What is in Kelvin's Head?

Always the Inkeeper – a sermon for Christmas Day 2018

25/12/2018

In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

I, was always the innkeeper.

I’m not sure how many times I was in a nativity. Nor am I sure how it happened. But somehow, I was always the innkeeper.

And the innkeeper doesn’t get the best of lines.

“I’m sorry, there is no room at the inn”

Of course, there’s no actual innkeeper in the Bible. Just that line which says that Mary laid him in a manger because there was no room in the inn.

From the lack of room in the inn there is presumed to be an innkeeper.

And the innkeeper must therefore turn the holy couple away. Not for them the comforts of the inn.

But how to play the innkeeper – stern and uncompromising as he shakes his head at the holy couple. Or kind and compassionate finding them a corner round the back with the animals because you can’t just let a woman give birth on the street?

I’m not sure that my knowledge of theatre was all that developed in those days but there was still clearly a choice to be made.

If you’ve only got one line, you’ve got to make it count.

I never got to play the part of Joseph – concerned, compassionate, gentle and strong.

I never got to play a shepherd shivering on the hillside nor a king come from the East to worship the Christchild.

I never got to spit like a camel or baa like a sheep. Nor was I to ever become any of the whole host of angels who came to sing peace to God’s people on earth.

I always knew that I’d have made a fabulous Gabriel, all sparkles and glitter, even if the world was not at that time ready for me to play the Blessed Virgin Mary.

But it was never to be.

I was always the innkeeper.

Carrying my lamp (I always had a lamp) it was my solemn duty to tell Mary and Joseph that there was no room for them in the inn.

So far as I can tell the inns of Great Western Road, do not seem to come with adjacent stables these days. The memory of the cow byers in the West End where animals were stabled after being brought into town for market lingers in the name of Byers Road. But generally speaking, for most of us the idea of a stable is a bit foreign.

But it was to such a place that the innkeeper showed the holy family and in such a place as that, the Lord of heaven and earth first laid his head, all wrapped in swaddling bands.

Perhaps the modern equivalent is a garage around the back.

I wonder whether those of you who played a part in nativity scenes in your youth have found the character that you played has played out in your later life. Is there still an angel in you – announcing news whenever there’s great news to tell? Are you still searching like one of the Magi? Are you someone who still looks after the sheep.?

I find myself wondering whether constantly saying “There is no room at the inn” in my childhood Christmases somehow contributed to wanting to preside over a congregation which is trying to be open, inclusive and welcoming and trying to say, yes, there’s always room for more around the crib at Christmas and around the altar where God is alive to us the rest of the year too.

Maybe I am rebelling against my old Christmas script. No more will I proclaim no room at the inn. There’s room for everyone here.

It may be because it was my part to play that I’ve tended to think that the church has neglected the innkeeper somewhat. There’s no carols about the innkeeper. No icons of the innkeeper. No relics of the innkeeper to visit. No shrine.

Once he has delivered his line in the nativity play, the innkeeper fades away.

Well, he fades away from view but somehow we each get the chance to play his part and not just at Christmas. Whom will we welcome? Who precisely will we make room for.

For there must be room for the wandering and the lost. There must be food for the hungry. There must be shelter for the homeless. There must be refuge for the refugee.

And the vocation of all of us innkeepers is to work out how to welcome just one more.

And the Christmas story is at its weakest if we locate it only in Bethlehem and only in a time long, long ago.

Like all the best stories it comes to life when we find ourselves acting the parts of the characters not simply in childhood but when we can see and influence the same drama as it plays out in our lives.

The Christmas story is not simply that God came once and laid his head in straw and that was that.

The Christmas story is that Glasgow is the holy city in which God is born. The Christmas story is that people still discover that same God in the most unexpected ones. The true Christmas story is that there’s always room for one more beloved child.

And the true Christmas story is not that God loved the world so much 2000 years ago that he came and for the blinking of a lifetime was part of it.

It is that God loves the world so much because God loves you.

And that love doesn’t happen then or there, but here and now.

God loves you, here and now.

This place is Bethlehem. And unto us a child is born.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit Amen.

19 responses to “Grace Received: communion on the battlefield”

robert e lewis

19/04/2020

RE “Spiritual Communion”–This prayer has been used in one form or another of late in various instances, including the Easter Sunday service at the National Cathedral.

My Jesus, I believe that you are truly present in the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar. I desire to offer you praise and thanksgiving as I proclaim your resurrection. I love you above all things, and long for you in my soul. Since I cannot receive you in the Sacrament of your Body and Blood, come spiritually into my heart. Cleanse and strengthen me with your grace, Lord Jesus, and let me never be separated from you. May I live in you, and you in me, in this life and in the life to come. Amen .

I detest this prayer. It is smarmy, dorky, and focused on ME ME ME. There must be something better that we can come up with in this unprecedented moment when we cannot gather for Eucharist.

As an alternative I have created this prayer (well, not “created,” but rather pieced together using phrases and motifs from the BCP and A New Zealand Prayer Book), which I offer as a starting point for dicsussion.

it has echoes of the sursum corda and the sanctus
it is WE language (not ME language)
it expresses both our fear and our hope
it points to working together to end our exile.
it includes the key phrase “receive into our hearts by faith”

Lord, the door of your church is locked.

We are not able to gather around your table;
we are not able to share your peace.
We are anxious and afraid.

Nevertheless, we lift up our hearts,
we join with angels and archangels
and all the company of heaven
as we proclaim you holy
and receive you into our hearts by faith.

Strengthen our love for you.
Give us patience and hope,
and help us work together with all your faithful people,
that we may restore health and wholeness to one another
and to all your creation.
Through Christ our Savior, Amen.

Reply
Father Ron Smith

20/04/2020

There will come a time – we are told in a certain Christian hymn: “When Sacraments shall cease” In the meantime, Jesus told his disciples that they were to “Do this to remember me”. In saying that, I’m pretty sure that Jesus meant that we were to gather together (whether in the body, corporately, or – in todays’s situation – possibly over the ether of the Internet – to re-member Him.

Having been given the Spirit of Christ in our Baptism, we are told that the Holy spirit now lives within us. Teilhard de Chardin, when faced with the prospect of celebrating Mass with neither bread not wine to hand, asked God to “be my bread and wine for today”. He believed that he was receving Christ sacramentally in that moment. Knowing that God is much great than our understanding of God, can we not believe that God will feed us sacramentally when our hearts are actually open to receive Him? “I will never leave you” said Jesus. Do we really believe Him in this time of extraordinary need?

Reply
David Wood

20/04/2020

A typically helpful and generous reflection, Kelvin, thank you.

Thanks to you too Robert, for your simple and elegant prayer suggestion, which will hopefully replace that narcissistic rubbish.

Reply
Anne Wyllie

05/05/2020

Thank you Kelvin for your helpful and thought-provoking reflection and questions. As a lay member of the Scottish Episcopal Church, I am following the current guidance from our College of Bishops and making ‘spiritual communion’ instead of partaking of bread and wine whenever I join in an online SEC Eucharistic Service. As a member also of the Church of Scotland, I gladly accept the invitation from Ministers in the Church of Scotland and other churches in the Reformed tradition to set apart a portion of bread and wine in order to receive it during an online Communion Service conducted by such a Minister. Do I feel more nourished by one of these acts of worship rather than the other? Actually, so far, no: I value both traditions and am grateful to belong to both.

Reply
Rev. Lewis G. Walker

05/05/2020

And what exactly is the purpose of an article which is all to do with senseless sensationalism and nothing to do with good an sound Theology?… This is the sort of nonsensical gibberish I expect to find the Sun Newspaper, or the Daily Mail, or the Express… They all make a living out of hysterical spectacle passing as “journalism”!

What is the main objective of an article like this?… I have no idea! Irresponsible scaremongering certainly springs to mind, along with disbelief. What happened to Faith?

This is not a matter of public relations, Earthly Humanism, or marketing. And this is NOT the place, the time or the subject matter for senseless speculation of utmost gravity!

This is the MOST HOLY SACRAMENT OF THE EUCHARIST, the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ, instituted by Him at the Last Supper, with a simple and straight forward request: DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME.
For 2020 years Christendom has honoured that promise, through and through, amid endless wars, plagues, sieges, catastrophes in Europe and elsewhere and terrible tragedies such as World Wars 1 and 2, persecutions, and even evil, demonic dictatorships such as the Soviet Union and China.
Despite all that, Our Lord Jesus Christ emerges, always radiant, always loving, always REAL and PRESENT, a magnet of the Christian Faith, the ultimate catalyst of the New and Eternal Covenant, declared at every Holy Mass during the Canon, at the Elevation.

COVID-19 is no different than any other calamity the miserable History of Humanity has landed on our doorstep. And as before in 2020 years of Christian History, Our Lord Jesus Christ shall rise again, because we shall raise HIM again. We shall raise him in churches, and if we are forbidden to do so, we shall raise HIM in the streets, in processions, in Open Air Masses, in the open and in hiding if it needs be. And we shall raise HIM again, in public places and in private homes, in gilded altars and on kitchen tables if it comes to that!

And why?!… Because He promised and so far has never failed us, to fulfil His Mission NEVER TO LEAVE US ALONE, even though He ascended to the Heavens.

So the message for you, and ME, and all others in ALL CHURCHES is simple: Get AWAY from behind the comfort of a screen and a keyboard, put a washed and nicely ironed cassock on, get inside a cotta, grab a stole and get out, celebrate Mass as before. Ring the bells until they drop off the silent towers.

Get organised, invite local brass bands, CELEBRATE the Victory of Resurrection as it should be celebrated. Take the Holy Eucharist in procession from local churches to the Cathedral, stop all the traffic, make a splash, make noise. MAKE A FUSS!

Dying on the Cross for all of us is worth all of that and more, I believe.

Have FAITH! And for goodness sake, blog less, especially when you are bored, it results in train crash articles like this one. Do something else for the Love of God.

Regards.

The Faithful will come, because Love is more powerful than blogs, empty notions, cheap pseudo-debates and all that nonsense.

Reply