The Blog of the Provost of St Mary's Cathedral, Glasgow
Here's the sermon that Chuck's preached last week. Chucks is a curate at St Mary's at the moment. A curacy is a training post where one develops one's skills and learns how to be a clergy person.
It was great to see him in the pulpit at St Mary's for the first time preaching in such a confident way.
Here is what I said in the pulpit on Christmas Day
There’s a whole slew of new sermons on the preaching page.
Here’s what I said yesterday in the pulpit…
There’s no getting away from it. Sooner or later we do have to think about hell. That’s the message from this morning’s gospel reading and I don’t think that there is any choice but to deal with it head on and allow ourselves the chance to ask ourselves what we believe about it. [Read more...]
Today is 1 August and that is a traditional day in Scotland which has a name and a heritage and a series of traditions around it.
And I bet most people these days don’t know what it is.
Today, 1 August is Lammas Day – one of the Scottish Term Days, similar to the English Quarter Days. These were the days on which rents were paid and servants were hired, and the day on which the clergy stipends were due.
In old fashioned terms, it was a day of reckoning. A day when the tabs were all added up. The balance sheets balanced. Debts were settled. And a line was drawn under what had gone before in order to provide for a clean sheet to begin business again.
I’ll come back to the idea of a day of reckoning in a bit, for Jesus certainly seemed in the gospel to be speaking about the day of reckoning that comes of each of us and about the nature of the balance sheet that we are left with at the end of life. I’ll come back to that in a minute, but first I want to stay with this image of Lammastide for a moment for there is a bit more that I want to draw out of it.
[Read more...]
This is what I had to say in Edinburgh on Sunday afternoon at the Affirmation Scotland service:
Thank you for inviting me here. It is wonderful to discover that God seems to be raising up people in denomination after denomination the world over to proclaim that the time has come to proclaim publicly and proudly that God’s promises are for everyone, and specifically at this time to say clearly and confidently that God’s promises are for gay and straight people alike.
As an Episcopalian, I’m delighted to be here with a mostly Presbyterian crowd singing God’s praises on this special day. Today is special because it is Pentecost. And its special because it is General Assembly Week. A good day to gather to pray and to praise together.
Pentecost is a day about coming together and hearing the good news as one people, and discovering as we hear that news, that we can each hear it in unity and express it in our diversity. The same good news gives us confidence to proclaim it in diverse ways, with diverse stories and amongst diverse peoples. Pentecost is the great Feast of Creativity in Diversity and that is something to celebrate in itself.
On the front of the service sheet, there are a few verses of the Pentecost story. Just a few verses about the coming of the Spirit.
But they don’t include the best bit of the story. We’ve missed out the great tongue twister. [Read more...]
Here is what I said yesterday – text to follow later.
What with the reading being all about sheep and shepherds and with +Gregor being consecrated, it seemed like a good weekend to preach about the episcopate. Here's what I said:
On Friday evening, this place was packed full with guests for the consecration of a new bishop. People had come from all over the diocese and indeed from right across the world to celebrate the ordination of Gregor Duncan as a new bishop. Not any old bishop either. Our bishop for us, here in this place. And its here in this building that he was enthroned in his cathedra, the ornate and I suspect deeply uncomfortable seat which is up by the High Altar – the seat of the bishop and the throne which allows us to be known as a Cathedral church. [Read more...]
Here is what I said this morning:
The readings that we have had this morning are the readings set for the day – the sixth Sunday after Epiphany. Most of the time, the readings that we use in St Mary’s are the same as the readings that many of our friends use in other local and indeed far distant churches. But not this week. This week, there is an option. You can either do the readings for the day or chose a special set for the Sunday before Lent.
I tend to have an opinion on this, which is that Lent is long enough already without adding an extra week counting down to Easter. Indeed, the idea of a week which celebrates the coming of a season which itself celebrates the coming of another seems to me to be putting the cart before the horse.
Seasons of the Sundays before Lent are an abomination before the Lord, at least in my head and we don’t do them.
[Read more...]
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