• The Past Tense

    Sometimes museums are terribly annoying. I found myself getting all worked up about this thurible.

    image

    Well, It wasn’t exactly the thurible that got me worked up but the card next to it.

    image

    The caption uses the past tense. “Censors were used…”

    Censors are used. It somehow felt so frustrating to look at an object that I could pick up and use in my daily work and which seemed to me to be in as good a state as when it was first made and yet see the caption speaking about the use as being something in the past.

    As I looked around the same gallery, all the references to anything liturgical were expressed in the same way:

    “Music was important in the Christian liturgy…”

    There’s no was about it.

5 responses to “20111224 Midnight Mass – Sermon”

  1. Christmas Sermons…

    Today’s Church Times has reports of several Christmas Day sermons: ‘Atomised’ Britain is urged to seek God’s forgiveness. The full texts of some are available online. Archbishop of Canterbury Archbishop of Wales Bishop of Salisbury Bishop of St A…

  2. william Avatar
    william

    “Christ is born and all shall be well” – sounds very like Jeremiah’s “peace, peace”, but there was not peace.
    Substance is all important, whether it’s in the content of sermons or websites.
    Throughout His life, and especially in His communication with the religious Jesus took great care to communicate substantially lest at the end many should come to Him, saying Lord, Lord and He would then have to say – I don’t know you.
    Crowded churches or busy websites in themselves are nothing, as we all know – so let’s not encourage folks to busy themselves with such digressions.
    But there are ways in which we should be busying ourselves – Jesus had a lot to say about that – including our presence for worship and even the content of websites!

    1. kelvin Avatar

      > Jesus had a lot to say about …. even the content of websites!

      Oh no he didn’t!

      1. william Avatar
        william

        Kelvin, your understanding of scripture is amazingly narrow, even literalistic – at times!!

        1. kelvin Avatar

          That may well be so.

          However, I do understand irony.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.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

Previous Posts

  • The Sound of the Photocopier

    The sound of the photocopier was heard in the land. It is a little known fact that the week before Holy Week is now referred to in the Calendar as Photocopier Week.

  • The Scottish Episcopal Church and the "Listening Process"

    Seen this? http://www.aco.org/listening/reports/scotland.cfm It is the response of the Scottish Episcopal Church to the “Listening Process” in the Anglican Communion. We will leave aside the fact that although it is supposed to be a process of listening to lesbian and gay people there is nothing in the response about what any lesbian or gay person…

  • Sermon – Passion Sunday

    This week is the start of a mini-season in the church – we are travelling through Lent towards Holy Week – the Great Drama. This final part of the journey, we call Passiontide. The time of the Passion. There is, of course, a very particular view of what the Passion of Christ is about –…

  • Topics to blog about

    Andrew has commented on a previous post about topics to blog about. His suggestions are The environment Slavery ( any why it is still practiced ) Ecumenical concerns and relations with other religions Children, and how we can bring them into the Faith Someone else has commented that Andrew could set up his own blog.…