What is in Kelvin's Head?

Christmas Message from Bishop Gregor

27/12/2013

It is quite likely that people reading this blog won’t be aware of Bishop Gregor’s Christmas Message – I don’t think it was sent to clergy or congregations and it doesn’t appear on the diocesan website. However, it is quite a good one and so I’m putting it on here.

I heard a carol new to me last year at the Cathedral: All this time this song is best: Verbum caro factum est. That is, All this time this song is best: The Word was made flesh. (It only rhymes in Latin.)

That carol is right, it is indeed the best song we can sing at Christmastide.

But why? At Christmas I receive the odd circular letter folded into a Christmas card. I enjoy these letters, on the whole. Last year one came from people I used to know from Oxford days, way back in the 1970s. At the top it had a quote from the great Swiss theologian, Karl Barth:

We may choose to live without God. God has decided from all eternity never to live without us.

Wow! That leapt out at me.

You see, St John’s great proclamation that The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the best song we can sing, is the best song because in singing it we sing of God’s desire, of God’s choice, from all eternity, never to live without us. Remember, for St John, the story of Christmas begins with God, in eternity. In the beginning was the Word.

Now, when you choose to live with someone, and especially when you commit to live with someone for the whole of the rest of your life, this is to do with love, a determined love that, as St Paul says in his first letter to the Corinthians bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. A love that is patient and kind and rejoices in the right.

This kind of love is often beyond us – though often we can come pretty close to it – but it is never ever beyond God. This is how God loves us and if we can love a little bit like that well, then, we are showing something of God’s love in the world.

The other thing is that when you choose to live with someone faithfully and truly, you are recognising something in the other person that is attractive to you, that gives you delight, that makes you want the relationship to grow and deepen. And that’s another reason why Verbum caro factum est, the Word became flesh is the best song. For it reminds us that God finds us attractive, seeks us out, wants his relationship with us, and ours with him, to grow and deepen until it comes to glorious flower. The song is about God and it is about us and it is all about love.

I sang another carol new to me at the Cathedral last year:

Lord, you are love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King we worship you;
Emmanuel, within us dwelling,
Make us and keep us pure and true:
Lord, you are love beyond all telling,
Saviour and King, we worship you.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us – love beyond all telling – that is the heart of Christmas, the core of our celebration, the ground of all our hope.

Christmas Message 2013, Gregor Duncan

23 responses to “What if this is the end of the Eucharist?”

Thomas Scott

06/05/2020

Just noticing here that DGD (of happy memory) seems to have left out of his catalogue of joyous, sad, perilous, and solemn occasions any instance of celebrating during a plague or pestilence. I’m not worried about the mass. The eucharist need not be celebrated as though it were a car battery, as if not offering it now would somehow allow the power to run down. It is not at risk, we are, which I think is your point. The questions asked are worth asking, of course.

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Mo Nicholson

06/05/2020

Mo Nicholson. This is an intriguing discussion and what I would like to add to it is the observation that I have had to learn the hard way that participation in the Eucharist being made impossible in no way diminishes an individual’s ability to worship God or be in fellowship with other believers. I am barred from receiving Holy Communion in the Catholic church because allergies make this impossible for me. The pain induced by this has little to do with feeling separation from God, in fact nothing at all as I do not feel that. It comes from feeling excluded from the community, different sections if which regard it as desirable or tolerable that a member of the community should be excluded in this way. This experience has made me understand as never before that if we place prime value on liturgical celebrations, ir indeed anything else, above charity, compassion, welcome and inclusivity, in other words love, then we have become the sounding gong which St Paul warned against. If we truly believe that God is love, as I do, then it is obvious that it is love for one another which makes us true children of God our Father, and in light of this we could begin to look at these present challenging circumstances as simply an opportunity to love more, to reach out to one another in whatever way possible in the knowledge that this is what actually matters and always did. Only perhaps we were tempted to almost make a fetish of our rituals, sacraments and so on. And perhaps this can show us a better way more adapted to the world we are supposed to serve.

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Lynsay Downs

06/05/2020

You and your conversation with Dave Roberts prompted me to write this. Does it resonate for you?

https://astonishing.community/2020/05/06/conversations-in-coronatide/

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1. Kelvin
  
  06/05/2020
  
  Thanks Lynsay – yes, it does resonate with me very much.
  
  I’ve shared it on facebook. I think it is really helpful.
  
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Fr Keith

06/05/2020

Thanks again for such a thoughtful piece. With the Eucharist central to much of, at least Anglican/Episcopalian, worship in recent generations, we perhaps forget that the Church in these islands was, between the Reformation and the liturgical revivals of the 19th and 20th centuries, sustained by Mattins and Evensong as the regular diet of worship on Sundays. I’m not advocating a return to such times, but there is, as you suggest, work to be done on non-Eucharistic worship (though not defining it as a negative). Thanks again.

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Fenland Boy

07/05/2020

For the record, I’m not in favour of lay presidency at the Eucharist. I believe, for better or worse, in an ordered church.

Why are you concerned about lay Presidency?

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Chuck

08/05/2020

May I say respectfully, lighten up. Many Anglicans/Episcopalians lived on the edges of civilization in the nascent U.S. and various elements of the British Empire. Priests to celebrate the Holy Eucharist and to baptize were seldom seen, at most twice a year in many areas. (Bishops, only every several years.) The Church carried on in this manner decade after decade. If circumstances require, the Church will carry on again despite our profound sense of loss.

I should add, to those who grew up under threat or reality of war, persecution, oppression, famine, other disease, etc, the present difficulty is not unfamiliar in many respects.

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Miriam MacCarthy

08/05/2020

Thank you! It is wonderful to read these serious, personal thoughts about the Eucharist. My feeling is that it has become celebrated to the point of boredom. Church, and what we do in it, is in danger of becoming simply a habit. It could just as well be crackerjack for a fast-asleep congregation. My heresy is that the direction Jesus gave is to “do this in remembrance of me”, and that means everything we eat at any time, whether alone or with others, in thanksgiving. If that is seriously done, it has vastly more meaning. It really gets ones attention and requires preparation. Would not become popular or usual, I predict!

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