospel at Mass this evening and I am still gasping and wondering. Thanks for new vision and allowing the scholarly woman to touch you and ‘blow your mind’. My previous sermons are well and truly dumped and I repent of them. Drained is love in making full, bound in setting others free…. came to mind and so much more to be thankful for. I had a Jewish doctor in London in the 70’s who was rather angry with me when I wished to continue with a life threatening pregnancy. He persevered with this stubborn scared young Christian (one who understands why some would decide otherwise) and when he came to visit each day after the birth of John he totally ignored me and sat rocking in prayer beside the miracle in the crib. He and his lovely wife honoured us with their presence at John’s Baptism – a first step into another place of worship for them as they approached their seventies. We continue to journey together now that they are in the fullness of The Kingdom. I was so fortunate and my dear Doc who was known to me as ‘Uncle Eric’ is still very much part of our family. He always ended his surgery with an important appointment – His wife confided in me that it was to watch Eastenders! which he found therapeutic – so do I as the Gospel message is always popping up in the midst of horrors and so are the babies!

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