I certainly appreciate the effort. The sermon was so utterly crap-tastic I didn’t even know where to begin criticizing it. I just wrote it off to completely dense episco-speak.

“This frail infant is clothed with divine glory – the lowly lifted up and the hungry fed at his birth.”

Call me crazy (“Okay, Fuinseoig, you’re crazy!”) but I think this was a reference to a piece of Scripture, namely the Magnificat, where Mary responds to Elizabeth’s greeting “And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy”:

“He hath put down the mighty from their seat, and hath exalted the humble. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.”

Lowly lifted up = the humble are exalted. Hungry fed = hungry filled with good things.

Don’t know how that slipped through; whoever did the speech-writing must have got carried away!

But even better was this little gem, when she’s talking about the young homeless drifter Jesse (emphasis mine):

“Jesse’s angels guided the night-watching shepherds to his side and led him to shelter. The elders of Leadville guided him into the heart of a welcoming community table. That table has room for all who hunger and thirst – in body and in spirit. It is peopled by the poor and the better off, by Spanish speakers and Anglos, by people from Ireland and Greece, by the wounded and the outwardly well.”

If I wasn’t depressed about our economic situation before, I certainly am now. Getting a pitying pat on the head from Her Primatialness, while being compared to a homeless beggar – my nation thanks you for the kind thought, Presiding Bishop!

Ah, well: happy New Year to one and all, and may we get through it somehow.

No, she was emphatic about speaking of “people from Ireland”; apparently she has written off ‘people in Ireland’.

Cheers

Maybe a course in remedial homiletics would help?

Maye her text should have been 1 Cor. 14:8? This sermon is a great illustration of that text, at least.

“Christ’s coming means infinitely more than Mrs. Schori communicates here” ‘And he did not do many mighty works there, because of their unbelief.’ (Matthew 13:58)
Chris, here is my book recommendation for folks for the new year. “A Man In Christ” by James S. Stewart. He took the theology St. Paul back from the captivity of the theologians and reinserted the central teaching of Paul which is the mystical union of the believer with Christ.

This is the line that jumped out at me: “Parents, elders, and teachers steward our growing wisdom and awareness and guide us into growth toward the full stature of Christ – the glory of God in a human being fully alive.” Eh? This is not only Pelagian, but it’s downright Mormon. According to Christian teaching, I cannot ever achieve divinity. I will not become God; only God, the one and only, is God.

J.M., in a sense that’s even worse for our situation, since that means there are hordes of Irish once more emigrating to America and other far-flung parts.

Granted, that’s true, but she didn’t have to rub our noses in it.

Oh, well, I’ll sit here homeless and shoeless, begging a few coins from the charity of you kind passers-by: say a prayer for yeh, mister?

And in other news: Happy New Year! And I see the Personal Ordinariate for the U.S. Anglican Use is up and running today – by Vatican standards, this is scorching speed!

All the Episcopal pooh-bahs have trouble dealing with the Incarnation. That is because they have denigrated and denied the Crucifixion and Resurrection.

So Christmas becomes a festival of the hungry being fed, the poor housed and clothed, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

That is the meaning of Christmas for them. It is just another Justice and Equity show for them.

There seems to be an unwritten rule that you have to be “original” in sermons. Where has “originality” in any theological question ever got Anglicans? Right where they are, just as she “preaches”. It’s flawlessly Anglican. Make a “nice” sound for around 15 minutes, say as little as possible, say nothing straightforward and plain. Certainly don’t quote the Bible. If she wanted to she could do what Orthodox have done for centuries. At a big feast where a great Father (oh dear, that word!) has done a notable sermon for the day, read it in its entirety. Fat chance. That’s her mother’s Church, not hers.

At least she didn’t do the usual lefty spiel that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were homeless.

Duane, you’re right! How could she have forgotten. She didn’t even say they were *occupying* Bethlehem, the stable, whatever. That really is a mistake on her part.

She could be a used car salesman…

Barney,

Shame on you. Disparaging used car salesmen like that…….

I have to say that sermons like this one make me long for the [/sarc on] wisdom [/sarc off] of Frank Griswold.

“At least she didn’t do the usual lefty spiel that Joseph, Mary, and Jesus were homeless.”

Well thank God for that. I got into an awful fight about 2 years ago with the woman who does the church’s newsletter, when she trotted that exact phrase out.

I have read over the PS’ “message” a couple of times now, and I think she may have just culled every phrase that she could think of (and some that don’t bear thinking of…) regarding the Incarnation and just jammed them all together without much regard for whether she was making any sense. Or, maybe she just didn’t care if it made sense or not.

“Jesus is born anew in human hearts every time we meet the vulnerable – which is all of us, once we awaken to the reality of our own longing.”

Just read this line to my wife, who looked confused and said “Who said that?”

“KJS,” I replied.

She gave me a disgusted look and said, turning away, “Oh. Well. Why do you even bother?”

I clicked on the video link and, quite frankly, couldn’t make it past the recitation of the countries and continents in which “EPISCOPALIANS and Christians” were celebrating. While I’m certain that her differentiation of Episcopalians from Christians was inadvertent, the tiresome re-listing of the far-flung places in which TEc has planted its flag was not. Given that her “sermon” has garnered all of ONE comment at the ENS site on which it is posted, her attempts to remind everyone just how relevant she and TEc really is doesn’t appear to be working (I still think that damned oven mitt she wore in Jerusalem sealed the deal in terms of any rational person being able to take her seriously).

This is from the Christmas special? I loved that thing. I can’t imagine a more effective commercial against TEC. Dismal, dreary, boringly static camera angles, and during minute 48, you can clearly see the conductor is wearing an earring in his right ear. I can’t believe no one caught that and edited it out. Or maybe they were purposefully trying to make a statement.