Kelvin Holdsworth is the Provost of the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St Mary the Virgin in Glasgow.
You can watch and listen to the sermon here under the date of 9 October 2011 (it lasts some 12 minutes). His text is “The Parable of the Wedding Banquet” which is in Matthew 22:1-14.
I think this falls under the “Take out the beam in your own eye before you attempt to put out the slinter in your neighbor’s…”
An abysmal sermon, preached without any obvious attempt at understanding the text.
You can also find it [url=http://www.thurible.net/20111009/sermon-preached-on-9-october-2011/#more-8809]here[/url], with a transcript.
He writes,
[blockquote]The parable of the wedding feast that we have today is part of the old sheep and the goats, the saved and the damned stuff that permeates this gospel. I struggle with it every time we go through it.[/blockquote]
To say that he struggles with it, in my mind, is to say that he doesn’t understand the Gospel message at all. Then, we have:
[blockquote]Well, as I alluded today we would do well to remember that there are those amongst us (including me) who are cut off from the institution of marriage.[/blockquote]
Ah-ha! Eisegesis! It all makes sense, now.
So when he writes,
[blockquote]It may well have made sense to the people amongst whom it was first told but we must be frank, we must be bold and we must be clear – it has very little in it to edify us now.[/blockquote]
Ole Rafe cries out, “Anathema!” Cut off, indeed.
Good Lord!! The man is utterly clueless as to what the parable even means! But that doesn’t stop him. He’s going to reject it anyway. And anything else he doesn’t like in the Bible. Not just the Old Testament stuff. Not just St. Paul. He’s going to correct Jesus Christ himself and tell him what he should and shouldn’t have said! Then he calls the Catholic bishops “arrogant” ?? The mind boggles.
[blockquote] I hope that you were embarrassed and outraged by the parable told in this morning’s gospel. If you were not – go and read it again until you are. It may well have made sense to the people amongst whom it was first told but we must be frank, we must be bold and we must be clear – it has very little in it to edify us now.
The words of Jesus to cling onto are the words which nourish and the words which heal. The stories that inspire, the sayings which embrace. Those ways of thinking which enfold the weary like that shepherd we sang about in the psalm – those are the elements of Gospel which the whole world craves.
As the apostle said, “So beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.â€
And in the name of God, forget all the rest.
[/blockquote]
Selective editing of Scripture according to what an individual thinks is acceptable goes all the way back to Marcion. As Fitz Allison said, “scarcely is there a modern heresy that we have not seen before” ( [i] The Cruelty of Heresy, [/i] p. 17).
But this isn’t selective reading! He’s basically saying “if you read anything that Jesus says that makes you uncomfortable, skip over it and keep reading until you find something that you like better.” Can anyone quote anyone ever whose ever said this? (Ignoring the fact that he somehow thinks the fact that the wedding guest who was not attired for the wedding was thrown into outer darkness means that Jesus thinks it’s important to dress up for church whereas he finds that elitist.)
Laura — I re-read what you wrote and I see I didn’t understand it. Yes — this isn’t selective reading it’s selective editing. “Things Jesus Christ said I think are nice” by Kevin Holdsworth. (Amazingly he doesn’t like the sheep and goats parable either since it seems non-inclusive.)
In the interest of full disclosure (sort of) I attend a weekly lectionary/Greek class which is at a convent along with a Priest(who has been seen in procession with Bishop Lawrence), some nuns, and some folks in the deacon formation track. I am the token normal layperson. We just discussed this particular parable,reading it in the Greek text and then trying to dig in a bit. Perhaps Holdsworth could join us and maybe get a little better understanding of the text. As evidenced by his recent sermon, he seems to have missed something.